Fear

I have been thinking a lot about fear the last few days. I was reading last Sunday about honoring self. I always love reading because I learn a lot and it is a de-stresser for me along with writing. I was reading about how there are times that we are motivated by fear. A quote from the book I was reading is “Fear sabotages mind, clarity, and efficacy. Fear undermines the sense of personal worth…above all fears; they become the masters; it is to them, not to reality, that the individual has to adjust.” There are times I am an obsessive thinker, I always attributed this obsessive thinking to being a problem solver but it is not that at all, it is fear, I always worry or obsessively think about the things that I am the most afraid of. 

A few months back I went on line and looked up obsessive thinkers and I learned that it goes hand in hand with anxiety and like I said it comes through fear. I learned when you are thinking about something and you can’t get your mind off of it you need to “name the beast” or what you are worried about or obsessing over? When obsessively thinking, ask yourself: First, What is my fear and Second, What is my doubt? You need to describe these in words. So I tried it. When I was worried and anxious about something I just asked myself what is my fear? What is my doubt? An amazing thing happened I faced those fears and/or those doubts and I didn't think, obsess or worry about them anymore.  What a freeing feeling, not to have to be obsessively thinking and worrying all the time. Now am I perfect in it? No. I still have a long way to go. Sometimes I don’t even realize that I am obsessively thinking and I forget that I need to ask myself what my fear is and/or what my doubt is. It is when I tired and exhausted of thinking and worrying that I realize that I am obsessively thinking, then decide I should do something about it and I go back to those questions. Of course I have to be very honest with myself about why I am obsessively thinking about something and sometimes I don’t like the answers to the questions but if I am honest with myself it works and I able to calm my thoughts and the best thing about it I don’t worry or obsessive over it anymore. I guess in a way it is a mental exercise. If you are an obsessive thinker like me you should try it sometime, you do have to be very honest and real with yourself, but it works and is very refreshing. 

Now that I got side tracked back to talking about being motivated by fear oh and by the way being motivated by fear is not a good thing if you didn't already catch that. “Anytime we admit a difficult truth, any time we face that which we have been afraid to face, anytime we acknowledge, to ourselves or to others, facts the existence of which we have been evading, any time we are willing to tolerate temporary fear or anxiety on the path to better contact with reality [or another way to say it is we are real with ourselves] our self-esteem [may I say self worth] increases.” (Nathanial Braden. Honoring The Self ) We need to be true and real with ourselves about our thoughts (what we are thinking), feeling (emotions, what are we truly feeling?) and our behaviors (what we are doing? Why are we doing it?). We have to accept reality, we cannot pretend it does not exist or they will always be our fear.  By accepting reality and being real with ourselves we can increase our self esteem and feelings of self worth AND we are not living in fear anymore. It is not easy to be honest and real with ourselves and I am still at the beginning and I fall short all the time but it feels great when I am able to over come fear and in a way it is very refreshing and freeing which I think I mentioned before.

 Wouldn't it be great if we were all emotionally healthy and emotionally stable? I laugh because I don’t know very many people with a perfect life and that are perfectly stable emotionally. We all go through things in this life that cause us pain and heartache. We also all have fears that we have to face and none of the fears are the same.  .