Face Your Fears (there's gold in there!)

Fear and I have a very different relationship these days. We’re actually weird buddies. Because these days I know when you face your fears, this is how you grow.

Before my rock bottom, I wasn’t too bad at doing big things that scared me – but they were all outward, external things.

But I couldn't face my fears where it really mattered.

It was the invisible, emotional stuff that scared the bejesus out of me.

I was PETRIFIED of my wounded inner child like she was the scariest monster in the world. I was scared to deal with her so I didn’t.

She was trapped inside me and I knew it. I could feel her hurting just as bad as she did when she was damaged decades before. She never aged a day because she was stuck. Her timeless anguish scared me.

Opening the door to love, also flung open the door to fear. My subconscious mind regularly assured me that any love I had, would trigger a repeat of childhood, and one day, with no warning, sweet sweet love would be switched off like a tap.

These were my fears running in the background, and these troublemakers dictated my life.

I didn’t know when you face your fears you are able to heal. No one told me about the importance of clearing out my shadows, and I sure as hell didn’t know how to do my spiritual house cleaning.

So I ran from my fears and buried their whispers.

I made my life fast, and layered it thick with addiction and mental health struggles. Moving my mind fast to sidestep my triggers was a habit I learned young.

After my dad’s suicide in 2014, this big guy grief became the new member of my shadow gang, and it was this monster that handed me my ticket to rock bottom.

When I emerged from rock bottom, I was sizzled to a crisp. But the fire tempered me.

The darkness taught me to see. My fears and I eventually sat together because there was nowhere else to go. After a long time I learned their names. Gradually I began to understand where they came from.

After a while I found I had deep love and empathy for my fears. They taught me that they were parts of me. That they were created from events in my past.

Gradually I transmuted my fears and integrated them back into my wholeness. And this made me strong.

There are still many things that 'present' as fear.

Fear still pops in when someone close to me is dying or suffering.

Fear grows when I worry about having to look after my Mum who has multiple myeloma. How could I stay in that house with her suffering AND all my childhood triggers poking and prodding me?

Driving freaks me out, because I only got my licence at 44. What if I hit a cat and have to put it out of its misery? But it’s a projection of something that may never happen. If I buy into it, it costs me my freedom and keep me small.

LOVE still brings up old fears. But my triggers are gone now so there’s nothing to fear. It’s just old records playing that have no basis in fact anymore.

I also feel a twinge of fear when writing about something raw and vulnerable. More residual crumbs of the crappy old program of, ‘what will people think?’ That program ran on repeat back in the 80’s and 90s, it’s so fucking outdated and not relevant to me anymore.

Fear still gets in. But now I can observe the fear, and see the program run, rather than be stuck in it.

By facing our fears and moving through it, it begins to break down.

When you face your fears and look deeper, you see that they are not even real. The are the 'program' of fear. It's the mind.

The things we fear seem scary at face value – but it’s just False Evidence Appearing Real.

When you feel it, know it won’t actually harm you. See it as just a program that is running. The only way out is through.

Mindful drawing is a powerful tool to teach you to face your fears, because it teaches you to know yourself, layer by layer.

It will teach you to observe your thoughts and your fears. You begin to see what you are afraid of. Slowly, you learn the names of your fears.

Gradually, you become braver to go in and explore why fear exists in certain areas of your life.

You begin to realise there’s nuggets of gold in there, and you become braver to go and collect them.

You’ll begin to see that this is the path to expansion beyond the limitations of what you were.

You grow beyond it and rise above it – wiser and more experienced than you were before.

Here are some root causes of why fear exists:

Fear exists because we’re afraid of putting ourselves out there. Maybe we’re afraid to get hurt, or we’re afraid of being laughed at.

A common fear is being rejected, or being left alone. Or falling, or failing or worrying what people think.

Often we don’t try new things because we’re afraid it’ll be too hard or we’re not good enough. Fear (your mind), wants you to stay small – where you’re ‘safe’.

But then we can’t grow. And this is not what we’re on Earth to do.

When you’re on the path of consciousness expansion, we refuse to stay small. We won’t be silent, or boxed in.

Our warning lights flash at comfort zones, because we know they are NO GROWTH ZONES.

Step back and observe your mind – see how it conjures up the fear? See how you are not the fear? Can you see how it’s just a program running?