Fear
I went on some training last week in Nottingham. It was provided by the Asylum Associates and it was aimed at Identifying Child Sexual Abuse.
I have been on various training course to identify abuse in families. This was different as it brought in people with their own experiences to share their stories. These people had overcome many fears in their lives and were following their dreams.
Also a Consultant Psychiatrist was there that I have met previously on training, called Dr Bob Johnson. He talks about fear being the master emotion.
I would like to reflect and explore fear in this blog today. I also read Susan Jeffers book some years ago which really helped me move forward, 'Feel the Fear and do it anyway' , a great book to read if you have not read it as yet.
Fear to me has connections to anxiety. Anxiety is something that we feel when scared and fearful. For e.g we may feel anxious about starting a new job. We may procrastinate about finding a new job.
Why? Because I fear that I may not like it. I may not know what to do, I may get things wrong. I may not fit in. Sound familiar?
Or we may feel anxious about money. I may be fearing I am losing my job. That I may not have enough money to pay the bills. That I may not be able to afford to buy food and feed my family. At the root of that fear is that we may die from lack of food.
Irvin Yalom a favourite psychiatrist of mine speaks about death anxiety.
Death anxiety is the fear that one day we are going to die.
My father says he doesn't fear death but fears getting old and helpless.
With all this fear around this can create depression and aggressive behaviour. Fear can cause us to act out of character to protect ourselves or others. Alternatively, we may be so scared that we are paralysed by our fears. That we stop going out, meeting new people and taking risks.
A certain amount of fear can keep us safe but too much fear causes pain and suffering for many people.
How do we over come our fears?
Some fears may not be that deep rooted and may be easier to face, for others that may be and therefore take longer. We therefore cannot put time on recovery (Recovery is something I will be writing about in my next blog).
Talking through with someone about your fears and anxieties can help to unravel what may be tightly wound. Slowly we start to reach into our bag of worries or box of fears and take one out at a time and understand the fear. We learn to understand how it got there, how it stays there and what we feed it to keep it alive.
Slowly and consciously we can start to become more aware quashing the harmful fears we are harbouring. We then begin to feel and see changes in our lives, that open new doors and help us to feel brave and good in ourselves.
Links below related to fear that are useful
If you have experiences of fear that you haven't or have overcome I would like to hear from you. Or if you would like to discuss anything else you can email me
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