What often helps me is hearing/reading other people’s stories. It reminds me that it’s not uncommon to have anxiety and somehow that takes the edge of it.
❤️
what helps me is listening to your meditations from spotify. It strengthens my own meditation practice. hard to explain but your podcast helps me become aware of a calm my body recognizes. It’s pretty amazing🪷Thank you 🌺
Meditation and practice of Tara’s RAIN process has helped me deal with my fears considerably. Therapy has helped me to understand how my experienced childhood trauma has resulted in a set of patterns that have kept me unfree in some ways. With a mindfulness practice, therapy and the ability to listen/accept my felt sense of fear, I am slowly, ever so slowly, creating new responses to fear.
Bianca B., Marriage/Family Therapy, Encino, CA, USAsays
Absolutely love your work, Tara! Practicing exposure to the fear with clients through imagination and somatic tracking, and then gradual exposure to actual feared tasks. Also, practicing self-compassion is HUGE! Also, the psychoed piece you shared at the start about fear/anxiety and it’s evolutionary purpose. Thank you for what you do!
the utter relief of allowing pain or fear to just be as it is without trying to push it away or fix it .. its like the pain, when allowed, turns to blessing and release
Acknowledging the fear, the realisation that everyone has fear so why not me? And being aware of the space within the fear; I am not consumed by it and parts of me have no fear.
Saying the mantra,”Let go, let God.” It may have to be said many times over. Trying to understand where my fear is coming from, and putting things in perspective. Compared to what’s going on in the world, I ask myself, “Is this really that bad?”
‘Pausing.’. Asking myself, “Is this real?, Is this true? Seeking refuge in ‘the breath. Long time practicing this and default still ‘fight or flight”.
Tara, and team.
Thank you so much for this opportunity. You have been one of my mainstays for six years now, your generous gift to ‘humanity’ teaches me my value and restores my faith in humanity.
My innate sense of responsibility gives me whatever confidence I need in the moment to just show up and face my fears. My “ability to respond” , this sense of responsibility to myself and others has seldom let me down. Responsibility gives me the courage to face my fears. And the knowledge that “fear” is part of the human condition emboldens me to move forward knowing my fear is not unique…Tara, your “presence “, wisdom, humor and vulnerability are both powerful and inspiring. Thank you for sharing with the world.
Acknowledging that I’m afraid. But there are tools to face this fear. Step forward, move on in little increments, keep trying/learning.Did the 40 day mindfulness course recently without missing a day- yay me!
I am in my late 70’s. I do not have a life partner, and my only child is an adult daughter with learning disabilities. I am afraid of growing old and infirm, with no one to really monitor my situation and make whatever arrangements might be needed in the future. (Dementia runs in my family). This thought makes me feel very afraid and anxious.
To help with this, I listen to inspirational CDS when I am going to sleep at night. The quality of centered and grounded voices helps me. I focus on trying to live in the present moment.
Fear is a part of our intrinsic nature, makes us to be vigilent (awareness, presence). It is an impeccable alertness that keep us aware of consequences of our action when we fear something. This alertness is achievable, it requiers skills, training, practicing, and meditation. If we are not aware and present to our emotion,fear become a negative emotion and it has a paralyzing effect on us. Awareness, Presence, Sustaining a conscious relationship to our state (mind-emotion), Be an objective observer of our emotion, Pause, Conscious breathing, Being grounded in our body, Understanding, Open up to fear, Recognized and examined, Non-Judging, Compassion, Meditation allow the transformation of fear. By becoming skillful, we can allow fear to be seen and eventually to be dissolved by that seeing.
l sit each morning and do a yoga nidra practice in the evening.
l speak and write my fears.
l seek wisdom and guidance from others and remember my true nature is love and that this is the truth for all beings.
Wise teachings from books such as yours and Byron Katie. Friends advice and support. Listening to myself. Knowing of others who have been through life’s challenges.
I go to psychotherapy as well as somatic experiencing therapy. Writing in my journal goes a long way in helping me figure out what’s bothering me. Meditation and calming music help too.
Some parts of me enjoy the thrill of fear, in sports and activities, it makes me feel alive. I face it by accepting the fear and going forward anyway. The kind of fear you speak about is my fear of standing out, speaking and expressing myself, it’s become chronic for me. I’m looking forward to finding some inspiration how to fight it.
Dear Tara, i was hurt in my previous relationship which ended the same time as my Father was reaching the end of his life. I do feel that I have a built up a fear to surrender and open myself up to new relationships, I have made myself small, as to not be noticed. I have spent the last 3 years since covid working on myself, facing myself, which has been hard but also awakening to the truth, I feel I am ready for a new relationship but I haven’t been able to stand up to fear or recognize if somebody is interested in me? Listening to you has made me realize, I have nothing to loose. Thank you for making me understand this. Mark
I gently hold a small dried flower I keep in a cup in my kitchen and I notice how beautiful and fragile it is and I imagine it’s me. I just hold it and sit with it and allow whatever rises and just breath.
As a child I disassociated. Today it’s different, either I freeze inside but can still act and more and less respond but not being 100% present. Or I feel a warning in I’m my gut and can better take it easy and decide what to do.
Acknowledging my fear is the start of process to stop me meatimg.myself up; I accept I am the way I am and tend to diary light and bright events into gratitude diary (making five +ves).
Breathing and talking to my stomach where my fear tightens my muscles, every day of my life. I do go forward but I have to keep trying because my stomach has been damaged by it from childhood. I disassociated as a child. Meditation helps. Watching videos of birds or animals with quiet music.
Year’s ago I read a book called “Feel the fear and do it anyway by Susan Jeffers. It must have been at least 30 years ago. 1987 I had to look it up it was Just over 30 years. I’m happy to revisit it with your Series.
Margaret Ames, Teacher, Spokane Valley, WA, USAsays
My fear and anxiety is based upon unprocessed CPTSD from a very abusive childhood. I’ve spent my whole 70 years of life in fight, flight, freeze, faint mode. Once I retired from teaching during the covid lockdowns, I was in total isolation and my demons rose to the surface with overwhelming anxiety/panic. The covid vaccine also triggered a trauma response in me too. I have had 5 vaccinations in the past 2 years. I have also realized that the side effects and withdrawal from my 6 years on gabapentin for neck pain was fueling my somatic anxiety response. I have been blessed with weekly trauma therapist sessions, an amazing spiritual director, and journaling. My connection to God’s Loving Presence is salvific. My primary care physician is helping me with the extremely difficult and painful process of slowing tapering off of gabapentin. I see light at the end of this very deep and dark Shadow and Ego driven tunnel. Their protective energy and lessons have been transformative. I am BLESSED and pray that everyone who is suffering for any reason will experience the LOVE and SUPPORT of others in God’s loving Presence. Tara, your books, guided meditations and talks have been a continual, absolute rock for me, Thanks for all you do to promote LOVE and HEALING in our precious universe. You are a blessing!
Margaret
esperanza sanchez, Psychotherapy, san diego, CA, USAsays
Hello, I resonate with what you just presented. I struggle with that fear of being judged, criticised, laughed at on a professional level. I too hold back but when I can open to self-compassion and accept that I am human it really helps to quite that critical voice. I love what you said, “. . . be mindful of fear, allow it to be there. . . and I would go one step further and befriend it and learn from it.
Tara, I am so grateful for your wisdom and teachings.
I find self compassion, holding the fear with respect and kind attention, then coaching the client (or myself) to move into a loving, comforting, thought process that soothes the self to be helpful. I utilize the RAIN meditation frequently but also find that I slip into this process without the formal guide of the meditation.
I do not have any affiliation with religion but I have a very strong belief in God and strong faith in God. I’ve learned along time ago that everything is temporary. If you come from love you can never go wrong. Keeps me centered. Not that I don’t have fear, but this too will pass.
We all grow up with fear because it is part of the way we are raised and trained to “do what we are told” so it is as much a sociologically conditioned response as it is an individual response to threats that are internalized and become a response pattern. Yes, feeling the sensations and feelings is essential along with seeing and being aware of the movie in our mind that is stimulating and perpetuating the fear.
Watching the movie in our mind can support us in becoming aware of the movie that is perpetually playing and help us to release the pattern.
We are trained to disconnect from our own responses and think that our responses are somehow “bad or wrong” so we tend to avoid the feelings we are having so tuning in and centering in our sensations, feelings and mental images is essential to being conscious of our own responses.
I wrote a book called Being Human in a World of Illusion in which I describe the false social beliefs that cause us to disconnect from our actual response and suppress what we are really feeling.
We have a cultural problem that shows up in us individually and I think its important to recognize that we are responding to social conditioning and not just having a personal issue.
I loved your story of the chicken …below.I’ll say to people at times ,”I’m so brave sometimes I impress even myself(ha) and other times I’m a complete chicken shit”.Its all good…all part of being human .I love Tara’s teachings of radical acceptance.Sometimes I’ll eat 6 Kit Kats chocolate bars for about 3 days and then I’ll deal with whatever is coming up. Sometimes not.I’m not perfect but human and feeding that critical voice doesn’t serve.I remind myself and others that it’s a pretty toxic shame based society and the ruling class are made up of a lot of very sick psychos so of course we will fear but I use the methods I wrote about before and get thru it.I try to not take myself too seriously but grieve when I have to.Take it easy ,love , Denny ❤️
Knowing there are others who care and will reach out.
What often helps me is hearing/reading other people’s stories. It reminds me that it’s not uncommon to have anxiety and somehow that takes the edge of it.
❤️
Observer wise mind
what helps me is listening to your meditations from spotify. It strengthens my own meditation practice. hard to explain but your podcast helps me become aware of a calm my body recognizes. It’s pretty amazing🪷Thank you 🌺
Randi
Breathing
Mindfulness meditations
The Support of my beloved ones
Meditation and practice of Tara’s RAIN process has helped me deal with my fears considerably. Therapy has helped me to understand how my experienced childhood trauma has resulted in a set of patterns that have kept me unfree in some ways. With a mindfulness practice, therapy and the ability to listen/accept my felt sense of fear, I am slowly, ever so slowly, creating new responses to fear.
Absolutely love your work, Tara! Practicing exposure to the fear with clients through imagination and somatic tracking, and then gradual exposure to actual feared tasks. Also, practicing self-compassion is HUGE! Also, the psychoed piece you shared at the start about fear/anxiety and it’s evolutionary purpose. Thank you for what you do!
breathing
the utter relief of allowing pain or fear to just be as it is without trying to push it away or fix it .. its like the pain, when allowed, turns to blessing and release
Acknowledging the fear, the realisation that everyone has fear so why not me? And being aware of the space within the fear; I am not consumed by it and parts of me have no fear.
Thank you for the course
Serenity prayer. Saying fear out loud to a trusted other. Not running.
Saying the mantra,”Let go, let God.” It may have to be said many times over. Trying to understand where my fear is coming from, and putting things in perspective. Compared to what’s going on in the world, I ask myself, “Is this really that bad?”
When I am afraid and on top of the mountain I take one turn at a time.
conflict
setting boundaries
‘Pausing.’. Asking myself, “Is this real?, Is this true? Seeking refuge in ‘the breath. Long time practicing this and default still ‘fight or flight”.
Tara, and team.
Thank you so much for this opportunity. You have been one of my mainstays for six years now, your generous gift to ‘humanity’ teaches me my value and restores my faith in humanity.
Sincerely
Sara Skerman – New Zealand
mindful breathing, imagining the worse case scenario, recognition that most of our worst fears don’t come true, playing the tape through.
My innate sense of responsibility gives me whatever confidence I need in the moment to just show up and face my fears. My “ability to respond” , this sense of responsibility to myself and others has seldom let me down. Responsibility gives me the courage to face my fears. And the knowledge that “fear” is part of the human condition emboldens me to move forward knowing my fear is not unique…Tara, your “presence “, wisdom, humor and vulnerability are both powerful and inspiring. Thank you for sharing with the world.
This really hits home.
Acknowledging that I’m afraid. But there are tools to face this fear. Step forward, move on in little increments, keep trying/learning.Did the 40 day mindfulness course recently without missing a day- yay me!
THE FEELING OF BEING LOVED
Allow the fear to be without judgement and without the need to change my feelings. Accept it with compassion and kindness
Avoiding avoidance
Telling myself I can do this, I don’t need to be afraid of the task at hand!
I am in my late 70’s. I do not have a life partner, and my only child is an adult daughter with learning disabilities. I am afraid of growing old and infirm, with no one to really monitor my situation and make whatever arrangements might be needed in the future. (Dementia runs in my family). This thought makes me feel very afraid and anxious.
To help with this, I listen to inspirational CDS when I am going to sleep at night. The quality of centered and grounded voices helps me. I focus on trying to live in the present moment.
Fear is a part of our intrinsic nature, makes us to be vigilent (awareness, presence). It is an impeccable alertness that keep us aware of consequences of our action when we fear something. This alertness is achievable, it requiers skills, training, practicing, and meditation. If we are not aware and present to our emotion,fear become a negative emotion and it has a paralyzing effect on us. Awareness, Presence, Sustaining a conscious relationship to our state (mind-emotion), Be an objective observer of our emotion, Pause, Conscious breathing, Being grounded in our body, Understanding, Open up to fear, Recognized and examined, Non-Judging, Compassion, Meditation allow the transformation of fear. By becoming skillful, we can allow fear to be seen and eventually to be dissolved by that seeing.
l sit each morning and do a yoga nidra practice in the evening.
l speak and write my fears.
l seek wisdom and guidance from others and remember my true nature is love and that this is the truth for all beings.
Wise teachings from books such as yours and Byron Katie. Friends advice and support. Listening to myself. Knowing of others who have been through life’s challenges.
Very well said.
I go to psychotherapy as well as somatic experiencing therapy. Writing in my journal goes a long way in helping me figure out what’s bothering me. Meditation and calming music help too.
I thank the fear for alerting me, then let it know I have control of it now and it doesn’t need to get so activated.
Some parts of me enjoy the thrill of fear, in sports and activities, it makes me feel alive. I face it by accepting the fear and going forward anyway. The kind of fear you speak about is my fear of standing out, speaking and expressing myself, it’s become chronic for me. I’m looking forward to finding some inspiration how to fight it.
Dear Tara, i was hurt in my previous relationship which ended the same time as my Father was reaching the end of his life. I do feel that I have a built up a fear to surrender and open myself up to new relationships, I have made myself small, as to not be noticed. I have spent the last 3 years since covid working on myself, facing myself, which has been hard but also awakening to the truth, I feel I am ready for a new relationship but I haven’t been able to stand up to fear or recognize if somebody is interested in me? Listening to you has made me realize, I have nothing to loose. Thank you for making me understand this. Mark
I gently hold a small dried flower I keep in a cup in my kitchen and I notice how beautiful and fragile it is and I imagine it’s me. I just hold it and sit with it and allow whatever rises and just breath.
1. meditation
2. conversing with my wise wife
3. using Byron Katie’s ” work ”
4. reading wisdom texts
5. immersion in nature
As a child I disassociated. Today it’s different, either I freeze inside but can still act and more and less respond but not being 100% present. Or I feel a warning in I’m my gut and can better take it easy and decide what to do.
Acknowledging my fear is the start of process to stop me meatimg.myself up; I accept I am the way I am and tend to diary light and bright events into gratitude diary (making five +ves).
I remind myself to have faith in my fierce heart & to forge forward with trust & deep self compassion. I consciously chose love over fear. Thank you.
Breathing and talking to my stomach where my fear tightens my muscles, every day of my life. I do go forward but I have to keep trying because my stomach has been damaged by it from childhood. I disassociated as a child. Meditation helps. Watching videos of birds or animals with quiet music.
Recognizing my aliveness almost instantaneously quiets the noisy freeway of my mind
I’m not really sure. I guess I just try to realize I can’t know how it’s going to go so I may as well try.
Remembering the Feeling of Love threw my heart
I can not answer the question .who would I be without my constant companion fear and worry?
Year’s ago I read a book called “Feel the fear and do it anyway by Susan Jeffers. It must have been at least 30 years ago. 1987 I had to look it up it was Just over 30 years. I’m happy to revisit it with your Series.
My fear and anxiety is based upon unprocessed CPTSD from a very abusive childhood. I’ve spent my whole 70 years of life in fight, flight, freeze, faint mode. Once I retired from teaching during the covid lockdowns, I was in total isolation and my demons rose to the surface with overwhelming anxiety/panic. The covid vaccine also triggered a trauma response in me too. I have had 5 vaccinations in the past 2 years. I have also realized that the side effects and withdrawal from my 6 years on gabapentin for neck pain was fueling my somatic anxiety response. I have been blessed with weekly trauma therapist sessions, an amazing spiritual director, and journaling. My connection to God’s Loving Presence is salvific. My primary care physician is helping me with the extremely difficult and painful process of slowing tapering off of gabapentin. I see light at the end of this very deep and dark Shadow and Ego driven tunnel. Their protective energy and lessons have been transformative. I am BLESSED and pray that everyone who is suffering for any reason will experience the LOVE and SUPPORT of others in God’s loving Presence. Tara, your books, guided meditations and talks have been a continual, absolute rock for me, Thanks for all you do to promote LOVE and HEALING in our precious universe. You are a blessing!
Margaret
Hello, I resonate with what you just presented. I struggle with that fear of being judged, criticised, laughed at on a professional level. I too hold back but when I can open to self-compassion and accept that I am human it really helps to quite that critical voice. I love what you said, “. . . be mindful of fear, allow it to be there. . . and I would go one step further and befriend it and learn from it.
Tara, I am so grateful for your wisdom and teachings.
I find self compassion, holding the fear with respect and kind attention, then coaching the client (or myself) to move into a loving, comforting, thought process that soothes the self to be helpful. I utilize the RAIN meditation frequently but also find that I slip into this process without the formal guide of the meditation.
I do not have any affiliation with religion but I have a very strong belief in God and strong faith in God. I’ve learned along time ago that everything is temporary. If you come from love you can never go wrong. Keeps me centered. Not that I don’t have fear, but this too will pass.
Changing mindset
doing energy techniques
facing it presently
Being part of a supportive community, and “Just do it”. I think I dance around it before I face it.
We all grow up with fear because it is part of the way we are raised and trained to “do what we are told” so it is as much a sociologically conditioned response as it is an individual response to threats that are internalized and become a response pattern. Yes, feeling the sensations and feelings is essential along with seeing and being aware of the movie in our mind that is stimulating and perpetuating the fear.
Watching the movie in our mind can support us in becoming aware of the movie that is perpetually playing and help us to release the pattern.
We are trained to disconnect from our own responses and think that our responses are somehow “bad or wrong” so we tend to avoid the feelings we are having so tuning in and centering in our sensations, feelings and mental images is essential to being conscious of our own responses.
I wrote a book called Being Human in a World of Illusion in which I describe the false social beliefs that cause us to disconnect from our actual response and suppress what we are really feeling.
We have a cultural problem that shows up in us individually and I think its important to recognize that we are responding to social conditioning and not just having a personal issue.
I loved your story of the chicken …below.I’ll say to people at times ,”I’m so brave sometimes I impress even myself(ha) and other times I’m a complete chicken shit”.Its all good…all part of being human .I love Tara’s teachings of radical acceptance.Sometimes I’ll eat 6 Kit Kats chocolate bars for about 3 days and then I’ll deal with whatever is coming up. Sometimes not.I’m not perfect but human and feeding that critical voice doesn’t serve.I remind myself and others that it’s a pretty toxic shame based society and the ruling class are made up of a lot of very sick psychos so of course we will fear but I use the methods I wrote about before and get thru it.I try to not take myself too seriously but grieve when I have to.Take it easy ,love , Denny ❤️
I think acceptance of the fear or any feelings they are having or experiencing.