I tell myself to drop the story line in my head about a particular fear. If I don’t stop the story line I work my mind into a frenzy.
I say, it’s ok. It’s not true.
Jim Nothnagel, Another Field, Winnetka, IL, USAsays
Just for clarity, I am not a practitioner. What helps me face fear is being able to speak about it – – openly and transparently – – with a close friend / worker. This helps me put words to it and brings clarity to my real concerns. Also, frequently it lets me know that my fear is not “unique” – – that it is understandable to others and part of being human. This brings my anxiety level down, and allows me to process the fearful feelings, and address them / act mindfully and thoughfully. This doesn’t always happen when I react to quickly – – which brings me to the other thing I constantly have to remember which is to PAUSE!! Doing this or not doing this results in completely different reactions. When I pause, my reactions are most often with a greater level of understanding and compassion. When I don’t pause, I almost always react by striking out verbally and defensively and making the situation worse.
Esther Tetteroo Viswanathan, Health Education, MYsays
By telling myself that it’s not unusual to have fear. To understand my fear I often use RAIN and it helps me to see thinks clearer.
If the fear concent an health issue, I will seek a doctor or specialist instead of worrying.
Plus I believe by keeping one’s mind and body healthy ,do help to fight fear too.
I do that by practicing yoga and small dose of meditation .
My fear is embedded in my fascia and other places in my body so it’s been particularly challenging to feel it and release it. I’ve been in trauma therapy since last year and through that process of EMDR and somatic therapy, some of the fear/ reactivity has been released. I’ve also found that feeling the fear feelings and acknowledging them through the breath has helped the tension released. There is another component that I’m also working with …. making friends with my inner child and my inner teenager
Fear of dying alone. Of knowing I’ve spent my whole life cleaning up ancestral emotional trauma and wounds only to still not have healthy attachments and likely fearing intimacy.
Still repeating dépendance on food and not creating a life for myself doing stuff I want to do. I e travel…. Have a group of friends, getting out of a job that doesn’t resonate anymore ( but I’m 54 and have been there for 25 yrs…..
To allay fear …
I ask myself, “What is the worst thing that can happen?”
Then I ask, “What is the BEST thing that can happen if I face this person, situation, etc?”
What helps me is: Breathing in for 4, holding for 4, breathing out for 4, resting for 4, breathing in for 4, … etc. Also, slowly sensing around the body in a circle – sense right foot, right leg and hip, right hand/arm/shoulder, left shoulder/arm/hand, left hip and leg, left ankle and foot. These make the anxious thoughts dissipate and create calm.
I received Tara Brach’s offer of her free series on fear yesterday. This morning, I attempted to open it and was told it’s too late. This must be some sort of mistake.
Kim Seeburger, Psychotherapy, Mount Gilead, NC, USAsays
What I see over and over again with my clients is that their fear is very young, even pre verbal, and they feel it but have trouble identifying what it is afraid of. Since they can’t quite verbalize their fear, they have trouble accepting and allowing
I knew about what you say here. I’ve learned it through some readings and video linked to the MBSR program. I have chronic dizziness symptoms. I have reduced the gravity of inconfort by befriending them… reducing the fear of the inconfort. AT times, depending of my activity, I do feel quite dizzy, but never to the point of having nausea. I wish to learn more on whether I can put asleep the resurgence of dizziness.
For me it is about letting go of distractions from fear, embracing difficult emotions and sensations and connecting with what I truly value in the moment that helps get me through my fear.
Kristen Dakota Henderson, Other, Louisa, VA, VA, USAsays
I’m a long-term member of an intentional community, which is a secular monastery. I work with young people often who are looking for a new and different life. I want to work with the emotion of fear with courage and wisdom in a way that brings us together, rather than keeps us apart. I see very intimately the cost of fear. Thank you for this opportunity.
Learning to access my body and teaching my clients to do the same has been a game changer for me personally and professionally. I still need to work on my fear of flying but manage much better than in the past and speaking in public is easier.
We unexpectedly 3 years ago became grandparents. Our son and his partner had not intended to be parents and had been together for 17 years before ??? the universe interferes with their plans.
All has gone well so far but I find myself worrying about MANY aspects of the whole situation. I have always worried too much but I do not want fear to mess up this wonderful opportunity.
I’ve just “emerged” from a 5-day period of fear, following my usual pattern: an accumulation of postponed challenges, of demands on myself that I put on myself and accumulate.
And the fear, the feeling that I’m not going to make it, becomes unbearable, I get sick, I feel without energy, I reject myself, I disgust myself. I start sleeping all day, and usually, and this time as usual, it’s better by the 5th day.
To stop running from fear and learn ways to calm the body without the use of alcohol and substance. To pause and feel the fear. It was a miracle when I discovered the use of meditation, warm baths and aromatherapy to help soothe my body and relax.
I use Tara Brach’s RAIN. It’s my default response now. I find befriending fear especially usung a future self visualisation really helps. Also touching massaging my own shoulder or sternum is very soothing. Bring in nature, the forest or by water and letting nature hold me. Sometimes we carry the weight of the world when actually we can let world carry us. Its gonna keep turning anyway.
What has helped me face the fear of getting through losses like losing my auto to a gang that wanted it and set me up to have an accident that put it INTO their ha”nds from which I can’t ever get it back because they chopped it up to sell as parts {the black market is with us!) was the STRENGTH of my parents who, back in the day, managed to START a business of their own, raise me brother and me, pay taxes and bills and enjoy the community they found themselves in through dancing and attending weddings, doing humble everyday participation. I REMEMBER what they did but find it hard to “copy” because the world has gone inward [correction: “wonky”] like a bad toenail or a belly button that won’t heal. But I know that they just kept DOING THEIR BEST. I tell myself all the time: “Do your best because you can’t do better than your best!” (Thanks. Mom! Thanks, Pop! Must be that 1900 and 1903 were good vintages for parents, LOL!}
When I saw this offering from NICABM, my first thought was I have no fears. Hahahahahaha. Then it dawned on me, after numerous ends of relationships I mos def have a fear of getting close to anyone be it friend or love! Hmmmmm … at least I am aware and admitting it. I’m reading the comments posted here and going to be working on my fear.
Me too! I am 63 and never knew, all my life, how ALONE I was. I thought I was just a ‘loner’. I even thought I preferred that.
Ditto with fear. I never thought of myself as someone who is AFRAID and now I feel my ‘non panic’ panic attacks and realized I have been afraid of so many things all my life.
I’m learning. I’m getting better.
Mostly because I also learned: Awareness isn’t Healing.
I can’t just know what happened. I have to FEEL what happened.
This happened to me very recently. I was able to enlarge the space around the fear and rage. . I felt it as a wave. I was reading about Kali the Hindi goddess who represents fierce rage and understood it as the feminine rage of milennia. I found this very empowering and the space around my own rage enlarged allowing me to access my intelligence and presence to deal with the situation calmly.
Gilda Meyers, Marriage/Family Therapy, Santa Rosa, CA, USAsays
I am now retired from my career as a psychotherapist for over 4 decades. Using awareness of the body to stay with the sensations that arise with fear and be able to tolerate, through titration, unpleasant or uncomfortable sensations, helps the client investigate thoughts that are connected with fear.
Rosella Susan Byers, Teacher, Willits, CA, USAsays
When I feel fear, I first take a deep breath and exhale slowly, several times. I increase the space around me that I inhabit. If I can look at something in the distance – a mountain, a tree, a building – it helps me expand my focus beyond my fear, and dilutes it a bit. so I don’t feel as engulfed.
Lovely! I believe I have to steal your thinking! Thank you for posting it! I will have to IMAGINE seeing into the “distance” because I am hemmed in by macadam, but if I start with breathing and creating space as you said, I may be able to “get there.” Double-stamping the word “LOVELY,” Rosella!!!
Didn’t realize that my anxiety was based on fears, but what was said made sense to look in this area first. Until the next video, I can chew on this concept and hopefully begin to accept what causes my anxious moments and apply ideas to redirect to positive patterns.
Josephine L, Another Field, Sacramento , CA, USAsays
One of the ways I have faced fear has been to notice the space of awareness in which it is occurring and while I breathe I have been able to accept that it does not feel pleasant, I have also been able to freely accept it and grow from each experience as, sometimes it has been intense depending on life’s situations at that time. And I have shed quite a few tears along the way. Sometimes are easier than others to get through, as I find it quite overwhelming on some days. And it’s all Okay. I realize an inner peaceful place where fear is included sometimes. And then it’s like “ that’s a relief “. Then the sigh of relief.😌🪷
Fear is not something to fear. It has a positive relationship with safety. It is the fear of “if” or the fear of fear that causes anxiety, freezing, the inability to breathe or control.
Our ability to breathe, pause, study and gain some understanding of the fear is what helps us sort out healthy fear from destructive fear.
Mindfulness builds my internal strength and It is my internal strength that I need to face and understand my fear.
– Remember to breath
– when I remember that I can ask my higher Spirit, my ancestors, my past on friend and God for help
– when I meditate reguarly, specialy your awareness Meditations, the 2 points above are more reachable
– It also helped me to show myself and tell people how I am feeling
I have found that realizing fear distorts and shuts down my energy has helped me learn to check for fear, acknowledge it, and remind myself I don’t need to be afraid. I also believe, from many years of trusting that I am connected to a loving universe that even very scary things can turn out well for me, and that sharing my story with others can be helpful to them as well.
Feeling security is necessary to face fear. But when you lived so much abused, it’s very hard to feel secured. Sorry for my writing, I’m french
Thank you
Bless all living things
At 60 and with daily practice and flawed everything, I find my resting in being with myself as a child, the first fear the second the third and the gentle holding for me as a child. When I step into this space, my being is sensed by others as calm, acceptance and nurturing. Others feel safe without words or actions. We love you Tara
When I tell myself “I am doing fear” this helps me to take on board that, in reality, I am much more expansive than the one who thinks it’s experiencing the fear.
Recognising it in my direct felt experience, “this is fear”. Naming it. Reminding myself I’m not alone. Bringing in Metta. Understanding the tricky nature of the mind. Widening the lens on my experience. Recollecting the Buddha and all those wise and enlightened beings who have come before me.
I’m an oncology massage therapist and fear is something I witness a great deal. Often gentle, mindful touch can access the root of the fear that is being held in the body. My job is to “hold the space” and, with encouragement of the breath and when the timing is right, an emotional release can lead to calm, at least for that moment.
What helps me face fear? It’s when I stop and consciously tell myself “ok, I feel it, I’m not running now, I’m going to accept that’s how I feel”. And then I sit in it and name it and then it feels like only a part of me – not all of me.
Yes!
This is exactly what I finally learned to do last Spring: JUST SIT.
When I know I am agitated or angry or sad or unable to focus and get things done, I literally stop asap, JUST SIT and, inevitably the source of the problem bubbles up.
This is how I finally learned to FEEL rather than ‘know’
Fear these days is largely around the collective “what ifs”–climate change, election outcome, war around the globe, the use of fear to manipulate and create divisiveness, growing marginalization of the vunerable (refugees/immigrants, LGBTQ, people of color), growing gun violence particularly in schools–it feels heavy in my body, constricts my joy and saps my energy–it lurks perpetually in the background–When I look at it, it can transform to anger and often to grief, at times, hopelessness and powerlessness–in the actual present moment, however, there is often appreciation of beauty, awe, much gratitude, glimpses of joy, connection to loved ones and “ones” in general–Whatever is to come, I know that I can aspire to be kind to myself and others, to show compassion to myself and others, to feel the joy of others joy, to hold the middle between apathy and reactivity, but most of all to aspire “to do the next right thing” and in whatever way feels authentic for me to act with skillful means and stay in connection with others. These ways for me are not dependant on the conditions of the times as many others in times past have demonstrated perhaps with “fearless hearts”
Sheila Wenzel, Physical Therapy, Jamestown, NC 27282, USA, NC, USAsays
I’m grateful for this opportunity and gift of this course. I practice mindfulness every day, prayer, meditation, chanting, yoga, walks in nature, dream work, and poetry, each one helps bring me to face fear with greater awareness and tenderness.
Deeply grateful
I’ve been fearful of the fear itself which can be so paralyzing. What has helped me with fear has been going to worst case scenarios in my mind and noticing myself with mindful meditation, while also incorporating prayer. .
I created a mind map from above video; since it is not possible to attach images, transformed the same into text as follows;
1 What is fear?
1.1 Racing heart
1.2 Swirling thoughts
1.3 Clutch in belly
2 About fear…
2.1 Fear is a natural protector
2.2 It is needed to survive
2.3 Our nervous system can handle a certain degree of fear
2.4 We are Velcro for difficult experiences but Teflon for pleasant ones
2.5 Fear served well in ancient times
2.6 Fear types
2.6.1 Ancient
Physical
2.6.2 Current
Psychological
3 When psychological fear occurs…
3.1 What we do ?
3.1.1 Fight
React to the situation
Anger…
3.1.2 Flight
Withdraw from …
Become quite…
Depressed
3.1.3 Freeze
Unable to do anything
Unable to think clearly…
3.2 Neurons that fire together wire together
3.3 When reactive actions taken against fear…
3.3.1 Increase suffering
3.3.2 Perpetuates the feelings
3.4 The more we run away from fear…
3.4.1 It becomes more toxic
3.4.2 It becomes large
3.5 People
3.5.1 When group of people perceive unrealised fear…
They become enemies with each other..
They run even in to wars
3.5.2 At personal level when fear rules…
Become judgemental
Become hyper vigilant
End result is…
Unable to maintain relationships..
4 The solution
4.1 Concept
4.1.1 Stop running from fear
4.1.2 Open to it, face the fear
4.2 Practice
4.2.1 Breath-in
4.2.2 Scan body
4.2.3 Find the fear in body
Where pressure is observed
Tightness is observed
4.2.4 Breath into that area
4.2.5 Ask what needs to be done ?
Answer is just let it be….
The inner vulnerability needs acceptance
4.3 We transform our relationship with fear so that it no longer takes control
4.4 When we allow it to be and know that is there… we ‘become enlarged’…
4.4.1 This is called fearless heart
5 Fearless Heart
5.1 Allow fear to be
5.2 Know fear is there
5.3 You are larger than fear
5.4 Be mindful of it
5.5 This is just another feeling like love, kindness etc.
5.6 Have space and confidence
Thank you so much dear teacher !!! The teaching is very clear !!!
Thank you so much Samantha,
what a great idea to write down the “stepping stones”!
Thank you so much for sharing the work you have done, with us all.
I copied, pasted and saved it. What a treasure Samantha! When I use it, a blessing will float your way! Thankful greetings from Salzburg
I tell myself to drop the story line in my head about a particular fear. If I don’t stop the story line I work my mind into a frenzy.
I say, it’s ok. It’s not true.
Just for clarity, I am not a practitioner. What helps me face fear is being able to speak about it – – openly and transparently – – with a close friend / worker. This helps me put words to it and brings clarity to my real concerns. Also, frequently it lets me know that my fear is not “unique” – – that it is understandable to others and part of being human. This brings my anxiety level down, and allows me to process the fearful feelings, and address them / act mindfully and thoughfully. This doesn’t always happen when I react to quickly – – which brings me to the other thing I constantly have to remember which is to PAUSE!! Doing this or not doing this results in completely different reactions. When I pause, my reactions are most often with a greater level of understanding and compassion. When I don’t pause, I almost always react by striking out verbally and defensively and making the situation worse.
Thank you all for being “out there” to listen!!
By telling myself that it’s not unusual to have fear. To understand my fear I often use RAIN and it helps me to see thinks clearer.
If the fear concent an health issue, I will seek a doctor or specialist instead of worrying.
Plus I believe by keeping one’s mind and body healthy ,do help to fight fear too.
I do that by practicing yoga and small dose of meditation .
My fear is embedded in my fascia and other places in my body so it’s been particularly challenging to feel it and release it. I’ve been in trauma therapy since last year and through that process of EMDR and somatic therapy, some of the fear/ reactivity has been released. I’ve also found that feeling the fear feelings and acknowledging them through the breath has helped the tension released. There is another component that I’m also working with …. making friends with my inner child and my inner teenager
Mindfulness typically helps, recently i have gotten out of the habit of practicing Mindfulness
Oops sorry I didn’t realize that this was meant specifically for health care workers…I’m an admin assistant in elementary school.
Fear of dying alone. Of knowing I’ve spent my whole life cleaning up ancestral emotional trauma and wounds only to still not have healthy attachments and likely fearing intimacy.
Still repeating dépendance on food and not creating a life for myself doing stuff I want to do. I e travel…. Have a group of friends, getting out of a job that doesn’t resonate anymore ( but I’m 54 and have been there for 25 yrs…..
To allay fear …
I ask myself, “What is the worst thing that can happen?”
Then I ask, “What is the BEST thing that can happen if I face this person, situation, etc?”
What helps me is: Breathing in for 4, holding for 4, breathing out for 4, resting for 4, breathing in for 4, … etc. Also, slowly sensing around the body in a circle – sense right foot, right leg and hip, right hand/arm/shoulder, left shoulder/arm/hand, left hip and leg, left ankle and foot. These make the anxious thoughts dissipate and create calm.
Thank you. Very helpful.
I received Tara Brach’s offer of her free series on fear yesterday. This morning, I attempted to open it and was told it’s too late. This must be some sort of mistake.
What I see over and over again with my clients is that their fear is very young, even pre verbal, and they feel it but have trouble identifying what it is afraid of. Since they can’t quite verbalize their fear, they have trouble accepting and allowing
What helps me face fear: the memory of how I overcame it, even once, with struggle or careful decision making. Adding my successes.
I knew about what you say here. I’ve learned it through some readings and video linked to the MBSR program. I have chronic dizziness symptoms. I have reduced the gravity of inconfort by befriending them… reducing the fear of the inconfort. AT times, depending of my activity, I do feel quite dizzy, but never to the point of having nausea. I wish to learn more on whether I can put asleep the resurgence of dizziness.
For me it is about letting go of distractions from fear, embracing difficult emotions and sensations and connecting with what I truly value in the moment that helps get me through my fear.
I’m a long-term member of an intentional community, which is a secular monastery. I work with young people often who are looking for a new and different life. I want to work with the emotion of fear with courage and wisdom in a way that brings us together, rather than keeps us apart. I see very intimately the cost of fear. Thank you for this opportunity.
Learning to access my body and teaching my clients to do the same has been a game changer for me personally and professionally. I still need to work on my fear of flying but manage much better than in the past and speaking in public is easier.
We unexpectedly 3 years ago became grandparents. Our son and his partner had not intended to be parents and had been together for 17 years before ??? the universe interferes with their plans.
All has gone well so far but I find myself worrying about MANY aspects of the whole situation. I have always worried too much but I do not want fear to mess up this wonderful opportunity.
I’ve just “emerged” from a 5-day period of fear, following my usual pattern: an accumulation of postponed challenges, of demands on myself that I put on myself and accumulate.
And the fear, the feeling that I’m not going to make it, becomes unbearable, I get sick, I feel without energy, I reject myself, I disgust myself. I start sleeping all day, and usually, and this time as usual, it’s better by the 5th day.
I suppose a typical “fly” mode response.
To stop running from fear and learn ways to calm the body without the use of alcohol and substance. To pause and feel the fear. It was a miracle when I discovered the use of meditation, warm baths and aromatherapy to help soothe my body and relax.
I use Tara Brach’s RAIN. It’s my default response now. I find befriending fear especially usung a future self visualisation really helps. Also touching massaging my own shoulder or sternum is very soothing. Bring in nature, the forest or by water and letting nature hold me. Sometimes we carry the weight of the world when actually we can let world carry us. Its gonna keep turning anyway.
What has helped me face the fear of getting through losses like losing my auto to a gang that wanted it and set me up to have an accident that put it INTO their ha”nds from which I can’t ever get it back because they chopped it up to sell as parts {the black market is with us!) was the STRENGTH of my parents who, back in the day, managed to START a business of their own, raise me brother and me, pay taxes and bills and enjoy the community they found themselves in through dancing and attending weddings, doing humble everyday participation. I REMEMBER what they did but find it hard to “copy” because the world has gone inward [correction: “wonky”] like a bad toenail or a belly button that won’t heal. But I know that they just kept DOING THEIR BEST. I tell myself all the time: “Do your best because you can’t do better than your best!” (Thanks. Mom! Thanks, Pop! Must be that 1900 and 1903 were good vintages for parents, LOL!}
When I saw this offering from NICABM, my first thought was I have no fears. Hahahahahaha. Then it dawned on me, after numerous ends of relationships I mos def have a fear of getting close to anyone be it friend or love! Hmmmmm … at least I am aware and admitting it. I’m reading the comments posted here and going to be working on my fear.
Me too! I am 63 and never knew, all my life, how ALONE I was. I thought I was just a ‘loner’. I even thought I preferred that.
Ditto with fear. I never thought of myself as someone who is AFRAID and now I feel my ‘non panic’ panic attacks and realized I have been afraid of so many things all my life.
I’m learning. I’m getting better.
Mostly because I also learned: Awareness isn’t Healing.
I can’t just know what happened. I have to FEEL what happened.
This happened to me very recently. I was able to enlarge the space around the fear and rage. . I felt it as a wave. I was reading about Kali the Hindi goddess who represents fierce rage and understood it as the feminine rage of milennia. I found this very empowering and the space around my own rage enlarged allowing me to access my intelligence and presence to deal with the situation calmly.
❤️
I am now retired from my career as a psychotherapist for over 4 decades. Using awareness of the body to stay with the sensations that arise with fear and be able to tolerate, through titration, unpleasant or uncomfortable sensations, helps the client investigate thoughts that are connected with fear.
When I feel fear, I first take a deep breath and exhale slowly, several times. I increase the space around me that I inhabit. If I can look at something in the distance – a mountain, a tree, a building – it helps me expand my focus beyond my fear, and dilutes it a bit. so I don’t feel as engulfed.
Lovely! I believe I have to steal your thinking! Thank you for posting it! I will have to IMAGINE seeing into the “distance” because I am hemmed in by macadam, but if I start with breathing and creating space as you said, I may be able to “get there.” Double-stamping the word “LOVELY,” Rosella!!!
Didn’t realize that my anxiety was based on fears, but what was said made sense to look in this area first. Until the next video, I can chew on this concept and hopefully begin to accept what causes my anxious moments and apply ideas to redirect to positive patterns.
One of the ways I have faced fear has been to notice the space of awareness in which it is occurring and while I breathe I have been able to accept that it does not feel pleasant, I have also been able to freely accept it and grow from each experience as, sometimes it has been intense depending on life’s situations at that time. And I have shed quite a few tears along the way. Sometimes are easier than others to get through, as I find it quite overwhelming on some days. And it’s all Okay. I realize an inner peaceful place where fear is included sometimes. And then it’s like “ that’s a relief “. Then the sigh of relief.😌🪷
Fear is not something to fear. It has a positive relationship with safety. It is the fear of “if” or the fear of fear that causes anxiety, freezing, the inability to breathe or control.
Our ability to breathe, pause, study and gain some understanding of the fear is what helps us sort out healthy fear from destructive fear.
Mindfulness builds my internal strength and It is my internal strength that I need to face and understand my fear.
I can talk with my excellent and wise therapist about my fears..
God and the spirit world. Connexxion with my heart.
Nature’s blessings and sharing that space with clients. Being alongside these special moments, be it fear or joy .
As always thank you Tara
T
– Remember to breath
– when I remember that I can ask my higher Spirit, my ancestors, my past on friend and God for help
– when I meditate reguarly, specialy your awareness Meditations, the 2 points above are more reachable
– It also helped me to show myself and tell people how I am feeling
Tempering I am loved.
I have found that realizing fear distorts and shuts down my energy has helped me learn to check for fear, acknowledge it, and remind myself I don’t need to be afraid. I also believe, from many years of trusting that I am connected to a loving universe that even very scary things can turn out well for me, and that sharing my story with others can be helpful to them as well.
Feeling security is necessary to face fear. But when you lived so much abused, it’s very hard to feel secured. Sorry for my writing, I’m french
Thank you
Bless all living things
At 60 and with daily practice and flawed everything, I find my resting in being with myself as a child, the first fear the second the third and the gentle holding for me as a child. When I step into this space, my being is sensed by others as calm, acceptance and nurturing. Others feel safe without words or actions. We love you Tara
When I tell myself “I am doing fear” this helps me to take on board that, in reality, I am much more expansive than the one who thinks it’s experiencing the fear.
It helps me to turn towards what’s really here and seek connection.
Recognising it in my direct felt experience, “this is fear”. Naming it. Reminding myself I’m not alone. Bringing in Metta. Understanding the tricky nature of the mind. Widening the lens on my experience. Recollecting the Buddha and all those wise and enlightened beings who have come before me.
I’m an oncology massage therapist and fear is something I witness a great deal. Often gentle, mindful touch can access the root of the fear that is being held in the body. My job is to “hold the space” and, with encouragement of the breath and when the timing is right, an emotional release can lead to calm, at least for that moment.
What helps me face fear? It’s when I stop and consciously tell myself “ok, I feel it, I’m not running now, I’m going to accept that’s how I feel”. And then I sit in it and name it and then it feels like only a part of me – not all of me.
Yes!
This is exactly what I finally learned to do last Spring: JUST SIT.
When I know I am agitated or angry or sad or unable to focus and get things done, I literally stop asap, JUST SIT and, inevitably the source of the problem bubbles up.
This is how I finally learned to FEEL rather than ‘know’
Fear these days is largely around the collective “what ifs”–climate change, election outcome, war around the globe, the use of fear to manipulate and create divisiveness, growing marginalization of the vunerable (refugees/immigrants, LGBTQ, people of color), growing gun violence particularly in schools–it feels heavy in my body, constricts my joy and saps my energy–it lurks perpetually in the background–When I look at it, it can transform to anger and often to grief, at times, hopelessness and powerlessness–in the actual present moment, however, there is often appreciation of beauty, awe, much gratitude, glimpses of joy, connection to loved ones and “ones” in general–Whatever is to come, I know that I can aspire to be kind to myself and others, to show compassion to myself and others, to feel the joy of others joy, to hold the middle between apathy and reactivity, but most of all to aspire “to do the next right thing” and in whatever way feels authentic for me to act with skillful means and stay in connection with others. These ways for me are not dependant on the conditions of the times as many others in times past have demonstrated perhaps with “fearless hearts”
Thank you Dianne,
I like you´re way of putting your feelings into words. Greetings from Salzburg
I’m grateful for this opportunity and gift of this course. I practice mindfulness every day, prayer, meditation, chanting, yoga, walks in nature, dream work, and poetry, each one helps bring me to face fear with greater awareness and tenderness.
Deeply grateful
Susan, RN
I plan to use the information to help myself stay present with patients and to help patients with somatic issues related to fear.
I’ve memorized poems from Rilke and Mary Oliver…I recite them as though they were a chant and this is ever so calming.
By praying, talking to my higher power, and just doing it. I get centered and breathe.
By chanting hymns on god.
I’ve been fearful of the fear itself which can be so paralyzing. What has helped me with fear has been going to worst case scenarios in my mind and noticing myself with mindful meditation, while also incorporating prayer. .
I created a mind map from above video; since it is not possible to attach images, transformed the same into text as follows;
1 What is fear?
1.1 Racing heart
1.2 Swirling thoughts
1.3 Clutch in belly
2 About fear…
2.1 Fear is a natural protector
2.2 It is needed to survive
2.3 Our nervous system can handle a certain degree of fear
2.4 We are Velcro for difficult experiences but Teflon for pleasant ones
2.5 Fear served well in ancient times
2.6 Fear types
2.6.1 Ancient
Physical
2.6.2 Current
Psychological
3 When psychological fear occurs…
3.1 What we do ?
3.1.1 Fight
React to the situation
Anger…
3.1.2 Flight
Withdraw from …
Become quite…
Depressed
3.1.3 Freeze
Unable to do anything
Unable to think clearly…
3.2 Neurons that fire together wire together
3.3 When reactive actions taken against fear…
3.3.1 Increase suffering
3.3.2 Perpetuates the feelings
3.4 The more we run away from fear…
3.4.1 It becomes more toxic
3.4.2 It becomes large
3.5 People
3.5.1 When group of people perceive unrealised fear…
They become enemies with each other..
They run even in to wars
3.5.2 At personal level when fear rules…
Become judgemental
Become hyper vigilant
End result is…
Unable to maintain relationships..
4 The solution
4.1 Concept
4.1.1 Stop running from fear
4.1.2 Open to it, face the fear
4.2 Practice
4.2.1 Breath-in
4.2.2 Scan body
4.2.3 Find the fear in body
Where pressure is observed
Tightness is observed
4.2.4 Breath into that area
4.2.5 Ask what needs to be done ?
Answer is just let it be….
The inner vulnerability needs acceptance
4.3 We transform our relationship with fear so that it no longer takes control
4.4 When we allow it to be and know that is there… we ‘become enlarged’…
4.4.1 This is called fearless heart
5 Fearless Heart
5.1 Allow fear to be
5.2 Know fear is there
5.3 You are larger than fear
5.4 Be mindful of it
5.5 This is just another feeling like love, kindness etc.
5.6 Have space and confidence
Thank you so much dear teacher !!! The teaching is very clear !!!
Thank you! I love this outline!
Thanks so much for the attention and detail you have used in your outline. Grateful. ❤️
Thank you so much Samantha,
what a great idea to write down the “stepping stones”!
Thank you so much for sharing the work you have done, with us all.
I copied, pasted and saved it. What a treasure Samantha! When I use it, a blessing will float your way! Thankful greetings from Salzburg
Lovely thanks very clear talk! Yes sitting and staying with whatever comes up is very important in many ways fear too. Thanks