My old friend
Hi there Fear, you are at the control panel today. I’m going to give you the keyboard now. I am going to give you the attention that you need.
Whether the fear is slow, increasing day by day or sharp and sudden, its purpose is the same. To keep you safe mentally and to keep you alive physically. On a biological level, it serves to create a reaction in your system that ultimately keeps you alive. The four F’s, fight, flight, freeze and fawn. Are all inbuilt safety mechanisms, they are on your side. Doesn’t it make sense that you would want to avoid going somewhere that brings you pain? Or back away from a dangerous situation? It does, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t it be stranger for you to stay somewhere you felt unsafe? Or somewhere you were threatened? Once you understand what fear is for, what its purpose is, it loses its power, it loosens its grip.
The fear I am feeling right now sitting here in a hospital gown, is real! The energy in my body asking for action, to run, to fight, to do something other than sit here and let this happen. But I need this to happen. This thing growing in my jaw needs to come out. It needs removing. So, I am choosing to make friends with my fear. I am asking it what it needs. I am holding space for it. Suddenly the fear moves from a rock sitting on my chest, or a hand gripping my throat. And it becomes a younger version of me, sitting on the bed. Vulnerable. Needing comfort, reassurance and compassion. In this situation my fear is a younger self, scared that she won’t see her loved ones again. Scared to speak. Scared to ask for what she needs. Terrified of the vulnerability of letting others help. I welcome her into my arms. I hold her in her fear. The fear shifts. I understand it now. It’s a part of me. It is me.
Fear can stop you, hold you back, keep you small, if you let it. Fear is different these days, the things we fear and not what we are built to fear! On an ancestral level we are programmed to fear predators, a lack of resources or abandonment. Today we fear change, being ourselves or lack of progress in life. So similar things, just in this version of our modern world. Our body doesn’t know the difference between being chased by a lion and worrying about money. It has the same reaction. When studied closer, one is life threatening and the other is uncomfortable.
While there are elements of this surgery that could be life threatening, but mostly it’s uncomfortable. The vulnerability, the pain, the recovery, the unknown, is all uncomfortable. That’s why I’m still here, sitting in this chair. Getting comfortable in my discomfort. I know that discomfort is where change happens. I know that you can only change if you can sit in the discomfort of your transformation. Transformation is uncomfortable. It forces you to to see the things you haven’t seen and feel the things you haven’t felt.
If you could meet your fear around a situation what would they look like? Imagine fear sitting with you, how does it appear, does it say anything to you? What does it need and can you offer it what it needs?