Why do I fear?
Where did my fears come from? When I try to trace my fears back to their source, I often realize that a fear, or a limiting belief, has been with me for a long time. Longer than it needed to be.
Often, our fears grow out of our childhood, when we were afraid of things that seemed so painful to our childlike hearts and minds. Maybe it was fear of unkindness, such as that inflicted by a caregiver whose own demons stopped them from showing up in our lives in a way that would have been supportive and empowering. Maybe it was fear of ridicule from our peers, which to our childlike souls was so painful as to be nigh unto death. Maybe it was fear of abandonment by a parent simply because you had an opinion that ran counter to their own.
Whatever the genesis for your fear, it often took root after an experience that your younger mind took to mean something life threatening, but which through your adult eyes could be viewed very differently. To our young eyes, the fear, and the patterns of behavior that you adopted to counter those fears, seemed reasonable, necessary and vital.
When was the last time you took your fears for a walk, and looked them over with the eyes and mind of an adult? Chances are it’s been a while. Although our logical mind, our frontal lobe, operates near our maturity age, our emotional mind, the limbic system, still operates at the level of a child. The fears which served us as children are often detrimental in our adult lives, yet rarely do we confront these fears head on.
Growth as an adult usually involves facing fears learned as a child, and those can be the most terrifying to us. There is freedom on the other side of fear, but you cannot walk backwards through your fear to find freedom.
You have to face it, and move through it.
But once you do – it falls away.
The mature mind can stride through the trials that the childlike mind once shied away from.
It just takes a willingness to overcome….
And a desire to take the next step on your journey.
-- Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings