Befriending your fear

Something happened recently that was both exciting and terrifying in equal measure. Who am I kidding? It was mostly terrifying.

I received the edited version of my very first podcast episode.

I avoided listening to it until the next morning and even then I had to talk myself into hitting play. I wasn’t 2 seconds into the audio and I pressed pause. I noticed I was feeling nervous and unsettled. I couldn’t focus my attention or sit still in my seat.

I got up and walked out of the room. I tried shaking off the anxious energy, literally. All that did was get me a weird look from our dog.

I knew what I had to do. I needed to tend the space within to soothe the source of my discomfort. So, I went back to my office and pulled a card from The Wild Unknown Animal Spirit deck.

Rabbit.

“Afraid of everything, overwhelmed, frozen”

“Rabbit energy is alive when we are scared (most often about the future) and we become our own worst enemy.”

That card totally called me out.

But it was these words that caught my attention and made me to dig deeper.

“Notice your thoughts and words … they shape your destiny.”

I grabbed my journal, plopped into my comfy chair, and started to write a list of all the things I was thinking and saying to myself about this episode and the podcast. All of them negative.

Once I ran out of criticisms, I focused my attention on what I could say to myself instead. I took each of the judgments and turned them into positive statements—statements I could believe and knew in my heart to be true.

For example, the thought “The episodes need to be longer” turned into “The episodes are just the right length for right now.”

The thought “I need to be better” became “I am doing the best I can and will get better.”

And the thought “I hate the sound of my voice” became “I may not like the sound of my voice but there are those who say they do.”

By then end of the exercise, I felt calmer and more excited to listen to the episode.

I hit play again.

I cried. (And no, not because my voice sounded that bad, as my husband jokingly quipped.)

What I hadn’t realized until that moment is what a big thing I am doing in creating this podcast.

I can write content all day long and share my words with others on social media, my blog, or in my newsletter. But to put my voice to my words took an entirely different level of courage. And to hear my words through my own voice was nothing short of awe-inspiring. Not because the episode is the best podcast episode ever (‘cause it’s not) but because I did it.

I’m sure my reaction to the recording would have been much different, much more negative, if I hadn’t taken the time to befriend my fear instead of just pushing through it. While the adage “feel the fear and do it anyway” can be helpful in some situations, this wasn’t one of them.

Because I had befriended my fear, I was able to listen to the recording with an open heart rather than a closed, judgmental mind.

Learning to live with fear

Fear is complex and because of this it can be tricky to navigate. I know because I have spent a good part of this year working with my fear. (When I chose “confidence” as my word of the year, I didn’t realize it would mean plumbing the depths of my fear. Be careful what you wish for!)

My experience has taught me that fear has many facets. There is straight up fear, the “I’m being chased by a bear” fear. But fear also disguises itself as a lot of other emotions, like doubt, insecurity, anxiety, and perfectionism.

Adding to this complexity is identifying to whom the fear belongs. Sometimes the fear legitimately belongs to you and is in response to a current situation, like my fear at listening to the podcast episode.

At other times, the fear can belong to a different version or part of you that is reacting to a memory related to something that’s happening in the current moment.

For example, a couple of years ago, I remember a feeling of anxiety coming over me as I was getting ready to drive to California with my husband to say our final goodbyes to his mother. When I checked in with myself, I noticed that that fear belonged to a younger version of me. The me that experienced the death of my own parents. Once I acknowledged that the fear didn’t belong to me in this current situation, it subsided.

Sometimes, the fear is one you’ve inherited from your parents or ancestors. I know that I have inherited my fear around money and scarcity from my parents because they grew up during the great depression.

How do I know this is inherited? Because even though there is plenty of money in the bank, that fear is always lurking close to the surface of my consciousness. It weaves itself into the story my mind tells me about money. “There isn’t enough. You need to hold onto what you have. You’ll end up destitute in your old age.”

As I said before, fear is complex and tricky, and I am by no means an expert when it comes to managing fear. I’m still learning and trying to live what I’ve learned.

What I do know is this: Befriending your fear—acknowledging its existence and listening to what it has to say—is far more effective in calming your nervous system and allowing you to move forward with confidence than when you resist it, pretend it doesn’t exist, or push through it. Those strategies only fuel fear and amplify it. Ignoring your fear only succeeds in keeping you stuck where you are.

One simple way to befriend your fear is to give it a voice. You can do the same exercise that I mentioned above. Write down all the fearful thoughts you’re saying or thinking to yourself and then turn those thoughts around to something more positive.

I’m not talking about toxic positivity. Only write down something that you know to be true. If you’re not sure whether a statement is really true, find evidence to support it. For example, I reframed the critical thought “I hate the sound of my voice” to “I may not like the sound of my voice but there are those who say they do” because a couple people had recently mentioned liking the sound of my voice.

Turning the thought around to the obvious opposite (“I love the sound of my voice”) wouldn’t have worked because it’s not believable to me on any level—mind, body, or soul. If you don’t believe the positive statement, it won’t help to move you forward.

I’m curious …

Is there a fear that’s keeping you from moving forward toward something you want or want to do?

How could you work with that fear rather than resisting it?