• Breaking the Chains of Fear and Low Self-Esteem

    Low self-esteem, particularly in the context of career and success, can significantly limit an individual’s potential. For those suffering from a fear of failure, the idea of taking risks becomes both scary and discouraging. This fear often leads to settling for jobs that are far beneath their abilities, avoiding anything that might expose them to the possibility of failing. For these individuals, failure is not just a setback; it feels catastrophic—almost as if it would freeze them or destroy their sense of self. In this article, we’ll explore how this deep-rooted fear of failure manifests, how it is passed down through generations, and the steps one can take to break free from this self-imposed limitation. It is not only the fear of failure, as it is equally the limitation in being able to be creative to see one’s own potential.

    The Paralyzing Fear of Failure

    For individuals with low self-esteem, failure is often seen as an intolerable threat. The mere thought of falling short feels unbearable, leading them to avoid anything that could potentially lead to failure. Rather than pursuing challenging careers that tap into their full potential, they may settle for jobs that feel safe—roles that don’t require much effort but also don’t allow for growth or fulfillment.

    This avoidance stems from an underlying belief that failure equates to self-rejection and shame. The fear is so profound that it feels as though failing would lead to emotional or even psychological collapse. These individuals have untapped potential, yet they choose to remain in relatively comfortable, predictable jobs that don’t push them to succeed, simply to avoid the overwhelming feelings of failure and gloomy feelings in trying to envision fulfilling successs.

    Childhood Wounds: The Roots of Low Self-Esteem

    The origins of this dominant fear often lie in childhood. Individuals with low self-esteem may have been raised by parents who lacked faith in their abilities or held unrealistically high expectations. The subtle (and sometimes overt) messages they received from their caregivers could include:

    • “You aren’t going to succeed.”
    • “Even if you do succeed, it won’t bring you happiness.”
    • “You don’t have what it takes to truly succeed.”
    • “You don’t have the discipline or the right values to make anything of yourself.”
    • “There’s something inherently lacking in you, and you’re doomed to struggle.”

    These messages—whether spoken directly or conveyed through nonverbal cues—become deeply internalized. The child perhaps you, grew up believing they are incapable of achieving anything significant, and that belief shapes their entire life. In most cases, these toxic messages were passed down from one generation to the next, with the parent(s) themselves having experienced similar feelings of inadequacy.

    Generational Patterns: Breaking the Cycle of Limitation

    One of the first steps in healing from this pattern of low self-esteem is recognizing that the fear and limiting beliefs are not intrinsic to the individual, but rather are learned behaviors—often passed down from parents who were themselves victims of the same psychological wounds. This realization is critical: the low self-esteem you struggle with is not a permanent part of who you are, but a psychological imprint from your childhood.

    However, this recognition is only the beginning. Breaking free from this pattern requires maturity and a great deal of self-awareness. It’s essential to avoid becoming paralyzed by resentment and or withdrawal toward the parents or caregivers who perpetuated this cycle. Holding on to anger or bitterness can hinder the process of healing, so it is vital to view your parents’ behavior through a lens of empathy and understanding as they too are caught in the pattern that your liberated thinking is taking you potentially farther along than they were able to go. After all, they, too, were likely acting out of their own unresolved wounds.

    The Healing Journey: Disidentifying from the Fear of Failure

    The next step is to engage in what can be a long, but profoundly transformative, process: disidentifying from the limiting beliefs that have held you back. At first, it may feel as though the fear of failure and darkish future is simply who you are in your potential. It’s difficult to separate yourself from the deeply ingrained patterns of thought and behavior that have shaped your entire life. But with time and effort, you can learn to recognize that this fear is not part of your true self.

    Disidentification involves developing the humility, openness, and courage to challenge these ingrained beliefs and to view them as learned responses—behaviors that were passed down to you, not truths about your worth or abilities. This step can be difficult, but the rewards are immeasurable. By doing this inner work, you begin to untangle yourself from the restrictive narrative that has held you back and start embracing a new path of personal growth and achievement.

    The Payoff: Increased Self-Esteem and Career Fulfillment

    Once the process of disidentification begins, the possibilities for growth become limitless. As a therapist, I have seen many individuals with this pattern of low self-esteem transform their careers and their sense of self-worth. It’s not an overnight change, but with continued effort, these individuals start to explore career paths that align with their true potential. They might begin by researching areas that match their skills or by seeking out more fulfilling job opportunities. For some, this can even mean pursuing interviews for higher-paying, more rewarding positions.

    Over time, these small steps toward career growth and personal development lead to a greater sense of fulfillment and accomplishment. The most extraordinary part of this process is realizing that your past fears and limitations were not set in stone, but can be shifted with insight, courage, and perseverance. The person who once feared failure can now face challenges head-on and experience both professional success and personal satisfaction.

    The Path to Transformation: Overcoming This Psycho-Economic Patterns

    As a therapist, I have worked with several individuals who were struggling with this psycho-economic pattern—believing that their fear of failure and low self-esteem were inherent parts of their identity. However, once they came to the realization that this pattern was not “them” in a permanent way, their lives began to change.

    For some, this realization came relatively quickly, while for others it took a few months, or even years, to fully process and internalize. The first step was always the same: recognizing that the fear and limitation they had been experiencing were learned behaviors, not intrinsic truths about who they were. With this insight, they began to gather the courage to take practical steps toward exploring new career possibilities—researching fields that aligned with their skills and talents.

    In some cases, this meant starting by simply going for interviews in fields that felt more lucrative or fulfilling. While the degree of success varied from person to person, the key breakthrough was always the same: these individuals began to see that their fear and depth of discourgement was not an unchangeable part of their identity, but rather a taught limitation. They learned that, with insight, humility, courage, and perseverance, they could expand their boundaries and begin to take on challenges that once seemed impossible.

    It’s truly an extraordinary realization when you understand that the feelings and actions that once seemed like a permanent part of who you are can be redefined. With the right support and mindset, these limitations can be overcome, and you can begin to build a life of both fulfillment and success.

    If you’re on this path and looking for resources or support, feel free to reach out to The Global Bridge. We can help guide you through the journey of breaking free from limiting beliefs and discovering your true potential.

    A Path Toward Empowerment

    If you recognize yourself in this description, it’s important to know that you are not alone. Many people struggle with these same challenges, and many have found ways to break free from the constraints of low self-esteem and fear of failure. It may take time, but through introspection and a willingness to do the inner work, you can change the trajectory of your life.

  • Using Fear to Awaken Courage

    This meditation can help us understand our fear and serve as a catalyst to awaken the dormant courage within.  Through the process of accepting, tolerating, and maybe even embracing feelings of fear, we get to potentially discover aspects of strength and boldness that we perhaps have never experienced before.

  • Using Fear to Deepen Intimacy

    Learn how to cultivate intimacy when your partner has fears. Be present. Be grateful.  By providing your loved one with your tender presence, it will convey safety, peace and trust. Allow yourself to be open and vulnerable, instead of stuck in a persona. Allow your loved one to be OK exactly where they are, with their fears and feelings.

  • How to Develop Self Caring and Wisdom When Dealing With Fear

    “Would you try to feel worse than you already do?”

    I ask this (seemingly) absurd question whenever a friend, a client, or even I am experiencing and feeling deep suffering. I ask them this question to help them understand their current attitude about their suffering — and that there’s potential for them to learn and emphasize a friendlier, more self-compassionate dialogue with their negative feelings. 

    “Why the hell would I do that? It’s already bad enough!” is a frequent, angry response. Inevitably, there is initial bewilderment and confusion. This is when I explain that my intention to help them (and us all) supports a capacity to observe our feelings. This importance of developing self-tolerance and self-acceptance helps them realize that they’re not putting themselves in a painful feeling on purpose. 

    This little exercise makes it clear that we aren’t wishing an unfortunate situation or feeling on ourselves. This awareness frees up energy to inquire: how can we best take care of ourselves in this challenging situation? 

    Over time, this question can also serve as a long-term reminder that we aren’t making ourselves unhappy on purpose (rather than it being a fleeting moment of awareness). 

    When we ask that question above, it slowly and steadily leads us to greater empathy, wisdom, self-acceptance, and self-compassion. 

    “I know you’re not doing this on purpose.”

    “I’m sorry you have to go through this.”

    “This is really hard/This would be hard for anyone else too.”

    Statements like these are a sign of empathy and caring towards ourselves, making it easier to care for ourselves and still do whatever we need to do to make whatever situation we’re facing the best possible one. 

    Time for reflection — when could I have cared better for myself?

    I encourage you to take a moment to pause and think about a current situation in your life where you could have cared for yourself like this. Really pause — and let yourself think of the sentence that would’ve been the most self-caring and useful in the situation that you were facing. In time, this practice will help you care more deeply and stop you from unwittingly injuring yourself through critical comments and judgments. 

    This might sound simple and easy, but most of us were raised quite differently. At best, we’ve only been taught to identify the feelings and what we’re going through first. Only after that might we develop a supportive dialogue with helpful guiding thoughts beyond the illusions our feelings currently make us believe. However, when we recognize that challenging times and feelings often feel like they’ve put a spell on us. It’s counter-instinctual for almost all of us to find this kind of caring for ourselves at this time. 

    Don’t underestimate the importance of this life-long work and the improved quality of life it offers us all. Through this creative and constructive inner communication, you’ll teach yourself how this ongoing inner dialogue helps you to organically and gradually lessen the stranglehold that distorted and irrational feelings like fear, anger, and anxiety have on you. In time, you will gradually dis-identify from the feelings of fear and, most importantly, the harmful, repetitive, catastrophic thinking.  

    All this will inevitably expand your quality of life, and it can only be done by first facing your feelings and developing a caring and realistic thought process. It is hard to realize that the feelings aren’t the major source of suffering but is the follow-up thoughts that significantly distort what you’re facing and can catapult you from fear to terror, anxiety to panic, and anger to rage.

    Here’s a real-life example from my client’s life to make this clearer:

    My client’s daughter had discovered a lump in her breast that the doctor wanted to do a biopsy on. The daughter was 32 and had a routine mammogram showing a 2-3 cm-sized lump.  

    I knew that due to his previous medical issues, he was more susceptible to his fear being magnified into terror, even though facts indicated there wasn’t a serious danger of severe illness, according to the doctors. 

    After sharing an empathic response that it must be scary, I asked my client a couple of questions. As someone familiar with breast cancer, I asked him if the tumor was near the lymph nodes or the chest wall. I knew these locations were more at risk for danger beyond the breast. He had been reassured that the lymph nodes were clear and the lump was not near the chest wall. 

    My client came in and told me about the situation with his daughter and was crying in what felt like a life-and-death terror and panic. He told me, “I’m so terrified that my only daughter might die from this. I can’t believe this is happening to her!”

    I knew that I couldn’t just tell him directly that the odds were massively in his daughter’s favor — he was in the middle of a feeling that didn’t reflect what he had told me the doctors had conveyed to him. 

    I validated his feelings by often saying, “I can really understand how scary this is.” 

    He replied, “It’s terrifying.” 

    I was careful not to use words like ‘terrifying’ because it was clear the worst-case scenario wouldn’t be death but a lumpectomy if the biopsy came back positive. 

    He came in for the second session and was even more anxious as his daughter was going in for the biopsy in a couple of days. I had been seeing this client for many years, and we already had been through enough medical scares that I could reflect back to him that it’s important not to jump too far ahead and really try to listen to what the doctors had told him.  

    “I’m trying, but it’s just so damn scary that this could be more serious than what they know. It can happen, as nobody really knows.”  

    At this time, I began focusing on the thoughts that followed the feelings of fear and panic. I said with as much gentleness as possible, “George, you remember the other scares you’ve been through before? Do you remember how you had a hard time letting in the specific reassurance that you had gotten from your doctors?” 

    “It’s my daughter this time and it’s different, he protested.”  

    I followed this with, “That’s particularly why you want to try to be careful with what you’re thinking. It would be good to do your best to let in the reassurance with the information you’ve been given as much as possible, as your daughter is likely to pick up on your feelings. I know it’s hard.”  

    He stayed silent, seemingly unable to let in what I was saying. At this point, I decided that the benefits outweighed the risks of being direct with him.

    “George, you seem to be reacting like your daughter’s life is in jeopardy, and it seems clear from what you told me that your doctors believe the worst-case scenario is a lumpectomy. I know this would still be extremely disturbing.”   

    “Yes, he said, “but they don’t really know.”   

    Before you continue reading, please pause for a second and apply the feelings talked about in this situation to your life. If nothing comes to mind, it’s a good idea to remember this for when (similar)  future situations arise.

    Be careful in what you say to yourself in difficult situations

    I realized it was vital that I start to really address directly that he was reacting out of a fear of loss and the disease spreading — none of this was realistic, according to the doctors.  

    I continued, “George, you need to be careful in what you say to yourself. You’re making yourself even more terrified than what you’ve heard — more than what could be the worst-case scenario.”  

    He didn’t know whether to yell at me for being insensitive or thank me for the reassurance from the mixed emotions I saw in his facial expression. Finally, after a pause, he said with resistance, “I guess you’re probably right, but it’s so hard.”  

    “Yes,” I agreed and continued to tell him, “the stakes are very high, not only physically but also emotionally. What do you think about repeating what the doctors have told you? We are not talking about the biopsy revealing a danger beyond a lumpectomy, and we just don’t know if it is cancerous.”

    After repeating this several times over the next couple of days until right before the biopsy, he finally asked me, “What would you say to yourself?”  

    I told him I’d tell myself: “I know I’m scared of that lump being cancerous, but at least I’ve been reassured that it isn’t near any dangerous areas. In fact, I know that I would be shocked if it was a danger beyond removing it with a lumpectomy. There is only a 5-10% chance it’s cancerous.”

    He seemed to take these words in and kept repeating them to himself again and again. He stressed that it was very difficult, but saying this made him calmer amidst the anxiety. Over the next few hours, his state of terror and panic changed to one of anxiety and worry (which was a large shift from where he’d been).

    This was the beginning of his development over the next five years, and the doctors were right after all — the lump wasn’t cancerous, and his daughter was fine. However, the progression of his ability to see how his thoughts fed his emotions of terror continued to be illuminated over time, especially during the next three health scares around him.

    Can you identify how your thoughts positively or negatively impact your feelings & actions?

    While this story is about George and his scary feelings, it’s also about you and me. Understanding how our thoughts impact our feelings and emotions, especially how they amplify them, can help us see what’s important. This is a life-long practice — unless you are naturally balanced and keenly aware, most of us tend to make things harder for ourselves during challenging moments. So it’s a vital focus to see how our mind and the subsequent thoughts can be a negative emotion amplifier or a realistic reassurer. 

    The point isn’t to get over fear or even our thoughts of fear. The point is to realize we can’t change our feelings directly more often than not. However, we can learn to change our thoughts and focus them more on the reality we’re facing. The idea is to keep them focused on the present and not exaggerate the scary or anxious future scenarios. 

    This is a major journey to learning about ourselves and how to develop courage, wisdom, and self-compassion. There is no shame here, just the foresight to realize the immense impact our thinking has on how we feel about certain situations. We can change our thoughts about our feelings, but we can rarely change the feelings ourselves. This is a golden key that can be applied not only to illness or fear of dying but also to anything that presents as scary to us.  

    We are all human and face a mortal existence; our culture tends to deny this. This denial impacts many people (probably you), and our emotions and thoughts often overreact to or suppress reality in difficult times. We all need to do our best to have the courage to face reality in front of us and see that our minds can be our best friends or our worst enemies.

    We need to help ourselves, our families, and our friends. If you’re interested in developing this capacity to care for yourself better, I encourage you to watch the Friendly Mind guided meditations and read Chapter Two in Awareness that Heals — after all, a friendly mind can be one of our greatest allies in life.

  • How to Develop Self Caring and Wisdom When Dealing With Fear

    “Would you try to feel worse than you already do?”

    I ask this (seemingly) absurd question whenever a friend, a client, or even I am experiencing and feeling deep suffering. I ask them this question to help them understand their current attitude about their suffering — and that there’s potential for them to learn and emphasize a friendlier, more self-compassionate dialogue with their negative feelings. 

    “Why the hell would I do that? It’s already bad enough!” is a frequent, angry response. Inevitably, there is initial bewilderment and confusion. This is when I explain that my intention to help them (and us all) supports a capacity to observe our feelings. This importance of developing self-tolerance and self-acceptance helps them realize that they’re not putting themselves in a painful feeling on purpose. 

    This little exercise makes it clear that we aren’t wishing an unfortunate situation or feeling on ourselves. This awareness frees up energy to inquire: how can we best take care of ourselves in this challenging situation? 

    Over time, this question can also serve as a long-term reminder that we aren’t making ourselves unhappy on purpose (rather than it being a fleeting moment of awareness). 

    When we ask that question above, it slowly and steadily leads us to greater empathy, wisdom, self-acceptance, and self-compassion. 

    “I know you’re not doing this on purpose.”

    “I’m sorry you have to go through this.”

    “This is really hard/This would be hard for anyone else too.”

    Statements like these are a sign of empathy and caring towards ourselves, making it easier to care for ourselves and still do whatever we need to do to make whatever situation we’re facing the best possible one. 

    Time for reflection — when could I have cared better for myself?

    I encourage you to take a moment to pause and think about a current situation in your life where you could have cared for yourself like this. Really pause — and let yourself think of the sentence that would’ve been the most self-caring and useful in the situation that you were facing. In time, this practice will help you care more deeply and stop you from unwittingly injuring yourself through critical comments and judgments. 

    This might sound simple and easy, but most of us were raised quite differently. At best, we’ve only been taught to identify the feelings and what we’re going through first. Only after that might we develop a supportive dialogue with helpful guiding thoughts beyond the illusions our feelings currently make us believe. However, when we recognize that challenging times and feelings often feel like they’ve put a spell on us. It’s counter-instinctual for almost all of us to find this kind of caring for ourselves at this time. 

    Don’t underestimate the importance of this life-long work and the improved quality of life it offers us all. Through this creative and constructive inner communication, you’ll teach yourself how this ongoing inner dialogue helps you to organically and gradually lessen the stranglehold that distorted and irrational feelings like fear, anger, and anxiety have on you. In time, you will gradually dis-identify from the feelings of fear and, most importantly, the harmful, repetitive, catastrophic thinking.  

    All this will inevitably expand your quality of life, and it can only be done by first facing your feelings and developing a caring and realistic thought process. It is hard to realize that the feelings aren’t the major source of suffering but is the follow-up thoughts that significantly distort what you’re facing and can catapult you from fear to terror, anxiety to panic, and anger to rage.

    Here’s a real-life example from my client’s life to make this clearer:

    My client’s daughter had discovered a lump in her breast that the doctor wanted to do a biopsy on. The daughter was 32 and had a routine mammogram showing a 2-3 cm-sized lump.  

    I knew that due to his previous medical issues, he was more susceptible to his fear being magnified into terror, even though facts indicated there wasn’t a serious danger of severe illness, according to the doctors. 

    After sharing an empathic response that it must be scary, I asked my client a couple of questions. As someone familiar with breast cancer, I asked him if the tumor was near the lymph nodes or the chest wall. I knew these locations were more at risk for danger beyond the breast. He had been reassured that the lymph nodes were clear and the lump was not near the chest wall. 

    My client came in and told me about the situation with his daughter and was crying in what felt like a life-and-death terror and panic. He told me, “I’m so terrified that my only daughter might die from this. I can’t believe this is happening to her!”

    I knew that I couldn’t just tell him directly that the odds were massively in his daughter’s favor — he was in the middle of a feeling that didn’t reflect what he had told me the doctors had conveyed to him. 

    I validated his feelings by often saying, “I can really understand how scary this is.” 

    He replied, “It’s terrifying.” 

    I was careful not to use words like ‘terrifying’ because it was clear the worst-case scenario wouldn’t be death but a lumpectomy if the biopsy came back positive. 

    He came in for the second session and was even more anxious as his daughter was going in for the biopsy in a couple of days. I had been seeing this client for many years, and we already had been through enough medical scares that I could reflect back to him that it’s important not to jump too far ahead and really try to listen to what the doctors had told him.  

    “I’m trying, but it’s just so damn scary that this could be more serious than what they know. It can happen, as nobody really knows.”  

    At this time, I began focusing on the thoughts that followed the feelings of fear and panic. I said with as much gentleness as possible, “George, you remember the other scares you’ve been through before? Do you remember how you had a hard time letting in the specific reassurance that you had gotten from your doctors?” 

    “It’s my daughter this time and it’s different, he protested.”  

    I followed this with, “That’s particularly why you want to try to be careful with what you’re thinking. It would be good to do your best to let in the reassurance with the information you’ve been given as much as possible, as your daughter is likely to pick up on your feelings. I know it’s hard.”  

    He stayed silent, seemingly unable to let in what I was saying. At this point, I decided that the benefits outweighed the risks of being direct with him.

    “George, you seem to be reacting like your daughter’s life is in jeopardy, and it seems clear from what you told me that your doctors believe the worst-case scenario is a lumpectomy. I know this would still be extremely disturbing.”   

    “Yes, he said, “but they don’t really know.”   

    Before you continue reading, please pause for a second and apply the feelings talked about in this situation to your life. If nothing comes to mind, it’s a good idea to remember this for when (similar)  future situations arise.

    Be careful in what you say to yourself in difficult situations

    I realized it was vital that I start to really address directly that he was reacting out of a fear of loss and the disease spreading — none of this was realistic, according to the doctors.  

    I continued, “George, you need to be careful in what you say to yourself. You’re making yourself even more terrified than what you’ve heard — more than what could be the worst-case scenario.”  

    He didn’t know whether to yell at me for being insensitive or thank me for the reassurance from the mixed emotions I saw in his facial expression. Finally, after a pause, he said with resistance, “I guess you’re probably right, but it’s so hard.”  

    “Yes,” I agreed and continued to tell him, “the stakes are very high, not only physically but also emotionally. What do you think about repeating what the doctors have told you? We are not talking about the biopsy revealing a danger beyond a lumpectomy, and we just don’t know if it is cancerous.”

    After repeating this several times over the next couple of days until right before the biopsy, he finally asked me, “What would you say to yourself?”  

    I told him I’d tell myself: “I know I’m scared of that lump being cancerous, but at least I’ve been reassured that it isn’t near any dangerous areas. In fact, I know that I would be shocked if it was a danger beyond removing it with a lumpectomy. There is only a 5-10% chance it’s cancerous.”

    He seemed to take these words in and kept repeating them to himself again and again. He stressed that it was very difficult, but saying this made him calmer amidst the anxiety. Over the next few hours, his state of terror and panic changed to one of anxiety and worry (which was a large shift from where he’d been).

    This was the beginning of his development over the next five years, and the doctors were right after all — the lump wasn’t cancerous, and his daughter was fine. However, the progression of his ability to see how his thoughts fed his emotions of terror continued to be illuminated over time, especially during the next three health scares around him.

    Can you identify how your thoughts positively or negatively impact your feelings & actions?

    While this story is about George and his scary feelings, it’s also about you and me. Understanding how our thoughts impact our feelings and emotions, especially how they amplify them, can help us see what’s important. This is a life-long practice — unless you are naturally balanced and keenly aware, most of us tend to make things harder for ourselves during challenging moments. So it’s a vital focus to see how our mind and the subsequent thoughts can be a negative emotion amplifier or a realistic reassurer. 

    The point isn’t to get over fear or even our thoughts of fear. The point is to realize we can’t change our feelings directly more often than not. However, we can learn to change our thoughts and focus them more on the reality we’re facing. The idea is to keep them focused on the present and not exaggerate the scary or anxious future scenarios. 

    This is a major journey to learning about ourselves and how to develop courage, wisdom, and self-compassion. There is no shame here, just the foresight to realize the immense impact our thinking has on how we feel about certain situations. We can change our thoughts about our feelings, but we can rarely change the feelings ourselves. This is a golden key that can be applied not only to illness or fear of dying but also to anything that presents as scary to us.  

    We are all human and face a mortal existence; our culture tends to deny this. This denial impacts many people (probably you), and our emotions and thoughts often overreact to or suppress reality in difficult times. We all need to do our best to have the courage to face reality in front of us and see that our minds can be our best friends or our worst enemies.

    We need to help ourselves, our families, and our friends. If you’re interested in developing this capacity to care for yourself better, I encourage you to watch the Friendly Mind guided meditations and read Chapter Two in Awareness that Heals — after all, a friendly mind can be one of our greatest allies in life.

  • How To Develop Self-Caring and Wisdom When Dealing with Fear

  • Embrace Fear to Unlock Courage: Your Key to Resilience

    Embrace Fear to Unlock Courage: Your Key to Resilience

    Fear and Courage: Unlikely Bedfellows

    In the aftermath of the recent election, I found myself grappling with a profound sense of fear and anxiety. It was as though the very fabric of our country was unraveling, and I couldn’t shake the nagging fear that we might be veering dangerously close to a dictatorship. As I sat with these emotions, I realized something equally powerful was rising within me—a deep well of courage. Despite the fear, there was an undeniable surge of energy, a drive to step up and support the world in the best way I could. Both emotions, fear and courage, coexisted within me with an intensity that seemed almost contradictory.

    When friends asked me how I was doing in the wake of the election, I responded jokingly that I felt like a “balanced and stable schizophrenic.” Of course, I didn’t mean this in any clinical sense, but instead, I was trying to express the overwhelming internal split I was experiencing. It was as if two very different parts of me were at war—one filled with paralyzing fear and the other bursting with fierce resolve.

    This internal conflict reminded me of something I had experienced before—something I had become quite familiar with—the feeling of fear when waiting for essential health results. Every time I faced this uncertainty, fear and anxiety would come rushing in without fail. Over time, as I went through this cycle repeatedly, something shifted. I realized that fear wasn’t helping me. It was draining me. So, I made a conscious choice: I decided not to feed the fear. Instead, I would focus on trust. I told myself that, whatever the outcome, there was nothing I could do about it right now, so I might as well try to distract myself and focus on other things.

    Coexisting with fear fuels my essential need to care for myself.

    But here’s the strange thing: when I consciously chose not to engage with my fear, I noticed that I began to feel drained, sluggish, and disconnected. At first, I didn’t understand it, but over time, I realized that suppressing my fear didn’t make it disappear. It just left me feeling empty, as if my vitality was leaking out of me. Have you ever experienced a time when you tried to push a feeling away, only to discover that it didn’t vanish—it simply drained your energy?

    This was a turning point for me—a pivotal moment that accelerated an ongoing process of self-discovery. I realized how important it is to feel everything that arises within us, especially the difficult emotions. There is power in fully experiencing our feelings. Not only is it vital on an emotional level, but it’s also energetically invigorating. 

    The energy we often avoid is the very energy that can fuel us

    Over time, I developed a practice of accepting and witnessing my emotions. It wasn’t enough to just feel them—I had to honor them, too. When I feel fear, for instance, I now say something like:

    “I accept you, fear. Take all the time you need. I’m sorry for any resistance I may have toward you. I know you are my vitality, and it is essential that I embrace you fully. I won’t let you control me, but I will feel you fully for as long as you are here, and I will also seek the wisdom I need to stay grounded and focused.”

    There’s a particular paradox here. Something miraculous happens when we allow our feelings to be felt fully without suppressing or indulging them excessively. We find ourselves with greater access to energy and vitality and stop getting lost in them. Instead, we begin a unique coexistence with them. It’s as if we’re saying to ourselves:

    “I am both present with my emotions and beyond them. I can feel you fully, fear, and yet I am not lost in you. I see you for what you are—energy—and I choose to use that energy wisely.”

    This is the key: we don’t have to avoid or repress our emotions, but we also don’t let them dominate our lives. Instead, we can use our wisdom to navigate them. We can engage with our feelings without allowing them to take control of our thoughts and actions. It’s about finding a delicate balance where we don’t suppress our emotions, yet we don’t let them hijack our ability to think clearly or act purposefully.

    Let’s return to the fear I felt after the election. This fear will likely persist for a long time; it’s not going away anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean I have to be overwhelmed by it. The breakthrough comes when we allow our fear to coexist with our sense of resilience and purpose. We can acknowledge fear, be thankful for its warnings, and still find the energy and clarity to do what needs to be done.

    Here’s what this might look like in practice:

    1. Acknowledge and accept the emotion: “Fear, I see you. You’re alerting me to danger, and I appreciate your vigilance. But I don’t need to dwell on you. I can feel you and still choose my actions.”
    2. Take responsibility for your emotional state: “I embrace you, fear, yet you do not control me.” I am free to ask myself, “How can I best care for myself now, and how can I take effective action in the world, while you continue to be there?”
    3. Use fear as fuel: “It’s natural to feel fear in these circumstances. I am grounded in my authenticity and can channel this energy into thoughts, attitudes, and actions that help me move forward.”
    4. Stay focused on your higher purpose: “I recognize that fear can easily pull me into a spiral of future-oriented thoughts, but I choose to stay present. I will acknowledge my fear while focusing on my purpose and the things I can control.”
    5. Be kind to yourself when you fall out of balance: “I know I will sometimes struggle to maintain this balance, and that’s okay. I’m human. When I lose my balance, I gently encourage myself to realign with my wisdom and purpose.”
    6. Seek support when needed: “I will connect with mentors, friends, and guides who help me stay grounded in my feelings while supporting me in finding clarity and purpose. I will surround myself with people who can hold space for my fears and wisdom.”

    Living with fear is not about getting rid of or pushing it away. It’s about allowing it to exist alongside our capacity for wisdom and action. Fear is a messenger, not a master. If we can fully feel our emotions without letting them hijack our lives, we open the door to a more profound sense of vitality and purpose. And that is the most significant breakthrough of all.

  • Using Fear as a Catalyst for Building Courage and or Safety

    Using Fear as a Catalyst for Building Courage and or Safety

    Using Fear as a Catalyst for Building Courage and or Safety - ATH Blog

    Fear, like all emotions, poses as the truth

    They give the false impression that it is representative of a true perspective. This is so important for all of us to see as clearly as possible as our emotions have hypnotic effects that all too frequently puts us under their spell.  If we can look at our past experience and see this it gives us a chance to do some reality testing to see that the amount of times that our fears indicate realistic assessments of the danger we are facing is minimal at the least. This can give  us the potential to develop a counter voice that will be able to say something like, “Fear I see you and you have been wrong 99 out of the last 100 times you have arisen.” This is particularly true when it comes to health or an area where we have wounded self-esteem, and rejection issues to name just a few areas. We are not talking about simple fears like avoiding putting your hand in a fire or hitting the brakes when a car comes too close to you. We are focusing on future events that are not happening in the present moment.

    As we see this tendency it highlights the importance of developing a way of relating to our fears so that they don’t have the same power to run our thoughts, reactions, and actions. The central direction that we want to develop is the ability to first experience the fear consciously and see the fear clearly, and then to bring this observation to enable us to speak in a way that is both honoring the vulnerability of the fear and at the same time cultivate a sense of caring and courage to be embraced with the fear. This doesn’t mean that we are telling the fear that it is right.  We are instead letting the fear know that we aren’t generating the fear on purpose and that we want to learn how to take care of ourselves when we are frightened.  

    We will frequently want to say things like, “Fear I am experiencing you and I feel very vulnerable, yet I want you to know that I accept you or at the very least I am doing my best to be tolerant. I see the benefits of holding you in a softer way and the paradox is that the more I can care for you, the less I will believe that you have a monopoly.  I can start to develop the capacity to be afraid and have a response that cares both for you and wants to develop the capacity to find our courage at the same time.”

    If you are afraid that you might be rejected by your lover, You can say to yourself, “I can see this fear, and both notice if there are clear-cut signs that this is likely” and I can also ask myself, How can I best care for both the fear and the relationship at the same time.” This is a way to both honor the fear and starts to develop a type of courage and wisdom at the same time.

    This might sound impossible especially if you haven’t done a good deal of work on yourself. The ideal is to allow both the fear and the courage to be as close to simultaneous as possible. In the beginning, it is a major victory to even recognize the next day or week that courage could still be available when fear is present.  This is a great starting point. No matter whether this is a relatively new idea for you or one that you are familiar with, I don’t think any of us can rationally underestimate both the benefit and the evolutionary development this represents.

    It is important that we greet whatever our emotions are with a receptive observation

    We can say something like, “It is perfectly natural for you to be afraid, and I am here to look at whether this is reflecting an overprotection/exaggeration or simply a warning that I need to take healing steps or gather the courage to accept the danger I’m facing.”

    This may sound obvious, but when fear arises, if you look closely you’ll likely see that fear often isn’t accompanied by support and realistic observation. This is a very healthy dialogue that we each can teach ourselves to develop.  The tendency to be semi-paralyzed or even frozen by fear can make it hard to even remember that we have other parts of ourselves that can be of immense benefit. Once we remember we can ask guiding questions that will seek greater courage while we’re afraid requires a great deal of practice. It isn’t just an intellectual realization for it to be really helpful.  It is more like a marathon or an athletic event where we need to have a lot of repetitions in order to withstand the shock of fear hitting our system and not being knocked over by it. We can learn to have something like a Pavlovian response when fear arises . . . REMEMBER COURAGE. I have encouraged myself, friends, and clients to repeat the mantra fear/courage fear/courage to help remind the subconscious to remember this potential that we all have especially when we’re blindsided.

    Many of us have believed that it is hard enough to even stay aware of one part of ourselves at a time.  However, with practice and the intention to care for ourselves, it will become obvious that we can be aware of the fear and take great interest in our best ways to guide ourselves and what thoughts, qualities and actions will most likely take care of our needs during these times.

    It is helpful to realize if your tendency is to either suppress your fears, stew in them or periodically vacillate in both ways.  When you see yourself suppressing you want to be an encouraging voice that will say, “Have the courage to stay stably aware of your fear.” If you are stewing and obsessing in them then it will be very helpful to say, as kindly as possible, “I see that you are afraid and it’s necessary to balance this out with thoughts, actions, and qualities that will help you deal with them. What are the ones that will help?” This is not a punishment, and the tone will make it clear that it is a form of self-compassion or caring.  It’s not ever necessary to get over the fear, but it is necessary to support the capacity to be transparent and resourceful in your response to it.

    Articulate your specific and general relationship to fear

    How would you do this? There are so many possibilities and of course, each of us is likely to respond to different types and levels of fear differently. As I name several common ways of responding see which ones you most identify with and the ways you respond. You might suppress it, be consumed by it, intellectualize it without feeling, you may withdraw or get angry, or become depressed (a very common reaction as when fear is happening and we don’t recognize it, most commonly it will leave us withdrawn and tired mysteriously)  and many more.

    Each of us will want to develop a common strategy, ask ourselves the question of “How Can We Best Take Care of Ourselves” and have a verbal response that is helpful.

    If you are suppressing the fear and become aware of it then encourage yourself to stay aware and feel the fear as long as it takes for it to be registered and then ask “How can I support myself to feel both the fear and start to bring courage?”

    If you are consumed, then let yourself say, “Fear I see you and you are not all of me. I am now going to focus on what thoughts and actions will support me to find courage.”

    If you withdraw let yourself see and say, “I see you are withdrawing from your fear and I want to feel it so that I can recognize and go for the need for strength and courage.”

    If you’re depressed let yourself say, “Depression I feel for you and can you see that you are actually depressed because you aren’t feeling your fear.” Let yourself feel the fear and notice how it affects depression. Now see what your wisest thoughts are to guide you to take good care of your fear in terms of thoughts and actions.”

    If you’re defensively angry then you say something like, “I see that you are getting angry and I can see you really are afraid underneath.” Feel the fear and ask how you can best care for yourself while you’re afraid.

    If you intellectualize it then encourage yourself to direct your thoughts. Move from the mind to feel the fear and take feel the tremble or quiver. Ask yourself, “How can I take the next step to experience the fear and guide myself to the thoughts and actions to access a starting point of courage.”

    It’s important to see the need for at least a brief dialogue between the fear and the part of you that can see it. This establishes the beginning of independence from fear and yet develops a relationship. Our ability to have a dynamic relationship with our fears opens the door to actively taking care of ourselves, rather than just being taken over by them consciously or unconsciously. So much of the suffering that we and the world experience is a result of fear staying compartmentalized. By supporting this dynamism we put ourselves in a realistic position to accept the fear and develop our capacity to care for ourselves and develop courage.

    For greater detailed support read chapter 7 in the book Awareness That Heals called “Moving From Feelings to Needs” and listen to the ATH podcast episode  17.

  • Introspective Guides: The Golden Keys to Transform Fear & Anxiety

    Introspective Guides: The Golden Keys to Transform Fear & Anxiety

    Robert has never seen a time when fear and anxiety were more prevalent in the world. How we deal with our fear and anxiety is not only important in our relationship with ourselves, our love life, friendships, and family members that have opposite politics, but also in our relationship to our very survival, the survival of our planet, and democracy. It is possible to give yourself space to just feel it and not blend it in with the rest of your life. Give it a solitary sanctuary. Breathe into it so you can notice it more overtly to the point where you can have a dialogue with anxiety and find and speak in a voice that lets your wisdom guide you how you can best take care of yourself. Give anxiety the dignity that it deserves because nobody is being anxious on purpose. It is not a matter of being able to get over it. It is a matter of developing an autonomous capacity to guide yourself while the fear is going on. The origin of fear and anxiety is not negative. It is a longing to be safe. This episode will help you learn how to guide yourself and not get lost in self-judgment.

    Resources related to this episode

    Note: Below, you’ll find timecodes for specific sections of the podcast. To get the most value out of the podcast, I encourage you to listen to the complete episode. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors. For an exact quote or comment, please contact us.

    Transcript

    00:00 Announcer: Awareness That Heals, Episode 77.

    00:03 Robert Strock: What I’m suggesting you say to yourself, as you’re looking at your fear and anxiety, is you’re afraid or you’re anxious because you so much want to be courageous and relaxed. Their origin of fear and anxiety is not negative. It’s a longing to be safe, it’s longing to be secure, it’s longing to be courageous. And if you recognize that you see the dignity in the fear and the anxiety, and it also will help you to go to the next step to want to move in a healing or caring direction.

    00:39 Announcer: The Awareness That Heals podcast helps its listeners learn to develop the capacity, to have a more healing response to emotions and situations rather than becoming stuck. Your host, Robert Strock has practiced psychotherapy for more than 45 years. He wrote the book, “Awareness That Heals: Bringing Heart and Wisdom to Life’s Challenges,” to help develop self-caring and the capacity to respond in an effective way to life’s challenges. Especially at times when we are most prone to be critical or to withdraw together, we will explore how to become aware of our challenging feelings and at the same time find alternative ways to live a more fulfilling and inspiring life.

    01:20 Robert Strock: So I thank you again for joining us at Awareness That Heals. It’s truly an honor, uh, a joy, and really an inspiration to be able to share this program with you. It’s been a longing to be able to have an ability to speak more to the public. Having been a psychotherapist for all these years, behind four walls was dominantly talking at the most with a family and mostly with a couple or a single. And so I thank you from the bottom of my heart for joining us. What we’re gonna be talking about today is identifying our most challenging emotion that is happening at anytime of the day, night, and also how to find the ways to respond to that challenging emotion by identifying our most essential core needs or qualities or actions that would help us with the emotion, and also with a situation that is involved with the emotion.

    02:24 Robert Strock: And while talking about that, as we have been mentioning every episode, I give you a very strong encouragement to take a shortcut and go to awarenessthatheals.org and download the Introspective Guides that has two charts, one chart that will help you identify with 75 challenging emotions and will give you specificity, which really is important to be able to know whether or not you’re dealing with anger or sadness, or whether you’re dealing with jealousy or competition. And a lot of those get confused or get blanketed out. But when you become exactly aware of the emotion that you’re going through by looking at a list, it helps you greatly with going to the second chart, which is identifying your core needs. And those 75 needs that are identified are also qualities and implicit actions and thoughts that will help you move in a direction, depending on what your original challenge is.

    03:31 Robert Strock: And none of us, to the best of my knowledge, nobody I’ve met was really raised to identify specifically their core challenging feelings, and to be able to link them with directions, to take care of themselves. Now, as I say that, something I haven’t said in prior episodes, or maybe quite a while ago, it’s understandable why we’ve run, run away from our challenging emotions. If we don’t have a sense of where we go with them, why do we wanna face fear? If whatever we do is gonna be useless and not help us with fear or anger or anxiety, but what these 75 core essential needs and qualities does is it gives us a handle on where to move, which allows us to be more courageous and feel more safe to actually look at our most difficult emotions because we have a place to guide ourselves.

    04:30 Robert Strock: Now, of course, that’s only true if we really take the time to feel and see the difficult emotion and to find a place that cares for ourselves enough to wanna lead us to list and discover the needs, and then take it from there to be resourceful as to how we best implement the needs to take care of our original emotions and whatever situation we’re in. Now, I don’t expect you, especially if this is the first time you’ve heard me say that to remember everything I’ve said, but if it’s a reiteration, hopefully this really goes in deeply that you can see that every time you’re feeling lousy, in any form, and you circle that on the charge and you’re able to circle a few of the needs or even one, you’re gonna have a way that you can direct your mind. You’re gonna have a way you can direct your actions.

    05:27 Robert Strock: You can have a way you can direct your heart, and therefore we don’t have to be afraid of our fear. We don’t have to be afraid of facing our fear because we will have a directional path as to how we can deal with it. So today we’re going to be dealing with our fear and anxiety, which is certainly during this time period, the biggest time of fear and anxiety in my 73 years of life for not only me, but everybody around me that I’ve seen. I’ve never seen a time where fear or anxiety was more prevalent. And every part of me believes it’s even more extreme than that because it’s not only everybody I see, it’s not only everybody in our country, it’s the whole world. The whole world has been exposed to what’s happened in Ukraine with Putin. The whole world is aware of global warming and nuclear threats.

    06:29 Robert Strock: Maybe not the whole world is aware of, of how severe the economic divisions have been and how much of a setup that is for terrorism and alienation, but that’s existing too at an extreme level that’s unparalleled and has just gotten more and more unbearable for those that are poor and angrier and more alienated and just such a ripe ground to foster terrorists looking for members. So how we deal with our fear and our anxiety is not only important in our relationship to ourselves or our love life or our relationship to our friends or our relationship to family members that have the opposite politics, but also our relationship to our very survival, the survival of our planet and the survival of our democracy. So I’d like to start off before we go into this by introducing my dearest long-term friend, Dave, and my partner at the Global Bridge Foundation.

    07:37 Dave: Thank you. Uh, as always, I appreciate the opportunity and particularly with the Introspective Guides, uh, that are really related to and, you know, really about the lessons contained in Awareness That Heals, the book. I think that’s a shorthand way to get to things that would otherwise take much longer or never be really understood. So thank you.

    08:07 Robert Strock: Thank you for the thank you. So I’d also like to introduce Joel, who, in addition to being a great engineer, he’s also someone that I couldn’t help but invite to come in as he sees fit to join the show. So Joel, thank you. And definitely, definitely feel free. If you feel that this is something that’s gonna relate, especially to the audience and you, uh, to come in, anytime you, you feel the urge.

    08:35 Joel: Thanks so much, Robert. I’m really looking forward to learning and growing with this, being somebody that has never been exposed to these kind of elements before I’ve already gotten a lot of benefits. So thanks so much.

    08:49 Robert Strock: Great. So normally fear and anxiety is, and maybe this dates me, but is like a cootie. And for those of you that don’t know what a cootie is, it’s something that is, as my mother would say, a God forbid. Um, it’s something that we, we do our best to ignore. And when I say we, I obviously don’t mean all of us, but as a general culture, starting with a fear of death or anxiety, it’s not exactly a public announcement. It’s not exactly something that very many people talk about openly and those that do are lucky enough, uh, to have a good friendship or are unwise enough to do it in public and get hammered. And so, the importance of being able to catch fear or anxiety while it’s happening is almost like a life, quality of life and death issue. I know several people who have been anxious their whole life, not to the point where you would pick it up, but they’re, they’re suffering from this.

    10:04 Robert Strock: And so for them, it’s very important to do what we’ve been talking about, which is add a level where you not only give yourself the space to just feel it and not blend it in with the rest of your life, but give it a solitary sanctuary where you’re in a sanctuary. And you say, I wanna give you the space in this holy ground to be able to be felt exactly as you are, feel it as much as you, as you do. And I wanna let you breathe into it so that I can notice you more overtly. And then that will allow me to be more sensitive to when I maybe will have the opportunity to be able to share it with people that are really trustworthy or when they’re not, I can develop a relationship with you where I can talk to you where I can be the soother of you.

    10:59 Robert Strock: I can care for you, I can actually have a dialogue and say, anxiety. I know it’s really difficult for you right now. You know, you’re doing a really good job just being there. It’s fine that you’re there and I can easily be autonomous and speak in a voice that doesn’t have to have you own me, and I don’t have to suppress you. So that is one of the golden keys of fear and anxiety is being able to identify it, give it the dignity that it deserves and as I say to many people, one of the things that really helps in the statement, you can make yourself or the comments or the questions is, are you being frightened and anxious on purpose? And that almost invariably gets a little bit of a chuckle or a smile because it’s so obvious that none of us are really, especially the vulnerable emotions, maybe the aggressive emotions we might be doing on purpose, but the vulnerable emotions, nobody’s doing it on purpose.

    12:06 Robert Strock: So when you recognize you’re not doing it on purpose, it gives you a little bit more of a handle to move to the second step, which is, I want good for you, I want to bring caring to you, I want to do what we call either an intention to care or an intention to heal. And this is a monumental turning point. And even if you’ve heard this from me already a hundred times, realize you are not a master, nor am I. I can afford to hear it for the rest of my life, cuz I need the reminders and we all need the reminders over and over again. Because when we’re in a feeling, like fear of anxiety, it pretends to be like, God, it pretends to be like, it overtakes, overtakes our whole life. It’s all of us. And it has its distorting quality. It makes us feel like we’re gonna feel this till the day we die. And even if we did feel it till the day we die, we have the ability to be able to develop an autonomy and a caring relationship with it. If we can at least barely tolerate it, if not move to ultimately an appreciation that is a part of our human element and that we want to develop our capacity to care for it.

    13:22 Dave: I just wanna, um, reflect how true what you just said can be, and has been at least for me in different times in my life, uh, particularly relative, but not solely relative to medical circumstances and circumstances that relate to people I know, love, uh, family members. It is very difficult to create enough inner, emotional space to separate and see it. I know I’m in it. I even know that what I need to do is what we’re talking about. But even with that, I have been very challenged and on occasion, more than one occasion, paralyzed with it. And I find that what I need to do at those times when I cannot find a way just with myself and me, is reach out, reach out to friends. You being of course, one of them.

    14:27 Robert Strock: Yeah, but I think one of the things that you’re, you’re pointing out, which is really important, you know, we say intention to heal or intention to care. Uh, we need to add another intention here that is very, very realistic and more realistic than heal or care is its intention to tolerate or its intention to coexist with. It’s not a matter of being able to get over it. It’s a matter of developing an autonomous capacity to think while the fear’s going on. And that includes being able to dialogue with it, with things like fear. I know this is incredibly difficult for you. And I know I have no chance to reach you in terms of getting, getting you to get over it. I’m not even gonna try to have you get over it. But I do want you to know I’m capable of thinking independent of you while you’re there.

    15:24 Robert Strock: And I respect that you have fear, the stakes are very high. Reminds me of my favorite doctor of all time when unfortunately he’s not still alive. And my very first appointment with him I said to him, you know, I do wanna acknowledge to you that I have some fear of death. And his response was Mr. Strock, the stakes are rather high aren’t they? And it was like, I felt so understood. I actually had a tear rush. I was so moved by him getting that the stakes of losing everything, you know, in this world, losing your body, losing this mind, losing this identity, no matter what your beliefs are about life and death. He was able to show his understanding in that. So, I wasn’t gonna get over my fear, I wasn’t gonna get over my anxiety, but I have learned since that time, and before and after, more and more and more how to develop an independent capacity that can coexist with the fear or anxiety and can represent diversity, resiliency, flexibility, creativity, questioning, uh, asking for help, all kinds of things that the fear–if I was frozen in it–would not be able to do any of those things.

    16:47 Robert Strock: So the goal or the priority in a lot of cases, especially like ones you’re talking about is to be able to coexist with it, to be able to be a partner with it where you say, okay partner, I know you gotta be where you are and I gotta be where I am. I’ll relate to you, I’ll keep relating to you; if I could, I would make it be less, but if I can’t I accept you and I’m gonna be going in this other direction. So at this point, while you are looking at your relationship to fear and anxiety, and I’m really asking you, please stop dominantly listening to my story and bring yourself into your story. If you can do both at once, whatever degree you can, great, but lean more, more into your story, see what your normal reactions are when you’re afraid and you’re anxious.

    17:39 Robert Strock: What normally happens for you? Do you pause, do you give yourself the space to breathe into it? Do you have respect for it? And when I’ve asked a lot of my clients and even some friends, do you care for yourself while you’re afraid? It’s like, they look at me like, of course not, dumb shit. I mean, you know, it’s like, no, I mean, I don’t like fear, I hate it. You know, it’s one of the feelings I hate the most that I have. So that leads into a long series of dialogues. If we have enough time to do that, where the importance of being able to have a tolerance or bear tolerance or an acceptance, or maybe then ultimately an appreciation that I’m a human being. If my health is threatened, I’m gonna have some fear and some anxiety.

    18:33 Robert Strock: I’m not a machine, I’m a human. And so being able to see what your normal reactions are, is crucial or else you won’t ever be able to get back to the fear or the anxiety to help care for yourself. So see is it your tendency to change the subject in your own mind? Is it your tendency to be more uptight? Do you withdraw? Do you, do you get paralyzed? What is your normal reaction? And see if you cannot be pejorative or critical towards yourself for your normal reaction and go, ah, my normal reaction is to have a fleeting awareness of it and to withdraw, or my tendency is just to become more tense or my tendency is to be obsessed or my tendency is to make endless plans of how I’m gonna resolve it and have my mind be busy all the time of how I’m gonna get over it.

    19:29 Robert Strock: So whatever your tendency is, put as much awareness right now on your tendency and put a little, little red flag above it saying when I’m thinking these thoughts, I wanna go back to my fear. I wanna go back to the original anxiety, and I can afford to do it because I have a direction to be able to tolerate it and to lean into how can I best support myself when I’m feeling anxious or frightened. And if you ask yourself that question, you’ve morphed from being in a realm, that’s very likely to be destructive to a realm. That’s very likely to move you in a direction that’s gonna be beneficial to your life. And the stakes are really, really high because we’re all gonna have this happening. Some of us, like I said are lifelong, but even as we get older and older, we’re gonna have more and more.

    20:25 Robert Strock: Although for those of us that have been working on ourselves, we, we may have more and more, but they’ll become shorter and shorter because we’ll be able to nip them in the bud most of the time, but it requires life-long practice and a recognition. This is not a hobby. This is not for people that wanna live just a superficial life and don’t wanna have any fears or anxieties in their life. Well, if you don’t have any fear and anxiety in your life, you haven’t lived. If you really live, you’re going to encounter fear and anxiety. Very similar to what we talked about with insecurity. It’s like I view my life as really being, uh, not lived fully if I don’t have some element of fear or anxiety at all, all day long. It’s like when I’m seeing a client, I’ll have the slightest bit of what I would consider to be the optimal edge of fear or anxiety

    21:20 Robert Strock: cuz I wanna care for them. I care. I wanna see if I can reach them. I’m not sure if I can. Maybe they’re taking it sideways, I’m not sure how to get back, maybe I’m gonna offend them. So I’m aware I have the fear. And then what I say to myself and what I’m suggesting you say to yourself, as you’re looking at your fear and anxiety, is you are afraid or you’re anxious because you so much want to be courageous and relaxed. Their origin of fear and anxiety is not negative, it’s a longing to be safe, it’s longing to be secure, it’s longing to be courageous. And if you recognize that you see the dignity in the fear and the anxiety, and it also will help you to go to the next step, to want to move in a healing or caring direction.

    22:11 Robert Strock: So see where you are and just let yourself see on a 1 to 10 scale. How much were you able to identify any fear or anxiety? Did you even bother to do it, and could you see yourself saying anything to yourself that would be encouraging to go back to it and to remember that you want to move in a caring direction? I doubt very much we had enough time to develop the caring direction, but we had enough time to potentially recognize that you wanna be able to be your deeper self and you wanna be able to move in a caring direction. So one of the things, again, as we’ve talked about on a few other episodes regarding challenging emotions that you, with fear and anxiety in particular, you wanna focus on the present and the near future this week. You don’t fear if you let it go, it’ll go off into the future

    23:04 Robert Strock: and you’re a goner. So you want to ask yourself, what is the next step? What is the present and the future response I can have? Going to the future is a guaranteed to stay with fear. I was watching a children’s movie that I love, I think it was Frozen One or Two and the movie was, what’s your next step? What’s your next, best step? And it’s a beautiful song. Children’s movie so often have wisdom themes. What’s your next best step. That’s another way of asking for what, what way can you care for yourself? But it’s even better, I think, then when you’re dealing with fear. One of the other things you can do with, with yourself is to create a dialogue with your emotions. Like I know you wanna withdraw into a helplessness. Is this really what you wanna do with your life

    23:55 Robert Strock: or do you wanna return to where you are? When you see your normal tendency, which is maybe to judge yourself, you’ll say to yourself, oh, let’s not waste our time judging ourself. And it’s never too late to start again. If you’ve been judging yourself, it’s never too late to see I’ve been judging myself, and now I want to go back to my original fear. Now this common sense or uncommon common sense to have a healthy conversation with ourselves is a bit like a mini miracle. And we all need to develop this capacity, if we want to live a deeper, more fulfilling life, to have a dialogue and not suppress the fear or the anxiety, and to be able to have this dialogue, that’s allowing you to be where you are and then how do you become resilient? And as I’ve talked about before, the more you practice this, the more it becomes like a Pavlovian response: challenging feeling, fear and anxiety, intention to care or heal, or at least to tolerate asking yourself a very positive question of how you can be resourceful at care,

    25:00 Robert Strock: and then you get the guidance and then you dedicate yourself to the guidance. My dearest deepest wish is that process goes from memory that you remember it, to it going into a cellular memory where you really long for a way to develop self-love, deeper intimacy with yourself, deeper connection with yourself, deeper relating to other people, deeper friendships, and a deeper relationship to the world. And if you can see that this urge to have a caring response to what’s difficult is the key turning point. The key pivot in all of our individual lives, and rather than just blaming our politicians, we all have a lot of individual work to do. We all need to have our more caring sides of ourselves become the more dominant side while we don’t suppress our emotions. But while we have a deeper relationship to our emotions. So I leave you with sort of a deep prayer or wish that this be something that’s organic, something that you take in as a deep longing from inside yourself, that you want to be able to claim your own life at a deeper level and realize that this is something that your authority, you’re being the guide for yourself, is the one that’s making this decision.

    26:33 Robert Strock: Thank you very much for your dear attention. And I look forward to continuing to join you in future episodes.

  • Fear and Courage

    Fear and Courage

    This guided meditation helps you explore the relationship between courage and fear and how to transform it to
    be able to reside     primarily in your courage.