How do you live with fear? Find the reasons why you have anxious feelings. Usually, fear comes from the unknown. Or from past painful experiences.
I don’t know what is there in the dark as a child. It could be anything. Fear preserves me, keeps me alive because there might be a hole. There might be somebody who wants to hurt me. So fear makes me stay still. There’s a biological reason for that. If there’s a predator, if I’m not moving, I am increasing the chance of not being noted. When I am scared, I tend to close to myself, I become smaller, so I am less noticeable.
Fear is an important feeling. It keeps you alive. What if you embrace it?
What if you use it as a prompt, to react, not to self-destroy?
Why are you scared? What is scaring you? Asking those questions can be a painful process. You can do it on your own. Or ask a friend. Sometimes you need a professional to help you.
It’s the first step to be more self-aware. The more you know about the context in which you experience fear, the more you can either accept it or find ways to react and change.
So, how do you live with fear? The first answer that comes to my mind is: be brave and face your fear by embracing it. You don’t have to risk your safety. You have to be an explorer. What happens if you research your anxiety? If you do experiment around fears? What does it change?
Think about becoming a scientist of yourself. Hypothesize an experiment, prepare it, execute it and reflect on what happened. By changing your behaviors, the settings in which you’re living, working, and breathing, are there any different reactions in your feelings? If you feel worse, stop and avoid doing that again. Understanding why. If you feel better, try to understand why you feel like that.
How do you live with fear?
Be brave and investigate the causes of your fear and call them by name.
Then, react. Become more self-aware and take charge of your life.
Writing is a powerful technique to reflect on your feelings. Think about journaling and keeping a diary of thoughts. When you write, you track your feelings’ evolution, fear included. Like a researcher, an investigator, you can write the history of your feelings. Writing contributes to making you more self-aware and better equipped to make sense of your experiences. It can be a great tool to research the causes of your feelings.
Write, and fight your fears.
This article is dedicated to Siddu Tummala who suggested the writing prompt to write it.
I am Massimo Curatella, and this is my DAY 15 Article in the CREAZEE Daily Writing Challenge and my 152nd daily article in a row.