“Fear does’t bluck us, unwillingness to feel the fear blocks us.”
I have a tendency to favor feeling good over feeling fully. To intellectualize or tell stories instead of feeling the parts of me that are hurt and afraid. To shift my perspective on a dime so that I can feel hope and excitement instead of grief and despair.
My unwillingness to feel fully leads to pain and numbing. When I’m afraid, I rush to problem solving to not have to feel the fear. That rush creates pressure. That pressure feels bad, resulting in more pressure to do something to feel better, fueling a vicious cycle.
So my body takes a shortcut, “If the goal is to not feel the fear, I know a much better way!”
That’s why I have such well practiced numbing patterns. It’s more efficient to numb the fear than to neutralize it. It protects me, at least in the short run. Like my body going into shock to avoid devastion.
Unfelt fear is like an unread warning messages. I know something is amiss, but because I don’t know what, I have to be on guard against everything.
Feeling the fear is doing the work of reading those messages. And when I have the courage to read them, something powerful happens: The warning lights that acted like beacons of fear turn into beacons of clarity.
An unknown fear carries with it a thousand strains of potential devastation. A known fear focuses down into one.
The more I feel my fear, the less I have to be afraid of. That’s how I can feel my way to freedom.