How To Have a Healthy Relationship With Your Fear

How do you know the difference between the type of fear that you push through, and the type of fear you need to listen to, and potentially change directions?

I had this question come up on a coaching call the other day, and I wanted to share my response with you here because I think this is something that ALL of us will have to feel into at some point (likely way more than once!), because there is no way to ever reach the point of being “fearless” in our lives, no matter how much inner work we do.

Fear will always be present in our lives because we are human.

Liz Milani says, “There is no healing from the human condition. You cannot eradicate pain and fear and suffering and worry from your life experience.”

Even though we cannot eradicate fear from our lives, we can improve our relationship to our fears.

(In case you hadn’t picked up on this, I believe improving our relationships is what really changes things and touches every area of our lives. This is the heart of the work I do because everything in life is a relationship, and there is no relationship that you aren’t in).

We can learn to know how our fears are communicating with us, learn to soothe them, learn when we need to take heed and listen to the caution they are communicating, and when we need to gently tell our fears, “I see you and hear you, but I’ve got this, and I’ll take over from here” and allow yourself to sit in the driver seat instead of your fear.

Something that I think is super important to establish right off the bat:

Your brain is not interested in making you happy.

Yes, you read that right.

Your brain is interested in keeping you alive; that is it’s sole purpose. It is a meaning-making machine that literally interprets anything outside of your “normal” as unsafe, and will therefore illicit fear to keep you in your “safe zone”.

The problem with this is your “normal” may not actually be what is best or even the most healthy thing for you (or what would make you happy or fulfilled), but your brain will try to keep you there anyway because it has deemed this “normal” as “safe”.

And simultaneously, how do you know when your fears are alerting you that perhaps this path isn’t for you?

Tara Mohr outlines two different types of fear in her book “Playing Big” (which I highly recommend):

There is fear because you are trying something new, inhabiting a larger space than we are used to, or we come into possession of more than we are used to.

This is your brain telling you “this isn’t your normal” and trying to get you back into the safe zone. This type of fear will always crop up, because your brain will always try to protect you.

Tara says “we feel this type of fear when the ego perceives that something has the potential to bring us into transcendence of the ego.”

If you don’t learn to recognize this fear, acknowledge it, support it, and be able to not allow it to drive, you’ll never be able to do what you actually came here for.

Some examples of this kind of fear may look like:

Taking a job promotion

Speaking up where you used to be silent

Starting a new relationship that feels really exciting (and also really vulnerable and scary)

Moving

Changing careers

Ending something that no longer feels aligned

Being in a whole new level of joy and ease

Sharing your true voice

Another type of fear is the fear of the worst-case-scenarios that we imagine:

They will find out I don’t actually know what I’m doing.

I’m going to get in a terrible accident.

The plane is going to crash.

I’m going to say something stupid and ruin the relationship.

Fear of a potential future outcome.

This is the lizard-brain type of fear.

These fears are protecting us from potential threats, especially things that threaten emotional safety (saving us from shame, embarrassment, etc.)

Tara says that we feel this type of fear “when the ego perceives something it feels will wound the ego’s fragile self-concept in some way”.

Both of these types of fear are distinct, and yet both can hold us back from what we are really called here to do if we haven’t established a relationship with our fear where we know it intimately: when it simply because we are expanding, when it is protecting our self-concept or a wound, and when there is a deep inner knowing that something isn’t for us at this time.

The most powerful thing that I ever did to help distinguish the differences here is become intimately attuned to my own body sensations and the way she communicates with me.

When you know how your body communicates to you and you trust her, you always have the answers inside you.

Questions to Help You Have a Healthy Relationship With Your Fear:

-What does it feel like in your body when you know something is a hell yes for you?

-What does it feel like in your body when something is a hell yes, but it’s expanding you past your comfort zone?

-What do you feel like in your body when you know something is the right decision, even though it isn’t exactly what you want?

-What does it feel like in your body when you have a deep inner knowing that something isn’t right for you?

-What does it feel like in your body when you know something isn’t right for you even though it looks like a good choice on paper?

-What does it feel like in your body when you are trying to save yourself from an imagined future outcome and protect yourself?

-Are there any key distinguishing differences between how all of these things feel within your body that you can take note of?

When I have fear that is associated with expansion, fear is present, but I still feel excitement and a feeling of openness and expanding energy.

When I have fear that is associated with projected fearful outcomes, I typically experience a tenseness or contraction feeling in my body.

When I have an inner knowing that something isn’t for me, it’s typically very quiet and without much fan-fare. It feels like a still, quiet knowing that “this isn’t it”, even if it defies logic.

**Interesting to note, for me in this instance the fear typically comes into play when I try to convince myself NOT to listen to that inner knowing and instead to go with what seems logical!

Getting intimately in tune with how your body communicates with you in these different types of fear establishes a relationship of trust with yourself and a healthy relationship with your fear that allows you to honor your fear while still supporting yourself to expand into what you really want.

I’d love to hear where you feel fear is currently holding you back in your life right now. Comment below and let me know!

I’d be happy to ask you some powerful questions and get you started down the path of having a different relationship to your fear.

XX,

Kim