Facing Fear - Part 1

Facing Our Fears

There are different synonyms to fear:  alarm, anxiety, dread, fearfulness, fright, horror, panic, scare, terror, trepidation, etc...

What do you gain by facing and overcoming your fears? You gain self-esteem! You gain courage! You gain wisdom!… You gain yourself! There is a wonderful feeling that comes from being free of your fears. Unchallenged fear becomes a prison for you that prevent you from going forward thus preventing you from accomplishing your goals and living victoriously. It binds and chains your mind so much so that you cannot think outside of the cell that you have allow yourself to be put in.

Avoidance of that fear leads to more avoidance and the fear escalates as you give in to it, thus you give it more power from you. You become powerless and it becomes more powerful over you, sometimes to the point of it becoming a “phobia” which we will discuss later. Being proactive in dealing with your fear will release the chains that bind you.

Your body reacts to fear. When the brain thinks or perceives that a situation is possibly life threatening, it reacts in 1 of 2 ways, “Fight or Flight”. “Fight” is the pathway of aggression to defend yourself and “flight” is the fear reaction that sets the body in motion to run or escape from the threat. This "fight or flight response" is essential in truly dangerous circumstances to decrease the chance of injury or death.

The key word here is "perceives". The perception that a situation is life threatening does not mean it is. And that is the problem. All of us have experienced fear at one time or another, but only some of us have actually experienced it to the point that we are in physical life threatening danger. However, although we may not be truly experiencing a life-threatening situation, because of our “perception” our body reacts as if we were.

This week we will discuss the symptoms of fear and the steps necessary to overcome it.