“Fear is a friend that you misunderstand.” – John Mayer
Lately, I have been filled with fears. I have been obsessed with my fears. I have been talking about them, and about the concept of fear.
Today I realized that I don’t have to let those fears consume me.
At the root of fear is what is important to us.
Now, if you have a fear of losing someone, it means you have an attachment to them, usually love. If you have a fear of losing anything, it means you care about it.
If you have a fear of dying, it means you love living.
The opposite of fear is love.
Irrational fears? That’s a slightly different topic.
The brain likes to invent little imaginary stories about what bad things could happen. I like to attribute that to our cave-faring ancestors, passing down their instincts to watch for sabretooth tigers.
Today, I’m addressing those deep-rooted, lifelong fears: the ones that will come and go and circle back around until you learn to conquer them or accept them as part of life.
The list of what they could be is quite long, and they are usually universal as well as individual. Whatever your fear is, know this:
You don’t have to act on every impulse your brain says you need to in order to conquer the fear. Sometimes the best medicine is to simply acknowledge it and continue about your life.
I’m not claiming you can just be immune to fear, but you can try to understand it as a concept. Fear is what shows you what’s important; in many cases, fear is used as a motivator and that is for a reason.
If you are afraid of something, supervillains would call you weak. If you are afraid of something, there are people who will exploit that.
My TikTok algorithm is testament to that. A bad boss could be testament to that. A particularly jarring Ad campaign could be testament. I don’t think I need to defend the idea that exploiting fear has its own economy.
However, while we cannot stop fear from being exploited at large, (not in a single day), we can stop it from being exploited by our own inner voice.
I’m an expert in trying to fend off the brain’s unique brand of spiral-inducing intrusive thoughts, all correlated to fears of mine.
I am understanding that this is just a shadowy projection of my consciousness and that however uncomfortable, it is a necessary evil.
The Yin and Yang show it’s never fully one side of the story. There is bad in the good, and good in the bad. On the other side of that shadowy side of my mind, there is the light fighting right back.
There was a fable about two wolves, a white wolf and a black wolf both starving, representing light and dark, and the stronger one will be the one you feed.
You don’t have to starve your fear if it motivates you, but if it is debilitating some days like mine, then you don’t have to feed it either.
I did a few things to face my fears: I changed my TikTok algorithm, I took a week off work, I try not to look at too many bad news stories. I had to calm myself, reach out to my support system, I have to use grounding techniques. I have to remind myself that not every fear is an ultimate truth.
If you have a fear today: put it to bed, tuck it in, kiss it goodnight, and go find the root of it – Find the love that caused it and cling onto that until the fear goes away, or at least quiets for a while.
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