Fear is the inspiration for this blog. Good old human creature fear and how it effects the psyche, the body, and the human experience. My intention for this blog is simply to reflect. I want to honor the process of contemplating, intuiting, and understanding in service of allowing the unconscious to unravel in the moment…

When fear is pushed deeply into the shadow of the psyche, going unfelt and unseen, it manifests as physical ailments. Digestive issues. Constipation if the human body retracts and tries to protect itself. Or diarrhea, the other direction, if the temperament of the creature tends to run more anxious than withholding…

Attachment wounds reveal themselves inwardly as much as outwardly. When we are not securely attached (most of us) we tend toward avoidance or anxiousness, the former being anxious too but withholds/hides/avoids and so it doesn’t seem to present emphatically.

It’s not just how we are raised that determines our attachment style and wounding, it’s the temperament of the body which has everything to do with the multigenerational family system. Avoidance style (the island) or anxiousness style (the wave) may be a pattern running down the DNA line. Digestive issues may run in the family through the female or male bloodline with each creature carrying fear that gets pushed into the shadow.

Feelings have to be felt to be released. Healing is feeling. Must fear be felt to be released?

How hard might it be to feel fear if you are wired to push it into the shadow and present with digestive issues and probably a neurotic mind. Usually when fear is hiding in the shadow the mind is defensive, controlling, and fanatical or extreme in certain ways to compensate for the unseen fear.

Fear is big. The country is big with fear. The family system is big with fear. The creature if big with fear because living a human existence is scary. We are not given any guarantee of safety, control, or happy endings. People experience undeserved tragedy all the time.

I think about animals that experience tragedy and how they are not conscious of themselves with a cognitive mind so they don’t have the ability to think, “why did this happen to me,” or “I am not good enough” or “this person is bad and I am a victim of evil,” or any such conclusion that only a self aware cognitive mind could come up with through the thinking process.

Fear is not the summation the mind makes. Fear is present in the body and then leaves. In animals, it presents and leaves if the animal gets to live a healthy life but trauma from abuse or neglect will collect just as much in their bodies, proving that the consequences of trauma live in the body first and foremost. The human mind only makes it worse.

The body collects what is not processed and this is a region of the shadow. I am thinking of an abused or neglected doggie living on the street that presents as mean and vicious (the wave) or through slinking and hiding away (the island) if anyone approaches to bring love. The doggie’s body is filled with fear from the trauma of being abused or neglected.

The only way to heal the doggie is exposure therapy to love.. First the doggie must be tricked into being caught (maybe a piece of food in a cage). Next the doggie must slowly be introduced to loving care, allowing her body to slowly release the fear and accept love. This proves that love is the healer of fear.

Humans are the same. Fear collects in the body from trauma, abuse, or maybe there is no abuse/trauma but there is the multigenerational absence of affection, attunement and acknowledgment of being seen, heard, and loved without conditions (the feminine side of the psyche).  Only love can release the fear the body holds.

Not some parlor trick for the mind. Ok, I have a bit of irreverence for certain modalities of therapy I think trick the mind into “feeling better” by changing the chemicals but I don’t think this is healing. I think it is temporal band-aid. I feel true healing is always rooted in the experience of being loved, listened to, and acknowledged.

The feminine aspect of life knows this. Knows that love heals all. And what is love? Love is how we behave. It is not a concept. It is not an ideal. It is how we care for the self, others, and life. How we show up. How we tend to fear. Fear, like with the doggie, will leave the body with love. It just will.

Self love is a start and usually the base of love. Self love releases fear beginning with not listening to self-sabotaging neural pathways, the well worn path, the shitty narrative in the mind that says, “I am not good enough, who do I think I am” etc….or the other direction of, “they are ruining my existence, they are to blame for how I feel,” etc.

Ignoring the sabotaging narrative is key and the base of self love but then what? It is it truly different for everyone. For me, self love is practicing mindfulness so I don’t listen to the narrative of doom, keeping up with my exercise and creativity practices that make me feel balanced, inspired, and confident, and being nurturing and easy on myself.

I truly believe in being easy on the self. Sure, there is a time to face fear with a wand of courage and determination. But back to the doggie, if you push him he will fall apart. If you give him time, patience, understanding and slowly expose him to love and new life, he will heal.

I am somebody who needs to go very easy on myself in order to heal, maybe more so than the average person (is there an average person?) and so I attest to this path as being pertinent in healing because I have been healing with great results over time. I speak from my own lived experience and find that the gentle path brings proven results.

Fear needs to be handled with skill and fear is attachment. We fear because are attached to security, health, love, and success….as we should be. Nothing wrong with being human! Yet in this messed up world with broken bloodlines riddled with too much suffering, we need major skill to bring healing to fear.

Like the doggie, learning to let more love in is an exposure process. Love will dissolve fear but it’s so scary to let love in. Letting love in may feel scarier than the fear. What a paradox.

Unfortunately the doggie cannot respond to humor but I think for humans, humor is a major healing tool for exposing the self to the fear of letting love in.

My god can we laugh at life for a second? I say this with emphasis because my own typical tendency to take life too seriously. You could say it is a privilege to have a light heart…and…it is also temperament. There are those who seem to have a light heart even when enduring the worst of circumstances.

But don’t beat yourself up if you have a heavy heart. I have a fairly heavy heart and I love my heavy heart because it allows me to sit with people in their deepest pain and give love, it allows me to analyze the psyche and discover new territory, it allows me to sit for hours and write about big ideas. I would not want to be romping around like a Pixie but more power to the Pixie.

Honor your temperament is what I am getting at here. You can heal from fear with a heavy or light heart but even heavy hearts can heal from humor. Laughing is vital. Laughing at the self releases the grip of those pesky narratives that shadow the fears.

Life is unsafe. We can create as much safety as possible by living in sheltered homes and communities with organized cultural institutions that allow us to experience more of the light and less of the pain. We can learn to love more so that we don’t have to feel unsafe with each other too.

At the same time, life is unsafe, suffering exists and it always will. People will cause violence and tyranny over others. Nature can wipe out a community in one cataclysm. Illness strikes even the most healthy. The dark side of life is not evil and cannot be eradicated. We can reduce suffering and achieve balance but we cannot be rid of darkness. Dark and light are equal forces of nature.

Fear will rise again and again, Fear is as natural as love.

All this being said, learning how to deal with fear is more pragmatic than trying to get rid of fear forever in the mind by demanding reassurance of continual safety (the wave) or through avoiding fear by living in one safe routined rut forever (the island).

I am all about living a fulfilling life where we get to keep growing and evolving each day and this is rooted in healing.

There is no healing arrival point where all fear is banished. Yet results are real. Healing the psyche brings more peace, love, fulfillment, ease, and all the other desired adjectives that balance out fear that will rise again and again.

I radically accept fear. I radically accept life not being safe. I radically accept the dark and light aspects of being human. I radically accept the patient process, the gentle path, love, and humor as medicine. This is my deepest reflection…

The more there is acceptance around fear the more body can stop expressing fear through digestive problems or other ailments, the more heart can let in love, the more mind can let go of self sabotaging narratives and the more soul or true self can rise out of the shadow and express in this world.