Working with Fear

March 2, 2024

Fear is only a foe if you don’t learn to make it a friend.

There is a reason I am choosing the phrase “working with fear” as opposed to “conquering fear” or “battling fear.”

It is as intuitive as it is experiential. Approaching a powerful energy like fear with an antagonistic spirit seems to strengthen it or suggest that it’s possible fear could win.

Instead, I meet fear as I do every emotion and energy that crosses the stage of my consciousness: as a visitor, a teacher, a learning opportunity.

I can talk to fear. I can say, “Thank you. I know you are trying to protect me and take care of me by sounding your alarm. But I am okay, really.”

I can also use short phrases that I keep on the ready in my mind. Some adapted from bible verses, others little rhymes I’ve made up in tense moments. I repeat these as I gradually relax in the face of fear.

When everything inside me wants to tense up in self-protection, that is the moment to let go. Letting go into the bigger flow of energy happening all around and through me is freedom as I know it.

It takes some pretty intense situations for me to surrender so profoundly into so much flowing energy. A giving up of control. A releasing of the wheel. Ah. There it is: Peace.