When Fear Becomes a way of Life

I am a Social Worker. My whole life's work has been to help people self-actualize by guiding them to find their own inner voice. Fear as a way of life can be paralyzing. There is rational fear......when we tell our children do not touch the stove because you can get burned....there is irrational fear....the fear that comes from an unknown place.....fear of flying and never traveling because that fear gets in the way.

I have experienced both, but somehow I was able to rationalize the irrational. This took some work and an incredible amount of risk taking. Irrational fear is that fear the creeps into our minds and body and keeps us from living. It is based on a couple of things:

fear of unknown things happening because of what we may do or say

fear of humiliation

fear of embarrassment

fear of what others may think of us

fear of rejection

fear of losing

fear of being true to ourselves

All these fears can paralyze us and keep us from achieving true happiness and self-actualization. What I mean by self-actualization is reaching our true authentic self. The person we are capable of being on a higher level. The person we can fully and completely be without restrictions placed on us by ourselves, by others or society.
I am currently watching as my son struggles with all these fears and it is heart breaking. He is a smart, funny, kind and wonderful young man. He gets in his own way. It is hard to watch, as a mother and a therapist. I try to look back and seek answers and there are none, except that fear rules his life, his happiness and his achievements or lack of.

People who live in fear do not take risk for fear of failure. But, how can you even know if you will succeed if you are not willing to risk. Risk embarrassment, humiliation, lack of praise, lack of approval, lack of love. The truth is, only by stepping outside of our fears are we able to see what we are really capable of. It is in this risk taking, that we develop a sense of power and strength, a sense of our own abilities, a sense of self.  It is in this risk taking that we self-actualize to a greater being. 

Some practical steps to overcome fear (and its not easy nor does it come without some pain) are:

letting go.....letting go of what we cannot control....such as what people think of us.

letting go of what we think we "should do or should be doing"

letting go of what we think is expected of us

letting go of preconceived ideas of what we should be

letting go of old ideas of what the norm is

letting go of our past failures in order to build a better future

letting go of timelines of when and how we were suppose to accomplish things

letting go of old wounds and moving forward from where we are

But, most importantly, loving ourselves enough to fight for freedom of the fear that haunts us. Setting ourselves free because we know that we are valuable and deserve good things even if it's not according to the unbending timeline we've set for ourselves. 

Self-actualization can only happen when we are free. Free to be kinder to ourselves, to be forgiving to ourselves for whatever infractions we believe we've committed. Free to love ourselves despite our failures.  Free to love ourselves enough to risk it all for the sake of self love and future happiness.