Here’s the deal. We were all created with feelings and emotions. They help us experience life and all it has to offer us. They also were given to us to keep us safe.

Joy and happiness are there to help us build memories and build positive attachments with the ones we love. Sadness comes in when something has happened to one we love, or we have been hurt or wounded. And fear steps in to ensure that we don’t experience that hurt or wound again. It’s literally the movie “Inside out.”

As we go through life, these feelings and emotions begin to prove themselves to be a helpful guide in our protection, or helping us understand how we relate to a person, experience or circumstance.

For example, as a baby, hopefully , your parents fed you, embraced , rocked and soothed you through physical touch. And your brain learned to associate that positive experience with love and belonging. Your feelings and emotions helped create that bond.

We can look at this in relation to other experiences. Say, you are walking and you stub your toe on the toy your kid left out. You may experience anger for the toy for being in an inconvenient location, your kid for not picking their stuff up, and yourself for not watching where you are going. The emotion you are feeling will program your brain from then on to watch out for objects so that you don’t experience the irritating pain from stubbing your toe ever again. And the love you have for your kid will stop you from sending them to their impending death too early. .. just kidding. But really.

When our brain sees these emotions as reliable and helpful, we begin to build a trust relationship, an allegiance with these feelings and anything that may tell us otherwise, or lead us to believe that feelings and emotions are not 100 percent reliable 100 percent of the time becomes the enemy.

The root in all of this? Fear.

See, when we can understand that feelings and emotions are for small moments , and shift quickly, then we can realize that they are great indicators of what is going on, but not reliable sources for what things will be.

Fear is tricky though. It can stop you right in your tracks and leave you bound for as long as you’ll allow. 

Fear tells you that you are going to fail, and even if you don’t it isn’t worth taking the risk to find out. 

Fear tells you to remember the moment you stubbed your toe, your kid is malicious and is trying to kill you via messy house. And then that keeps you high-strung and on your kid about how messy they are all the time. 

Fear makes irrational things sound completely and totally rational and healthy. It nurses you, rocks you and tells you that you are safe.

It coaxed you into a “safe” little bubble of isolation and loneliness and tells you it’ll be back to get you and tell you when it is safe to come out, but never shows up.

My relationship with fear looked like this:  Fear reminds me that I will be happiest living alone and single my whole life. It even showed me how to build walls to keep myself safe, and constantly reminded me how beautiful my walls were and how great of a job I was doing in keeping them up, sturdy and locked. And, in moments where my flesh failed and I began to start questioning my walls, cleaning up and thinking about going outside, fear would gently remind me of all the ways in which I had been wounded by the outside world, and I would agree, put all the stuff back, and go to my little corner of my little safe place fear had made for me.

Fear is meant to keep us safe from danger. Like people killing us, kidnapping us , or hurting us in some way. It is not meant to be our safety net . 

Fear is not meant to be the place we pull from when we are starting new adventures.

Fear will always be a part of our lives. It is an emotion. But it does not have to be where we live. We can move out.

What does it look like to move out of living in fear?

Shoot, this one is hard. But necessary. And, if I am being honest, it is a daily choice for me not to live in fear. And I am still learning and growing in it. But here is what it looks like so far for me.

Moving out of fear looks like , questioning your walls and motives even when everything in you is screaming “Danger, you idiot!!!”

Moving out of fear looks like, being kind to what you are feeling without agreeing with it.

Moving out of fear looks like, pushing forward even when what you are moving toward scares you out of your mind.

Moving out of fear looks like, having compassion for yourself when fear takes over for a second, but having the courage to get back up and start again tomorrow.

What is fear keeping you in?

What is fear keeping you from?

Do the things. Apply for the jobs. Be friends with the people. Take the risks.

Be encouraged,

Rachael