Is Mindfulness of Our Fear the Vehicle to Disempower It?
Nobody likes to suffer
Suffering – mentally, emotionally, physically, or spiritually – is unpleasant. The pain that comes with suffering – tangible or not – is unpleasant, distressing, uncomfortable, and just plain awful.
But do you know what’s worse than suffering? Often – the fear over how and what it’ll be.
Frequently, we don’t recognize suffering as our fear. It gets cloaked in another, more recognizable, seemingly more tangible form – like rejection.
Fear of suffering is often the real fear
Not to put too fine a point on it – but it’s suffering we tend to be most afraid of.
Yet that’s not the name we give our fears. Instead, we fear intimacy, heights, success, failure, abandonment, rejection, and lots of other tangibles and intangibles.
But really, it’s not those things we fear. It’s the suffering that could occur because of them.
· Intimacy? You fear a broken heart and the suffering that comes with it.
· Heights? The fear is falling from them and how much suffering being broken in that fall will amount to.
· Success and failure? The suffering that will occur due to the impression you make on people and their reactions to you.
· Abandonment? The fear of being all alone with nobody to turn to.
· Rejection? The fear you’ll suffer because you lost out, missed out, or otherwise have been refused
No matter the name we give it above, it always returns to suffering. As I wrote at the start – nobody likes to suffer.
The truth of suffering
All of us suffer from time to time
Everybody gets hurt – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. EVERYBODY. Sometimes the hurt is almost completely unbearable. Other times, it’s just annoying and irritating. And sometimes, it spurs us to action.
What can we do about this to disempower fear?
Fear is a natural reaction. And you will experience fear in your life because that’s part of life. Nobody escapes it.
When you fear something like rejection, success, failure, abandonment, or the like – and the suffering that could come with it – you can mindfully seek rationality, reason, and logic to recognize the suffering likely won’t be as bad as you’re fearing it will be.
Mindfulness gives you control of your life experience because it puts you behind the wheel of your head, heart, and soul. And since nobody but you is in there – shouldn’t you be the one driving?
This week’s Applied Guidance for Mindfulness Tool:
This is going to be challenging for some. I’m asking you to face down your fear. And that is not an easy thing to do.
Maybe this is not a current issue – but it can be applied to face any fear – tangible or intangible.
Keep in mind – we cannot run away from, avoid, or hide from our fears and expect them to then go away. Dealing with them requires mindfulness.
Here’s your applied guidance tool this week:
1. Write down your fear. Name it.
2. What is it you think or feel might happen if what you fear comes to pass?
3. How will that impact you directly? Not those around you – you. Write it all out in as much detail as you can.
4. Identify if what you fear is what you named or if it’s the suffering that might occur.
5. Write the response to your worst-case scenarios. Apply logic, rationality, and reason and see how that disempowers them.
In identifying our fears, we take away their power over us. But it is not easy because fear is a multifaceted sensation of thought, feeling, and more.
Blogs: titaniumdon.com and mjblehart.medium.com
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