Women's Empowerment Stories ...

Letting Go of the Habit of Fear
~ Ingrid Bacci

Fear can be a habit. As a habit, it can show itself in a thousand small ways. You may tend to wake up in the morning feeling nervous. Or perhaps you get anxious about your manager's reactions to your proposals, or about how you'll look in your new outfit. Some of us feel fear when we see those bills that find their way to our mailbox. Or before we open up our latest investment account report. Or we may feel anxiety about confronting someone whom we feel is taking advantage of us, or treating us discourteously.

Of course, there are times when fear has a useful purpose. Like when you feel a moment of panic as you swerve to avoid an oncoming car. In cases like this, a momentary feeling of alarm triggers a useful, sometimes life-saving, response. But when fear in certain situations is habitual, that is a signal that we are sabotaging ourselves and only doing ourselves harm. The more we listen to the voice of fear, the more we constrict our lives. If we wake up every morning feeling nervous (rather than excited, or energetic, or inspired), that nervousness is going to make us less efficient, less creative, and probably less pleasant as well during the day. If we get anxious about higher-ups' responses to our ideas, we will shut down on our own creativity, lose the respect of our colleagues, and live the unhappy life of a drone. If we have financial fear, we might avoid financial decisions that would put us more in charge of our financial life. And so on. Fear creates negative outcomes. It's that simple.

So how do you let go of fear? There are thousands of books and recommendations on this issue. I will confine myself to just one, that is very powerful. It's about learning to release yourself from fear by changing the way it feels in your body.

Have you ever noticed that fear is always a physical sensation? It may involve a tightening in your chest or gut, palpations, sweating, tightening in your neck, or other sensations. If you can get rid of the sensation, you will no longer have the fear. Another way of saying this is that you become afraid when you have certain physical sensations, and that you let go of the fear when those sensations dissipate. As a result, if you can train yourself to recognize what the sensations of fear are for you, and if you can then practice letting them go, you will go a long way toward letting go of fear altogether.

Here is a simple example from my own life. Years ago, I used to wake up with chronic anxiety. In those days, I also had a lot of low back pain, from all the tension I was carrying in my life. So when I woke up, I would feel stiff and nervous. One day, it occurred to me to work on changing that pattern. So every day, for about a month, before I got out of bed I would imagine how it would feel to be totally relaxed. To help me in this process, I found a beautiful picture of a soft, sensuous woman lying in a field, happily absorbing the sun and breeze on her body. I imagined that I was that woman. I imagined feeling the way that woman felt, from my neck, down through my shoulders, down to my fingertips, down through my hips and to my toes. I didn't move in bed until I could completely identify myself feeling the way that woman must have felt. Then, when I moved to get out of bed, I imagined moving the way she must have moved, slowly, easily, languorously. I kept at it. And a month later, I had "kicked" the habit of waking up with tension, fear and pain. Permanently. I had also learned a lot about how I held tension in my body, and how that was identical with the fear that I had. I discovered that when I let go of the tension, I let go of the fear. And I began to extend that simple exercise of letting go of the physical sensation of fear to other aspects of my life.

I have applied the same tool to numerous situations, learning how to let go of fear by letting go of its physical pattern in my body. If you would like to explore this process for yourself, begin by imagining a situation that makes you anxious. Imagine that situation in all its detail. Then notice exactly where and how your body tenses up. In your neck? Your shoulders? Your gut? You might want to even exaggerate these sensations for yourself, tense up even further, to get clear on exactly how you go into fear. You are identifying your own addiction to fear, the way you chronically encourage yourself to be in a place of fear. Once you have done that, then see if you can coax those tensions to release. You can do this by alternately tightening and loosening your muscles. Or, you may prefer just to bring to your mind an image that helps you release the tension, as I did in solving my morning anxiety. Notice how your body changes. Commit yourself to the change, to the feeling of greater freedom. Embrace it.

As you engage this process, what you are actually doing is training yourself to shift your habitual responses, out of responses that victimize you, and into responses that empower you. As you gradually create more empowering responses in your own physiology, the world will respond in kind. That boss who questions you will look on you with more respect. You will establish better boundaries with people who treat you discourteously. And so on. The world will reflect back to you your greater strength, by giving you more and more reason for optimism and joy. You will be increasingly on the path of effortless living. Enjoy!

All blessings, love and light to you on your journey into effortless living!

~ Ingrid Bacci