Sitting with Our Fears

 

Sometimes people are too afraid to live their dreams. This is especially true for codependents. 

 

So many of us, who suffer from addictive thinking, have never lived a day in our lives. Oh, we often think we are living. But we are not. We have been in a constant state of existence, trapped by our fears and addictions, which often force us to emotionally medicate ALONE. 

 

It's not until the endless pain of being alone grows so strong that we can't tolerate it anymore that we finally hit bottom. As we wake up to the truth, we are finally able to see outside the prison of our minds. And we see a big world all around us that we've never known because we were anxiously running from it. We then realize we've spent our entire life simply existing.

 

It's been easy for some of us to exist in our fears. These fears were often planted by authoritative, addictive parents. They imposed who they were-- their beliefs, their lies, their paranoia and their poor self-love-- onto us. 

 

We learned to over-think everything, just as our parents did. We learned to like what they found acceptable. And to dislike what they found objectionable. We also learned to always be on-guard for what could go wrong at any moment. So, we started living in "fight or flight" mode, never feeling safe in any environment.

 

The only way out of our fear-filled existence is to walk through the fire of our fears. We do that by sitting with our bad feelings. Makes no difference if we are at home, at the office, or riding the subway. If we are feeling uncomfortable around other people, we need to own that discomfort. We must feel it until it lightens up and begins to subside. It's then that we are able to claim our victory over the past. 

Little by little, as we sit with our fears, we will grow past them and we will reclaim our personal power over our lives-- the very power that we had surrendered long ago to parents, society, church, etc. 

 

We will start feeling good enough in our skin. Of course, we will face setbacks. If someone hits upon a sore spot in our hearts, it will trigger negative thoughts and feelings that haven't been healed. To heal them, we just have to practice sitting with them till they vanquish. In doing so, we will regain our emotional balance, and we will be able to pick ourselves up and move forward to "living" our lives.