Fear Is A Lie

Today is Thursday and according to my new plan to run a weekly update on this current journey of self love that I’m walking, today is the day where I shall begin.

The first times you come to write on a blank page is always a bit weird, as if you know you want to say something yet somehow unsure of what it should be. But STOP right there! Should is the problem.

And so we begin.

For so long in my life I’ve been following so many rules. We all somehow know this and live by it. However, sometimes this can become a deeper situation where fear truly becomes instilled in every single cell of your body. You don’t know where it comes from or since when, but all you know is that your life has been ruled by fear. Your decisions, your actions, your thoughts, your feelings.

You never knew until you knew. Until you began certain path after a difficult time of your life. We have many of those indeed, but it seems that some of those times are deeper and more significant than others in the way you perceive life.

Fear.

We were born without it.

And naturally through time and learning, we learn that we must survive in this place we are in, otherwise we’ll be eaten and disappear from this reality. We are now facing the first conscious fear of life: disappearing. What does that mean anyway? To us? To others? What if we did disappear?

So we learn that we need to protect ourselves. Yet we’re not in the jungle as we have known it. But clearly seems that our created and constructed human jungle has all this same features just with different views, concepts and survival techniques. Does bullying, sexual harassment, abuse, macho-culture resonate to you? Just to mention a few examples of how our society has evolved into patterns all based on fear and in order to protect a being’s integrity over other external threats (a.k.a fear of rejection, not-enoughness, isolation, not belonging).

I’ve been somehow unlearning to relearn how all these things work, how we, as a society, work. How us humans behave, whether we need control or surrender, grow or fall.

I’ve come to understand how my life experience has made me fear pretty much everything since early childhood. The reason? Difficult to know yet some inner work (or emotional archaeology) can truly give light into dark corners of our being that can teach us the most important lessons of life that we need to learn.

In short, we’re all like onions and I believe this to be utterly true. We have layers and layers. We peel one and more will show up, and eventually we get to the core. By core I mean the essence of who we are as a person. The essence of who we believe we truly are and what we cam here to do. Our sense of purpose, or sense of worth.

But there comes a time when we are prompted by life to dig inside a little bit, then a bit more, to look into the past, or into what hurts inside us. Every time we feel triggered by someone, or every time we feel the frustration or rage to a certain situation, are two examples of how we are being asked from life to look into ourselves inside in order to realise what is the trigger, the frustration or the anger. What in that triggering situation is repeating from a forgotten past that is making us react in this way? It’s all in there somewhere yet we’re unaware, we forgot. But we can always remember some or simply go heal that unwanted or unremembered event. When we do this, then the present changes…because the way we react to the same situation with the new understanding or awareness is now different.

This is life.

And we choose how to live it. Not because we can control every single thing that happens in it. In fact what we can control is a very small percentage of it, but we can certainly control how we choose to react at every single thing in every single moment. And that’s how we make life happens. That’s how we allow the flow of things.

And yes, this can be annoyingly frustrating and puzzled! I’ve been in that puzzle for the last 12 months regarding certain aspects of my life. I’ve been pushed and triggered the most, only to realise now what this journey was all about since the very first moment:

Self love. Self worth.

The journey is a never-ending one but as for now and in my current life experience, I am finding that all those fears that used to control my life for every single action, decision, thought and beyond, has been a massive massive protection mechanism of my beloved brain to help survive where it thought I was in danger.

It is beyond fascinating what the mind creates with all these survival instincts combined with modern life and modern threats as we know it.

And even more fascinating is to start unclogging those pathways, reframing those wires inside into a better, clearer, brighter way of experiencing life. And there are endless tools to do this, and there is no ideal one out there. There is no perfect formula. It is simply anything that calls you and truly works for you as you learn to put the break on your fears, see the triggers and choose a new story to install on your mind’s chip.

This doesn’t mean we can suddenly become a completely perfect fearless version of ourselves. Fear will always somehow be there, but…it won’t have the same power to control all of us now.

And this is the power of self love – as cheesy or cliché as it may sound. Let’s define self-love as this process of deeply seeing, recognising, accepting and acknowledging yourself without all the social norms you were raised with. A process that is completely free from blame or guilt, in the knowing that it’s no one’s fault – and this includes yourself. We were born and raised. Period. Then we become adults in the physical sense, yet somehow still children in the emotional sense, and that’s exactly what we have the personal responsibility to go find again, rescue and value in adulthood. Without fears of rejection or fears of not being good enough.

We all have different, oh so different, life circumstances, yet we are all the same patterned-onion with the same layers to be peeled and healed, no matter where, how or what we were taught to believe. It’s all valid but only if it makes us feel good.

Yes, in essence, we are no different from one another. We are truly all the same… until we are taught differently. Are you still here? Then you know what I mean and I’m deeply glad.

This first update on what I want to call and share as a self-love journey feels complete for now. This feels like a major topic that needs to be shared and I’m sure that if this reached your eyes, mind and heart it’s because you’re ready or already on it.

Let’s start looking inwards so we can discover uncover that original version of us. The one that didn’t know of judgments and fear of other humans. That’s the one that needs to come back now. Your life is calling just like it’s calling mine.

Glad you’re here!

Hugs,
Mariana

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Image Credits: Unsplash