How to Deep Dive Into Your Fears And Challenge Them
Updated: Apr 7, 2021
Most of the time, our fears are based on the beliefs learned in the past or through unpleasant situations experienced.
We learn our behaviour from others, absorb their emotions related to facts and ideas. To overcome unhealthy thinking patterns, we need first to become aware of their existence, the influence exerted on us, and then take action.
Understanding how your fear won a significant place in our mind and undermined our balance can help us find a way to defeat it.
Fears create insecurities and anxieties and they stop us from living fully.
“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world,
and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand,
and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
By writing your fears down and analyzing any memory and sensation related to them, you'll begin to have an understanding of what is really happening in your mind and how your fears became something you still believe in.
Fears may have multiple roots:
Challenges faced during childhood
Being bullied in childhood/adolescence
Rigidity of thinking patterns
Mistaking your feelings with who you are
Making others beliefs become your own
Believing you don't deserve better
Hoping that the situation might change without any intervention
Assuming that you are not enough
Hearing negative comments about yourself or others from people you care
When your mind experiences one or more of the above situations and is not supported by adequate help, you may begin to develop unhelpful coping mechanisms. Often these mechanisms have immediate positive results or give relief from the pressure experienced. But later, if you don't let them go, they prevent you from living your life fully.