How to Stop Allowing Fear to Run Your Life

Fear can be the ultimate ruler of your life, if allowed.  It can whisper in your ear that you’re not good enough, you’re a fraud, you won’t be able to do it, you’ll be made fun of, you’ll be rejected and abandoned or that bad things will happen to you.

Fear leads to avoidance which leads to pulling away from life.  It can also impact the way you see yourself, your self esteem and confidence.  It can also prevent you from breaking free of anxiety, depression, and so many other psychological issues.

It’s helpful to know that your nervous system is designed to maintain a certain degree of vigilance— in fact, we’re wired to remember things that go wrong, and fixate on where there might be trouble.  Scientists refer to that as evolution’s negativity bias: We are Velcro for difficult experiences but Teflon for pleasant ones.

If you live with a sense of danger “around the corner” you react by mentally and sometimes even behaviorally going into one of three modes: fight, flight, or freeze.  So with fear, if you regularly feel like a victim, if you close down and withdraw, or instead if you become angry and judgmental, your reaction becomes part of your physiology and character.

If you chronically react to fear with anger and judgment, your body is living with an unhealthy level of stress chemicals. Not only that, on an emotional level, you can become habitually defended or aggressive.

And what’s really sad is that we become mistrustful of others as well as ourselves.

What if all of this could be changed?  How would your life be different if fear wasn’t in the driver seat?

Tara Brach, PhD is a well known expert in meditation and emotional healing, helping people all over the world to heal the shame and fear that can keep them stuck, much of her teachings derived from the wisdom of Buddhist teachings.

In this free video series, Tara Brach speaks to therapists like me (but ANYONE can benefit) about how to begin to face your fears and change your life.  You will learn:

• 3 steps to radically reduce the grip of anxiety
• How to shift out of “fear-thinking”
• One way to soothe the vulnerability that fuels fear
• How mind-body “looping” can bind you to anxiety
• The simple practice that can de-condition a tendency to worry
• How to prevent a relapse into anxious thinking
• One specific anxiety that may be key to healing a worry addiction

Enjoy!