Let’s talk about Fear (yes, with a capital F) – the type of fear that plays over and over in your mind. The type of fear you feel in your body. The kind of fear that seems to take over. The flavor of fear that sinks into so many things, that catches you off guard, and the kind that knocks the wind out of you.
I know right now this fear is more prevalent than other times. I know that anxiety is all around us. I also know that the plant is shifting, the consciousness is elevating, and it’s time to step up each of our games around fear.
Now is a major time of awakening and I believe that it’s as great a time as ever to build your fear processing practice.
I encourage my clients to develop their own practice for processing and moving through fear. I recommend to my clients to take in the overall process and then start to make edits and continue to pivot towards a practice that feels fully aligned with you and your needs.
First off, I work with mediation daily, and journaling every couple of days, depending on what’s going on. During the current state of the planet, I’ve been journaling more frequently. Having a mediation practice (any form of mediation that suits you – mantra, conscious breath, mindfulness, TM, etc.) helps me to keep my calm, continue to sleep well, release stress, lower my cortisol, and go inward.
When I go inward, I’m able to clearly hear my intuition, which always supports my ability to stay in alignment during stress or come back to my center with more ease and grace. I also love to include journaling into my personal practice but even more so into my stress practices.
Journaling allows you to move fear, stress, anxiety from your internal reality, through the body and through the energy, and out onto paper.
I recommend you add an additional layer of releasing by saging/smudging your journal after writing out things you desire to release. You can also burn the pages, but I like to drop the caveat of being intentional about fire and your space. For apartment dwellers potentially burning a small piece of paper with a symbolic word or phrase might serve you and your space better than a multi-page burning sesh.
In addition to mediation and journaling, here is the general process I follow for moving through and transmuting my fears, anxieties and stressors.
First, let’s start with feeling the feelings.
It’s extremely important for you to honor and feel your true feelings. When we allow ourselves to feel our feelings, honor them and look at them, we allow them to move through us.
In the opposition, when we bottle up our emotions or stuff them down, we keep them in the physical and energetic body, which eventually wreaks havoc on the system.
So please feel those feelings y’all. I understand that there are times when you cannot take a 30-minute break from working or parenting or cooking dinner to feel your feelings, but don’t bypass feeling them because they are inconvenient for a specific moment.
Here are a few suggestions for feeling into your feelings.
1.) When you are unable to feel into your feelings in the moment, consider writing it down in a journal or phone note to revisit and feel into them when you do have time.
2.) Consider using the time you’re in the shower, washing dishes or folding laundry as a time to feel your feelings. These are activities you will do and are necessary. They also provide you with some space to feel.
3.) Acknowledge to yourself what is going on. Say to yourself something like, “I am starting to feel deep fear about XYZ creeping up but I am in the middle of a Zoom call. I know that now is not the time or place to feel and express this, so I will revisit this after this call or later tonight or tomorrow morning in my practice.” The act of connecting to yourself and crafting a plan will really support you in addressing the feeling later when you have time.
When those feelings (the lower vibe ones) start to dissipate, when you start to think or feel something better, allow it! Allow yourself to move through those lower vibes. As humans we love to hang on, examine, and relive those lower vibe feelings (think Gollem with his precious, curled in the corner holding onto fear).
Fear, anger, stress, and anxiety will start to move through us but we frequently reach to hold on, when your feelings start to shift, allow that shift, welcome that shift, feel into that shift.
Having the conversation with yourself and focusing on the awareness of those feelings leaving is extremely supportive, especially if you wrestle with anxiety. Anxiety is one of those feelings that can trick us into thinking and feeling that there is no end, there will never be an end, and you will have to live this way forever. When you build the habit of releasing the feelings, you teach your brain, body, and spirit that these feelings always have a finish point.
Third, after you move those feelings out, ask yourself:
What would feel better? What would feel more aligned? What would feel good?
Then spend some time feeling that, thinking about that, writing that down, meditating on that, etc. Allow those vibrations and that frequency to take over your body and energy.
For instance, if you are feeling anxiety about potentially losing your job, once you feel those feelings, move through those feelings, then ask yourself, what would feel better?
Here are some potential better feeling thoughts as an example:
1.) Everything is happening for me and not to me.
If I am meant to have this specific position with this specific company I know it will continue to be there for me through this experience. If I am meant to find my next aligned move then I know that will be even better for me.
2.) What will happen will happen.
I am using this time and space to work on myself, develop my personal practice, go inward, and cultivate my role as the conscious creator. In taking my power back I know I am ready for whatever situation is in front of me around my position.
I choose to reprogram my conscious and subconscious mind with my new feeling, with my new belief, with what I desire to be true.
I will frequently use the practice of the Emotional Freedom Technique – Tapping to do this work. If you are interested in learning more about that check out my previous article on EFT for limiting beliefs.
In addition to EFT, repetition, conscious practice, mediation, journaling, voice memos, and affirmations, are all great practices to integrate this new belief.
My intention with this process is to feel the truth of my feelings, move through them, and then take an active role in choosing what I desire to think and feel.
What we think and feel creates our reality, so you want to be an active chooser in that, don’t you?
Finally, I want to support myself in carving new neural-pathways by spending more time thinking and feeling the desired feeling than the heavy or lower vibration feeling.
This takes focus, practice, and repetition but it’s completely doable.
For more support check out the video I created on my Fear Processing practice.
