Don’t Be Afraid of Being Afraid

Fear is a dangerous beast, either we tame it or it will take over our lives.

You feel pain. You are afraid. Congratulations! You are human and you are alive.

We are all afraid of making mistakes, of being rejected and, most importantly, losing those we love, that’s all part of our human nature. Fear is a chain reaction in the brain that starts with a stressful stimulus — the fear of what we don’t know. My point is, how do we deal with that reaction?

I used to think of fear as a dangerous beast, whether I visualized it like that or not. Every time I came face to face with fear, my mind was telling me to either run away or to panic. That “fight or flight” mode, is our body’s primitive and automatic response to a perceived attack or threat. And that’s OK. The problem was my relationship with that beast, I realized I had to learn to tame it or it would take over my life.

If I panic and get caught up with fear, I become the prey. I get stuck, taken over by my emotions, losing my ability to behave freely. Many people were shocked by the presidential election results. B…