Ep. 7: Fear - Part 2

In episode 7, Cheryl continues the conversation about fear by exploring what often drives many of our behaviors and how we can reclaim this part of ourselves.

In This Episode:

• Why admitting she was scared became the turning point in Cheryl's healing
• How fear often disguises itself as other emotions
• The surprising role fear plays in everyday behaviour
• Why we can't heal what we're unwilling to feel
• How fear has impacted the world throughout history
• A powerful reflection to uncover the fear that's quietly shaping your life

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Okay. So for those of you who don't know this, I am very new to the podcast world, which means that I am learning about glitches and volume settings and echoes and all of those things. And so the episode you're about to hear was actually recorded at a different time and has a number of glitches. I was thinking of re-recording it. And as I was thinking of doing that, I just kept hearing embrace the glitches. And I know that might sound a little cheesy, but here's the thing. I'm talking to people about authenticity, and I'm talking to people about not striving for perfection. And so, as uncomfortable as it is for me to allow you to hear those glitches, that's exactly what I'm gonna do because it's growth for me too, right? So without any further delay, this is Fire and Fairy Dust, the long way back. And this episode is called Fear Part Two. In fact, I'm trying to do the opposite of that. My goal is to remind you how much power and control you actually have over your own life and over your own well-being, despite what we've been taught to believe about the outside world. Everything I share on this podcast is information that I've learned firsthand throughout my journey. And I learned these lessons by making mistakes over and over and over again. And I learned this information and how to navigate some of these situations because honestly, I finally got sick of my own bullshit and knew that if I didn't change things there was no moving forward. To feel what was going on underneath all the anger. And if you listen to part one, I speak about some of the anger I was feeling. And I was stuck in anger for so long. And finally, after a few pretty dark days, I had to kind of call myself out. And I thought, you know, like I can either sit here and pout about the things that I can't control and be mad about it. That's fine. I could do that, right, for the rest of my life if I really wanted to. But what a waste that would be. The other option was I can do the work and heal it and rebuild. But I knew where I was needed to stop, and what I was doing needed to stop because I was so stuck in that anger. And so very slowly, one step at a time, I found my way out of that space. So now I get to share what I learned, and hopefully I can give you some of the information that I wish I had had along the way. Some of the information, some of the lessons that I had to learn the hard way. The first step was admitting to myself that I was scared. And me admitting that I was scared was not easy. And when it came up, I remember thinking, like, what do you mean I'm scared? I'm not scared. That's weak. How dare you? How dare you tell me I'm scared of something? Right? We don't see that as a strength. But it I was scared, I was terrified. Because what would this new life that I had to rebuild look like? What would it look like without all of the people that I had in my life before? What would it look like if I actually cared for and valued myself? But the most difficult question, what would my life look like without me carrying my trauma? What would life what would a life where I healed that? What would that look like? How does that even exist? What would it look like to thrive instead of being in survival mode? Because that version of me had never existed. And the basis of the analogy actually came from uh someone I encountered in my work as a nurse psychotherapist when I did that in the past. Um, and I've kind of added to it to explain kind of why the brain does this. So if you think about if you're in a dark forest, it's dark all the time, there's no sunshine, there's no leaves, there's no flowers, there's monsters everywhere, and it looks like a horrible, horrible place. And then when you're standing in that dark forest, there's a bridge, and you can see on the other side of the bridge, there's a different forest. And the sky is blue, and the sun is out, and there are leaves on the trees, and there's butterflies and flowers and birds and bunnies, and it looks beautiful. And if you were to sit back and look at that, you think, well, that's a no-brainer. Why wouldn't you cross the bridge? But our brain doesn't see it that way. Our brain looks at that forest and is like, Whoa, I'm not going over there. I don't know what's there. In this forest where I'm standing, maybe it's not great. But I know where every single monster is, and I know how to survive them because I've been doing it the whole time. Our brain will do what it can to keep us safe, and safety is familiarity, even if what's familiar isn't what's best for us. And so, with that analogy in mind, and using all of the information I had gained along the way, I knew that I needed to embrace this, kind of dig in. And learning to embrace and feel and then release the fear took a really long time. And sometimes I still want to run back to the other forest because I know it so well. I grew up in it. And throughout this process, I've done a lot of reflection on fear and the role it plays in our lives. I sorted through everything I had learned from a scientific and research-based perspective, and I combined it with what I've learned spiritually and intuitively. And here's what I found. A lot of time fear will stop us from making the changes that we know we need to make. At least I know it did for me. We get so comfortable in our discomfort that we refuse to see that there is a better way to do things. It's like, you know, a child with their blanket, right? And I'm not trying to trivialize or minimize anything, but the analogy is, you know, if this, if a child had a blanket that was their favorite and they carried it around their entire life, and then even into adulthood, and they never put that blanket down. So they always just used one hand. And then all of a sudden someone tells them, Well, you can put the blanket down, you don't have to hold it anymore. Well, A, good luck getting them to put it down. You know, it takes time. And then when they finally do put it down, it's like, well, now what am I supposed to do with this hand? I just went through my whole life holding onto this blanket, and now, now what? We often don't see that there's a better way until we're ready to. Nobody can force it, right? The fear of change is so powerful that even the people closest to us who will tell us, you know, we need to work on something or change something. Something in our life is hurting us, we still resist it. In many cases, you know, some of us will lose that person before we make a change. But I recently learned to look at fear in a way that I've never looked at it before. To look at the bigger picture of how it really impacts me and honestly our world in general. I thought about the role that fear plays and unhealthy patterns in relationships, friendships, workplaces, habits. And if you think about it, if we have a fear that we're not enough, if we are insecure in any way, we often fear so many things based on that belief. We will fear that people will leave, so we become controlling. We fear that people will be more successful than us, and that that might make us look bad or incapable, so we tear others down, discourage them, and sometimes even sabotage their progress. Unhealthy behaviors like gossiping, lying, cheating, manipulation, and the list goes on, they can all be linked back to fear. I'm not saying that those behaviors are okay because they're they're scared, whoever's doing it. I'm saying that, in my opinion, that's the root of the behavior. The scariest thing of all, I think, is that someone else can use their own fear to manipulate other people into being scared as well. And this has been done numerous times throughout history, right? We know this, it's been done on a massive scale. There have been so many people who have lost their lives due to the fear felt or encouraged in or by other people. Think about the witch trials, right? It's a really good example. These are people who were intuitive and using herbs to help heal others. If you read about it, many of them were like midwives, but there was a lot of fear about their intuition and their resistance to conform and the fact that they didn't really have a desire to follow maybe all the rules at that time, and so there was fear created regarding their intuitive nature and their sovereignty, and that fear caused so much pain to so many people, and for what? But as humans, if we can control what we're afraid of, well then it can't hurt us. But the fear isn't always real, it's not always fact. Most times it's not fact, but that is the power that fear holds. That is the damage that fear does. And so I ask myself, what if we stopped letting other people tell us when we should and should not be scared? What if we, instead of joining in on office gossip or, you know, talking about other people, judging other people? What if instead of joining that out of fear of being left out or ostracized for not engaging, we decided that we didn't want to let that fear dictate the kind of human we want to be. What if we worked so hard at becoming self-aware that we actually got to the point where we were deciding how to respond instead of allowing others to tell us how to react? There's a lot to think about these past two episodes. I know it's kind of heavy, and I know that some people may agree and some people may not, and that's okay. But I ask you, what are you scared of really? And I'm not talking about like bugs, although some of them are really gross. I'm talking about emotionally in your physical world. If you were to close your eyes and connect with yourself and ask, what is my biggest fear? What is the first thing that comes to mind? The first one, because that's the answer. The three things after that, not as accurate. What's the first thing? And then reflect on that a bit. See if you can think about where it comes from. Is it helping you? Is it holding you back? Is it not doing anything? Is it neutral? Because that's also possible. Thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

They said I never get this far. Now I'm dancing on the stars. Every scar battle cry, turn the music up and fly. Just hearts that move, no limbs, no, just me and the group.