In a few of my previous blogs, I spoke of fear as one of the underlying drivers of the unhappy human. How on earth do we address this age old issue? Let’s get one thing straight, we need fear. Without it we would not learn that crossing the freeway is dangerous. Initially children have no fear, which is why we must constantly rescue them from their environment. We develop fear which protects us from doing stupid things. But what if our fears prevent us from living, i.e., shopping, outdoor activities, meeting friends, etc. This is called anxiety. Because we are sentient beings (we can reason and think) everything we experience is filtered through our internal neurological structure, mostly the brain. Furthermore, everything we experience defines how we interpret all future experiences. Here’s the difficulty, if we have many and formative experiences that are destructive, we may tend to believe that the world is a dangerous place. This belief then colors all of our experiences for better or for worse. But, what if our belief is not altogether true and that the world is not as dangerous as our past or formative experience would lead us to believe. We would then carry unnecessary and unfounded fears about the world and very likely avoid it. And this is for all intents and purposes true to varying degrees for all of us.
How do we begin to reprogram ourselves so that we are not at the mercy of our faulty beliefs?
This is where, as Bob Dylan would say, things are going to get interesting right about now. How do we get hold of that piece of ourselves that holds the fear? Where is it, how do we get at it. I believe that one way, is to use what is called the creative imagination. If we know or can identify at what age we roughly picked up that fear, we might be able to speak to that element of ourselves. By drawing this piece of ourselves, writing to it, painting it, singing to it, we bring it into our consciousness. Once in this conscious and real time world we can relate to it in a physical or sensory sense. So many times I hear people saying, I don’t know where this fear comes from, or if they do, they immediately try to dismiss it. I encourage clients to actively identify the source in themselves. Once identified, we have a choice, face the fear and or pain and get to know it, or walk away. Let’s be more to the point, if you were able to go back in time and see yourself when you experienced pain and suffering, would you walk away, or would you go to help. Most often, clients have been walking, or more likely running away from those parts of themselves that have suffered from emotional, cognitive or physical pain. Here’s the flash point, in order to heal, it is my belief that ultimately we need to heal ourselves, to go to those parts of our injured, vulnerable, painful selves that we have forgotten or pushed away, and to be understanding, caring, accepting, and loving with them. If you’ve read other parts of this website, I state this ad nauseam. If we have over the course of our lives failed to care for and accept those pieces of ourselves that are injured or in pain we are essentially, non-integrated with ourselves. In a sense we are dis-integrated. In my work, it is my job to help you to reintegrate those aspects that have been abandoned. By doing so, and bringing these elements to consciousness and treating them with love and care, they will be much less apt to rise up and kick us in the teeth in order to be acknowledged. It is my belief that our psyche very much wishes to be whole and will provide us with increasing levels of discomfort, (anxiety and depression) if we do not wake up to this “request”. In this day and age, we have a wide range of drugs and medications to avoid this aforementioned process of integration. This approach may relieve the symptoms, but does not deal with the underlying issues. This may explain why the use of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety are so prevalent and on the rise. I offer an alternative to this approach, give it a try it may set you free.
