What do you do when fear takes over,
Even when part of you knows that you're safe?
Hi,
I'm John.
I'm an energy healing practitioner.
And fear has been one of the deepest emotions I've worked with in my own healing journey.
For much of my life,
I thought fear was something I needed to overcome,
Something I needed to get rid of.
But through my own healing,
I discovered that some of my deepest fear wasn't asking to be conquered.
It was asking to be felt.
And in this video,
I want to explore how we can begin listening to fear.
How to tell the difference between fear that's asking us to respond to something happening now and fear that may be carrying something older.
And what we can actually do when fear arises.
Fear is powerful.
And it's supposed to be.
Fear is part of our survival response.
If something is genuinely threatening us,
We want our body to respond.
We want the signal that says pay attention.
Protect yourself.
Something is insane.
So I don't believe the goal of healing is to become fearless.
Sometimes,
Fear is giving us important information about what is happening right now.
And when that's the case,
We may need to listen to it and take action.
But I've also experienced another kind of fear.
Fear that wasn't entirely about what was happening in the present.
When I was a young child,
I experienced something that was extremely frightening and overwhelming for me.
And the details of what happened aren't important here.
What's important is what happened inside my body.
I froze.
I didn't know how to be with that much fear.
I didn't have the capacity to understand it or move through it.
And so my nervous system did what it was supposed to do.
It protected me.
I froze in fear.
And when I froze,
That emotional response was interrupted.
And the frightening experience that eventually ended.
But what I came to understand much later in my healing was that the fear itself hadn't necessarily finished.
The event was over.
I survived it.
I grew up.
But my body was still carrying the emotional charge connected to that experience.
And that distinction changed the way I understood fear.
Because something happening in my adult life could activate fear and my mind might know I'm okay,
I'm safe,
Nothing terrible is happening.
While my body was saying something completely different.
And this was something I experienced for years when I flew.
I could sit on an airplane and tell myself all the right things.
You're safe,
You're okay,
Stay present.
Breathe.
I could reason with myself.
I could remind myself that millions of people fly safely every day.
My mind understood.
But by body essentially said,
Nope,
We're terrified.
And no amount of thinking seemed to change that.
And I've heard it said that the way through fear is faith.
And I do think there's something beautiful in that.
But I also know from my own experience how difficult it can be to access faith when the body is overwhelmed with fear.
Sometimes before I could trust,
I needed to feel.
And eventually that became part of my deeper healing.
And years later,
The childhood fear that I had carried for so long came forward during my healing work.
By then,
I had spent many years learning how to stay with myself.
I had developed more capacity.
I had learned to listen to my body.
So when that fear arose,
I didn't try to think my way out of it.
I didn't tell myself I shouldn't be afraid.
And I didn't force myself to have some enormous emotional release.
I stay.
I felt.
I cried.
And I listened to my body.
And I allowed the fear to move for as long as my body needed it to move.
For me,
That became one of the deepest experiences of what I call completion.
Something that had been interrupted in childhood,
Was finally given space to move in the present.
And afterward,
I felt relief.
But I didn't yet know just how much had changed.
And later I had made a decision to travel to Bali,
My first overseas trip ever.
Even making that plan felt significant to me.
And eventually,
There I was.
On the plane.
And the fear arose.
I wasn't suddenly fearless.
But this time,
I did what I had tried to do for years.
I brought myself into the present.
I'm here.
I'm safe.
I'm okay.
I stayed with my body.
I stayed with the fear.
And something remarkable happened.
My body believed me.
For the first time ever,
Those words weren't simply coming from my mind and bouncing off a terrified body.
Something had changed underneath them.
I could feel fear without the old emotional charge taking over my entire system.
And that was an extraordinary realization for me.
The airplane hadn't changed.
Presence wasn't a new technique I had suddenly discovered.
And I hadn't somehow become fearless.
What had changed was what I was carrying underneath the fear I was experiencing in the present.
The older fear had completed.
And so now when I brought presence to the fear that was actually happening.
My body could receive it.
So,
When fear arises,
I think the first question is very practical.
Is there something happening right now that I need to respond to?
Because sometimes fear is telling us something important.
Right,
Listen to it.
But if you're safe in the present moment and the fear is still moving strongly through your system,
Instead of immediately trying to make it stop.
See if you can become curious.
First,
Notice the fear.
Fear is here.
Then come to your body.
Where do you feel it?
Your chest.
Your stomach.
Your throat.
Your leg.
Notice the sensations without immediately needing to explain them.
And if you can,
Name what's happening.
I'm feeling afraid.
And then something that has become very important in my own practice,
Acceptance.
I accept that I'm feeling fear right now.
That doesn't mean you want the fear.
It doesn't mean you're agreeing with whatever the fear may be telling you.
You're simply acknowledging.
This is what's here.
And then stay with yourself.
Not beyond your capacity,
And not until you overwhelm yourself.
And not because you're trying to force the fear to release.
So if it becomes too much.
Ground yourself.
Right,
Come back to the room.
Feel your feet.
And connect with something or someone that gives you a sense of safety or steadiness.
Staying with the fear doesn't mean drowning in it.
It means not abandoning yourself because fear is present.
And then listen.
You might gently ask,
What is this fear trying to tell me?
Is there something I need to do right now?
Or does this feel familiar?
Have I felt this before?
And you don't have to find an answer,
You don't have to identify a childhood wound.
And you certainly don't have to go digging through your past.
Just listen.
Maybe the fear softened.
Maybe nothing happens.
Maybe something older begins to reveal itself.
Whatever happens,
Let your body lead.
And I wanna make this very clear,
Not every fear is trauma.
And not every fear is in an unfinished childhood response.
Sometimes fear is an appropriate response to uncertainty,
To change or loss,
Or something genuinely frightening.
And sometimes it comes and goes.
But there may be times when the intensity of the fear feels much larger than what's happening in front of us.
Or the same fear keeps returning.
Or our mind knows we're safe,
But our body doesn't seem to believe it.
And that's when I think curiosity can become more helpful than judgment.
Instead of what's wrong with me or why can't I get rid of this?
Perhaps,
What is my fear trying to tell me?
For much of my life,
I wanted freedom from fear.
I thought healing meant getting to some place where fear couldn't touch me anymore.
I don't believe that now.
Fear is part of being human.
Sometimes it protects us.
Sometimes it alerts us.
Sometimes it asks us to act.
And in my own healing,
Sometimes fear became a doorway into something unfinished that was finally ready to be felt.
So maybe the way through fear isn't always becoming fearless.
Maybe it's learning I can feel fear without abandoning myself.
I can listen without automatically obeying it.
I can feel without immediately trying to make the feeling disappear.
And if something deeper is asking for my attention,
I can meet that too.
A little at a time.
And the fear I spent so much of my life trying to escape wasn't my enemy.
My body had been trying to protect me.
And eventually when I had enough capacity to listen.
That same body showed me the way through.
So the next time fear arises.
Before immediately asking,
How do I make this go away?
Perhaps begin with.
Am I safe right now?
And if you are.
.
.
What is this fear trying to tell me?
And then see if you can stay with yourself long enough to listen.
Thank you for joining me.
I'm John.
Take good care of yourself,
And I'll see you next time.
