Do you believe there is something about you to be feared?
Becoming scared of yourself – or a part of yourself – occurs when you have feelings you don’t know how to express or process and become fearful of them. It can start in childhood from a very young age, or develop in a later situation when you are surrounded by people who are not nurturing and don’t allow you to express your feelings, or who themselves are scared of expressing their feelings.
Someone might have told you that feeling a particular way was a bad thing and there was something wrong with you. Or when you tried to express upset feelings they reacted as though it was horrifying and you were dangerous.
People respond this way because someone expressing their feelings makes them have to think about their own, and they might not know how to express or speak about their feelings in a healthy way. Either way it creates a trauma for you, which makes you believe that there's something in you to be feared or that is wrong, and you internal the fear, turning it on yourself.
In our society we are taught not to express our emotions from a very young age. We are told anger is bad and being happy all the time is good. We are told not to be scared, not to feel anxious and not to feel sad. This means when we do experience these emotions, we don’t know how to process them, or what to do with them, and end up pushing them down or away.
But bad feelings left unfelt or unprocessed will build up and become overwhelming, and trigger other problems like depression, anxiety, paranoia and other more extreme mental health problems like self harming and OCDs.
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” – Aristotle
Fearing your feelings is based in a lack of self trust or self knowledge. If you don’t spend time with your feelings, you avoid getting to know yourself and learning to trust yourself. It is also based in lack of self worth. If someone externally hasn’t approved of something you have expressed, you have put their opinion above your own. You are not valuing yourself or respecting yourself.
So how do you unravel this and stop being scared of yourself?
You need to start by asking yourself what it is you are scared of? What part of you are you holding in fear? And what do you think will happen if you stop being scared of it?
Remember FEAR means: False Evidence Appearing Real.
Often our fears are created when our mind has taken over and believed something that isn’t true. Ask yourself, are you dangerous? Is there something scary about you?
We all have our dark sides; we can feel angry and negative about things and sometimes aren’t always feeling in a kind mood. That is allowed. You are allowed those feelings.
“Accept your dark side, understanding it will help you move with the light. Knowing both sides of our souls helps us move forward in life and understand that perfection doesn’t exist.” – M artin R. Lemieux
If those feelings are anger based, are you afraid you will never calm down? Are you afraid you will lash out and say or do something you’ll regret?
I was angry for a long time until I spent time listening to myself, and what it was I was angry about, and working through it. I realised I’d been treating myself badly. I’d mentally been pushing my angry self into a box and shutting it. I didn’t like that piece of myself and called it a monster. I separated from it and pretended it wasn’t there. But it was there for a reason and would keep coming out, because the anger was still there. It hadn’t gone away it was just shut away until it became so big it burst out – usually in a destructive way.
Once I let it out and listened to what it was angry about, I was able to put those feelings into a different perspective, using self-compassion and empathy. By being reassuring and comforting those feelings within myself, not judging them but actually feeling sympathetic towards them, I was able to stop being afraid of them and shutting them away.
If those feelings are based in deep sadness, are you afraid you won’t be able to stop crying if you let them out? Are you afraid that you will never recover from that sadness?
I felt this way for a long time. My sadness was based in feeling I was never loved, and deeply lonely. But again, once I had listened to those feelings and let them out, I found that although I might have cried for a while initially, it did stop and I felt a lot better. They weren’t trapped inside me anymore.
But how do you actually ‘listen’ to your
feelings and ‘feel’ your feelings?
You literally sit with them. You register that you feel a certain way and sit down and let yourself feel the feeling throughout your body. Don’t think about it, or let your mind get involved. If thoughts come just let them run through your head, don’t argue with them or engage with them. Just be.
You can journal about the feeling too; write out what you are feeling, write down all the things you are afraid of and listen to them that way.
And if you are too scared to do either of those things alone, maybe ask a trusted friend or therapist who can be there with you when you do this. You can also express your feelings verbally too and hear them out loud.
The longer you remain in fear, the longer you stop yourself from living your best life. You limit joy from entering your life. Happiness comes from within. Only once you are fully accepting (and loving) of who you are, can you find true happiness.
“The fears we don’t face become our limits.” – Robin
Sharma
