Self-trust over fear – how to overcome the fear of yourself

Does the way you feel frighten you?

Are you scared you’re a terrible person?

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

Comparison - how to stop it, and live the life you want

Do you wonder how others do things? 

Do you see it as a failure on your part if you aren't doing things the way others are?

Comparison can be positive when it is in analysis of statistics to gain more information, or in decision making. But when used to compare ourselves to others, or comparing someone else’s life to our own can often lead to negative feelings like regret, frustration, sadness, depression, even anxiety.

We all get stuck in the trap of comparing ourselves to others from time to time, whether materialistic things or not. We've all coveted a neighbour’s garden, car, or holiday. We’ve all looked at someone’s success and compared it to our own, and been left disappointed with what we’ve achieved.

“The reason we struggle so much with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlights reel.”- Steve Furtick

Those are clear cut examples of comparison, but there is a more insidious kind that is almost unconscious. It lies in conditioning within our society and culture, and is when we don’t do what the herd does, or matches what the herd does, and we are ousted and excluded, or ridiculed.

The pressure to stand true to ourselves is hard. If we think differently, take different actions, or desire different things, from tiny things to how you live your day to day life, run your household, do your job, raise your children, to how you respond to people, how open you are, how you see things from another perspective. It can be difficult. 

But the truth is we are not all the same, and not just in likes and dislikes and preferences, but in how we receive information, how we process things, how we respond or react to things. And this can make it so much harder, and cause us to be harder on ourselves.

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” – Teddy Roosevelt

A recent chat with a friend was a prime example of this. They felt they could not meditate, because they weren’t doing it ‘right’, because they were unable to follow online meditations due to struggling with visualisation.

Not everyone sees in pictures, some people see in words. My friend is an incredible poet, but felt limited because she couldn't conjure up the images the person narrating the meditation suggested. She felt she was wrong, or there was something wrong with her that she wasn't able to do this. But I told her that that is not the case; everyone has their own way, and not everyone can visualise and that’s normal. I could the relief in her face.

I see it in books I read on self-help, too, especially those that have a spiritual basis. Some of them define ways you should see/feel/process things. They are written as though it is only that way. But every person has their own way; they process things in their own way. They imagine things and relate to things differently; symbols mean different things to each individual.

These are external small pressures we as individuals often feel, and they can mount up. Small ways we feel we don’t fit into the crowd and are failing somehow.

With some people it can make them angry, and resentful, even causing them to reject an entire community, topic, or convention; wasting time and energy being hateful towards it or complaining about it. Others might view this behaviour as bitter or jealous, yet really it is a reaction to feeling insecure. They might like to be a part of it, but they don’t fit with the expected behaviour/method/thought process. They struggle to adjust to what is required. They haven’t worked out how they can encompass it in a way that works for them. This can lead to isolation, depression, or feeling ostracised.

“Don’t compare your life to others. There’s no comparison between the sun and moon. They shine when it’s their time.” – Abhishek Chauhan

So how do we stop feeling this way? How do we stop comparing ourselves?

We start by recognising when we are making those comparisons, and the negative or limiting impact they have on us. Identifying the areas they show up in and assessing how we feel about them.

When you look at others and what they are doing, and maybe feel anxious that you are not where they are, tell yourself, I’m doing what I’m doing, and I’m okay with where I am at. I don’t need to be there, or doing that. Reaffirm your own goals, and your own steps, as well as acknowledging the achievements you have made.

Only compare in a positive way, in a way that inspires you to better yourself. If you look at what someone is doing, you might think, ‘I want to do that too.’ But rather than then look at it as a failure that you are not,  look at how they are doing whatever it is you want to be doing, ask questions, get informed about how to go about - decide if it really is what you want to be doing, and then make your own way there. Use them as a positive role model.

Don’t let external pressures dictate who you want to be and how you want to show up. Take pride in your uniqueness.

Find your own way. Cherry pick if you like. Find what suits you.

Remind yourself there is no right or wrong way - only the way that works for you.

This your journey, your path, not theirs. 

You deserve to be seen. You deserve to be heard. You deserve to be known for the real deal that you are. The best place in life is where you’re already okay. Come home to you. It’s where you belong.” - Anne Bechard

Don't doubt - Do! How to crush self-doubt

Do you spend a lot of time doubting your talents?

Do you overthink everything you do, until you are not sure about anything?

Do you not know which step to take, so end up not taking any steps at all?

Overthinking and doubting yourself and your talents can keep you stuck in life. I should know, I have been there, and still find myself back there from time to time. Sometimes it feels like being on a stop and start ride at times. It's difficult to navigate out of repetitive negative thoughts and behaviors, and, as is often the case, what lies behind them is lack of self-confidence. 

"When you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt."- Honore de Balzac

Not believing in yourself, your talents, or your ability to accomplish your dreams, manifests itself in self-doubt, procrastination and self-sabotage, which then leads into further negative thoughts and feelings. 

They are all symptoms of deep seated feelings of lack within yourself: you lack the belief you are worthy, you are good enough, or that you belong.

And although it is worth uncovering where the roots of these feelings begin - what caused them - it's more important to find out how to change them. 

Yes, it is possible to change how you feel about yourself because I've done it.

When I began, I realised that the key thing I was missing in believing in myself was self-trust. I didn't trust myself to do what needed to be done, from small things to big thing. I didn't trust myself to follow-through, be persistent or consistent. I didn't trust myself not to let myself down. 

Trust and believing in yourself walk hand in hand. If you don't trust yourself, you won't believe in yourself.

"Don't believe what your eyes are telling you, all they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly."- Richard Bach

So how do you trust yourself? You trust yourself by listening to yourself.

I don't mean the constant stream of thoughts in your head that spin around, asking more questions than they answer, and providing tainted 'evidence' about your self-worth gathered from the outside world. I mean listening to your heart. That means sitting down and just reaching out your conscious mind to your body, feeling every part of it, and settling on the heart. And then asking how it feels about the things you are struggling with, and feel the physical response your body gives. 

Feelings are a physical thing. You feel bad when you feel sick to your stomach, tense your muscles, or feel tired; and you feel good by the opposite: a spark of excitement in your stomach, relaxing your muscles, or feeling energised.

Listening to your heart means tuning into your body, and its response. It is how you connect to yourself. You trust what you know and if you know how you feel about something, you can trust it.

However, it doesn't stop second guessing, or doubting those feelings. The trick to breaking that mental cycle is a simple one: Action.

"An inch of movement will take you closer to your goals that a mile of intention." - Steve Maraboli

If you take action based on your true feelings you start building something that is past the questioning stage, something tangible. You are supporting your feelings by doing something. You are following through. And the more times you do that - take action based off your true feelings - the more you will trust both your feelings and yourself. It supports belief in your feelings and creates trust for the next time and then the next, building a rapport with yourself, a history, and a connection.  

Yes, it sounds easy, doesn't it? But no, it's not. You have to believe you are worth it, and take the time for you. If you honestly want to change how you feel, you have to make time for you and your feelings.  You have to get to a point where you tell yourself, I am worth my time. 

And what if those actions don't work out, or fail? What then? Then the cycle begins again. 

Consider what didn't work, or what you need to change to make it work, and try again. As long as you stay true to how you feel and take action that is committed and wholehearted and not doubting, you will at the very least learn something that will help you try again and be successful.  

This is not a one time only deal. You choose to give yourself a second chance every time. You choose to decide you are worth it. Life is trial and error. But until you stop listening to the doubts and actually take action, you will never know. 

Are you worth the risk? The longer you dawdle over the answer, and don't take action, the more room you leave for self doubt. 

So don't doubt - DO!

“The path to success is to take massive, determined action.”– Tony Robbins

How to be accepting & stop resisting what you don't like about your life

Do you get frustrated by the things you can’t change or control in your life?

Do you get angry when things don’t go the way you want?

Do you waste time and energy refusing to accept the ways things are?

 “Resistance is futile”- The Borg Collective - Star Trek: First Contact 😉

I am a not a Trekkie per se, but The Borg were correct. It will cause you more trouble than it’s worth to resist assimilation.

There are some things that you can’t change or control in life, but resisting them will cause you more pain in the long term and keep you stuck in a negative place for longer than necessary.

My best friend used to repeat to me on the phone, “Accept and allow, go with the flow of life.” It took me years to fully understand and embrace this concept. I could understand it in theory but it felt like an unachievable goal for me. I found everything difficult.

Even though I made decisions to do things – like moving to a foreign country and culture to be with my partner - I resisted them. Often it was because I didn’t really want to do them and I was doing them to please another, but I made it harder on myself by refusing to accept that it was a choice that I had made and not one that was forced upon me.

I was locked in the victim mindset.

In the instance of moving to a foreign country for love, this led me to reject what I found there: the friends, community, and the different culture. And rather than embrace the life on offer, I resisted it. I attempted a few things, but when they didn’t go the way I wanted or didn’t achieve the results I was looking for, I felt stuck and I fixated on feeling powerless.

I longed for the things I didn’t have and only focused on what was missing from my life. I became miserable, tense, stressed, frustrated and very angry. For me this manifested mentally in a breakdown in 2008, and physically in two slipped discs in my neck in 2014.

“Resisting what is happening is a major cause of suffering.” -  Pema Chodron 

But it was during the pain I experienced with the slipped disc in my neck (which trapped a nerve, putting my right shoulder and arm in excruciating pain for 8 weeks at a time – they slipped twice) that I learnt to surrender.

I learnt to accept that I couldn’t do anything. I let go of everything – all the expectations I had of myself and of others, all the things I thought I had to do, all the chores I did to try and feel that my life was worth living. I could do nothing, so I did nothing.

And what I found was that there were people to support me and my husband to pick up the slack. And when you aren’t able to lose your temper over something petty, you respond differently - quietly and calmly, and people respond differently.

Within the pain I found the calm I was seeking.

“You can't calm the storm, so stop trying. What you can do is calm yourself. The storm will pass.” - Timber Hawkeye

I had to surrender.

I don’t like to use the word surrender, because to me it means to give up – but I didn’t give up, I opened up.

I accepted that this was how things were going to be and to let go in that moment. I let others help me; I relinquished control; I stopped and observed the life around me.

In accepting that time (and fortunately recovering) I was able to understand that I needed to accept other aspects of my life too. I needed to look at what I did have in my life and appreciate it and embrace it. I started to take walks in nature and appreciate where I was living. I stopped thinking about my future and where my life was going, and started living in the present.

“If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.” – Lao Tzu

When the noise in my mind would start up about where I wanted to live, what I wanted to be doing with my life, and how I felt like I was stagnating and not growing, I would just let the noise go.

I would hear it, register it, but know that I could only get to where I wanted to step by step, day by day. I took the end goal, the one thing I wanted to do the most, and broke it down into small steps - things I could achieve on a daily basis.

This enabled me to feel like I was moving forward. I would still have moments of frustration, but rather than fight that frustration I would allow myself to feel it – journal it out, or express it to a trusted friend, but then I would let it go.

“Resisting your negative feelings just keeps you stuck.” - Kute Blackson

When I was learning to drive, my driving instructor told me I thought too much about what I was doing to make the learning process easy. He said he could always tell when I started thinking about what I was doing because I would stall the car or crunch the gears. He said, “If you just let go and let your body do what you have trained it to do, it will be much easier. When you think about it, you interrupt the flow.”

By thinking about what I was doing I was letting my brain take over and panic about what I was doing. If I had accepted that I did know and allowed the training to flow through me, I wouldn’t have had a problem.

Often resistance is built up from having too many expectations. If we drop expectation of how something will be, and of ourselves in that situation, and not focus on a desired outcome, we can accept whatever happens organically.

We can release ourselves from the need to control. We become open to whatever happens. And accepting how our life is, in that moment, brings freedom and peace.

“It takes radical acceptance to bring inner peace.”- Kute Blackson

It can be a struggle to accept where you are in life if it is not what you want or where you saw yourself being. You can be consumed with trying to change it. But while you are spending time looking at all the things that aren’t working, you are closed to what IS working.

But how do you stop, if you are truly unhappy with your situation?

Have you ever thought about taking a holiday from your thinking?

If there is something you know you can’t do anything about right now, such as: move house, move job, create more time for yourself, go traveling, then set a date in the future  - a month, 6 months, a year from now, when you can review it again.

And every time you find yourself thinking about it, say, “No, I'm not going to think about that until *insert date*.”

I found this worked to stop me constantly thinking about how to change my situation. I knew I wouldn’t be able to for more than a year, so I set a date to review it the following year. And every time I thought about it, I stopped myself. I said, no, I’m not going to think about that now. I took a holiday from thinking about it. And the more often I stopped myself from thinking about it, the easier it became, until I was thinking about it less and less.

And what also happened, during that holiday, was say to myself, okay, I’m here for the next year, so how can I enjoy and embrace the life I have right now?

It changed the entire perspective I had on the life I was actually living. I was able to engage more with the people in my life and create a better day to day existence.

It broke the habit of the negative frustrated thoughts I was experiencing and allowed me to concentrate on the things that I could change in my life at that moment, and give myself room to work on the things that would help me move forward to the change I did want to see.

By accepting my life as it was I'd freed myself from being a victim in my life, which enabled me to find my personal power over the things I could do something about. It gave me freedom and peace of mind.

“Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.” – Eckhart Tolle

Self-Love: How to Love Yourself & Why You Should

Do you know whether you like yourself or not? Have you ever asked yourself?

Are you kind to yourself when things go wrong or do you scold yourself?

Do people tell you, you’re hard on yourself?

“Love yourself first because that's who you'll be spending the rest of your life with.”– Paulo Coelho

There is a lot in personal development and self help about loving yourself and being self-approved (the first one tends to lead to the second). It is a fundamental building block in finding your own sense of authenticity or ‘being authentic’ – meaning taking off the public mask and not being afraid to show others who you really are, and relaxing around people. 

You may have heard the term ‘Self Care’ recently. It is the new buzz word for loving yourself. It means to take time out for yourself: buy yourself something special, spend time with yourself in solitude or in meditation, walking in nature, or doing something you want to do that you would normally consider too extravagant or time consuming.

Some people think that ‘self-care’ or ‘self-love’ or ‘believing in yourself’ is selfish, that you are only thinking of yourself and your own happiness. But you are the most important person in your life – even as a parent your children are dependent on your health and happiness, and your ability to function on a daily basis.

“Loving yourself isn’t vanity, it’s sanity.” – Andre Gide

When I began the journey to start loving myself, it was to try and achieve a sense of calm about everything in my life. I was defensive, sensitive and reacted to people, usually with unsuccessful outcomes. I was angry and frustrated, and I needed to find a way to change that. I realised that I hadn’t spent much time with myself - in fact initially I had been scared to spend time with myself. I would do anything to avoid being on my own. I would liken it to loneliness. Spending time alone meant emptiness and sadness to me. It meant spending time with my feelings, which I was trying to avoid. As a child I hadn’t been allowed to express my feelings or have feelings, so I had no idea how to deal with them.

It was only when I went travelling on my own for a year that I started to understand myself better. On a daily basis I met new people and I would listen to what I talked about and what I told them, and notice how I reacted to them. I started to hear my own story and notice my reactions and behaviours. I started to know myself and see parts of myself I liked, and by the end of my trip I discovered I enjoyed my own company, and was fine spending time in solitude.  

“Stop hating yourself for everything you're not. Start loving yourself for everything you are.” – unknown

But not everyone can go travelling to ‘find themselves’, so how do you go about loving yourself while living your day to day life?

Step one: Listen to yourself: your feelings, your thoughts, your response to things externally. Don’t concentrate on any specific one, just listen to all of it, without judgement, without any expectation. During this process you will start to understand your own thoughts and opinions about things.

Step two: Trust your feelings: Trust how you feel about things: from what you might want to eat in the morning, to the state of the world. Some feelings might feel bad, or ‘wrong’, but they are your feelings, so hear them out. Believe them, rather than argue with them. Reason with them or sympathise with them. Find a place that you can start feeling comfortable about them. Don’t cover them up; be honest with yourself about how you feel. If you think you have to change how you feel to suit others, ask yourself why? Are you putting their feelings before your own? Why are you compromising yourself for another? Know the reasons why you think and feel the way you do, but don’t justify them. You don’t need to justify yourself to anyone. 

Step three: Set Personal Boundaries: Boundaries are to stop you compromising too much of yourself to suit others. Decide how you want to be treated: what you are okay with and what you are not okay with. Define where your limits are. Not being true to yourself will disrupt your sense of self. If you change your mind to suit another, or do something you are not really happy or comfortable with, you are compromising yourself – your feelings, your truth - and that can leave you feeling bad about yourself, resulting in guilt, regret, even resent and anger. By setting personal boundaries and trusting your own feelings and thoughts, and being clear about what you do and don’t want, you can achieve your own sense of inner security. If you are sure about who you are, it doesn’t matter what others externally say or do.  

“Listen to your own voice, your own soul. Too many people listen to the noise of the world, instead of themselves.” – Leon Brown

There are a great deal of articles and books on this topic. A book I have found helpful is Mirror Work by Louise Hay. In this book, you are guided through exercises where you look at yourself in a mirror and talk to yourself – to your inner child (the part of you inside that was once a child). It helps you uncover previous painful events and helps you release that pain and learn to appreciate who you are in the present moment. It teaches you how to be comfortable with yourself.

This book also highlights how you talk to yourself. Many of us might be kind to others, but we aren’t very pleasant to ourselves. When we start listening to what we are saying to ourselves, often we will find a negative stream of dialogue: berating ourselves over things from the past, present and even future scenarios, or constant criticism over how we look, feel or present ourselves.

If you hear yourself doing this, ask yourself: “If someone externally was saying these things to me, how would I feel?” Would you be upset, offended, even angry? If so then ask yourself: “Why am I saying these things to myself? Why am I not standing up for myself? Why am I not being a friend to myself?”

To practice self-love, let that voice speak, but don’t engage with it - know that it is not the truth. Not every thought you have in your head is true or real. And a lot of the noise in our heads is put there by other people: family, school friends, work colleagues. It is their perception of us, which is a reflection of themselves: their own thoughts and feelings. It is not who you are, and by listening and learning who you are, you can be sure of that.

“Be careful how you are talking to yourself, because you are listening.” – Lisa M Hayes

Compassion and empathy are feelings that we express when we care about someone deeply, and we want the best for them. They allow us to be non-judgemental and support people in being who they are and appreciating them. By listening to and trusting our feelings we are showing compassion and empathy for ourselves. We can then appreciate all the positive things about who we are and what we can bring to the world.

Self-love is something that can take years to build, but once you achieve it, you have a foundation of inner security: of trusting who you are and being sure of yourself. No longer questioning the things you do or feeling bad about them. It’s not easy, it takes courage to stand up and be honest about who you are, but you find that you start caring less about what others think and say about you. You realise that only what you think matters - because it is the only thing that impacts you.

“If you are not good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you will resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren’t even giving to yourself.”- Barbara De Angelis