Our fear brain is incredibly powerful and its sole purpose is to protect us.

But what do we do when what it starts to perceive as a threat isn’t really a threat or when it is starts to keep us from doing the things we need, want and deserve to do?

^^^^You see that picture? ^^^^

That’s me…holding a rose hair tarantula named Ursula at the Portland Insectarium last week in an effort to overcome my fear of spiders and show Everly what it looks like to validate and move through my fears.

What you can’t see is the terror running down my back like the shiver you feel when someone scrapes their nails on a blackboard.

Why am I so scared?

Because I have been conditioned to see spiders as terrifying.

I don’t know where that came from, as I have never had any bad run-ins with a spider. No bites that I know of, no attacks, no fights. But if I see one in my house — well, anywhere really — I lose all ability to focus on anything other than the trajectory that spider is moving in and how to kill them as quickly as possible.

I have to get rid of the threat — a threat I logically know isn’t actually a threat — to move on and reconnect with my present state of being.

Anyone see where I’m going with this?

Yep, exactly. The spider is a metaphor for our shame and negative core beliefs.

When our belief system is rooted in the fear that we are always a step away from losing connection — one of the things we need most of all to survive and thrive in this world — of course, we will find ourselves existing in a state of defense.

How many thoughts have our fear brains turned into certainties?

How often have they taken something uncomfortable and turned it into something detrimental? And how has that affected the way we show up in our daily lives?

We avoid setting boundaries because the idea that we could disappoint someone or that they may be angry at us has gone from slightly stressful to fears all-consuming.
We continue to put ourselves last in relationships even though we are burnt out and feel more alone than we would if we actually said something because the fear of rejection and judgment has gone from a 2 or 3 — mildly uncomfortable and fleeting — to a 9 or 10 — grossly overexaggerating the outcome based on the .00001% chance our fear brain has any real idea of how circumstances and consequences in these scenarios work.
We stay in unfulfilling relationships because the fear of being alone has expanded to become one of the worst fears imaginable.
We stay on the conveyor belt of conformity because we believe being miserable but a part of something is better than being ourselves and risking rejection.
We don’t take risks because the possibility of failure has become certainty, so we resolve ourselves to the notion of being “fine”.
We talk ourselves out of reaching for something more because we believe, at our cores, we don’t deserve it and should just be happy with what we have and not rock the boat.

We kill our dreams, wants and desires the same way I [used to] kill spiders.

The possibilities bring uncertainty and that uncertainty is too scary to hold space for, so we cut it off at the head.

But to what end?

That’s rhetorical since we all know the “end” is burnout, resentment, loneliness and a deeply compounded shame narrative that feels like a weight keeping you pressed to the floor and with no option but to stay the course.

What can you do about it?

Learn more about your fear. What are you actually afraid of? And how can you differentiate between possibility and certainty? We need to explore the root of our fears — what are we fearful of and WHY? What consequences have become tethered to you caring for yourself and what are they founded on?
Learn to differentiate your distress between short-term and long-term. Distress is experienced anytime we desire to feel, be or do something different from what we are currently doing. Not choosing you has put you in a constant state of low-grade, perpetual distress of choosing to live inauthentically to perpetuate the fears and beliefs of your shame. That distress may seem more manageable than the high-acuity, short-term distress that comes with doing the hard things we want and need to do for ourselves AND, over time, the compounding effects are exponentially worse. Learn more about the roots of distress, how to decipher “good pain” from “bad pain” and when we need to engage more deeply in the work and allow ourselves to walk through fear to let it go.
Develop your distress tolerance toolbox. As I mentioned, you aren’t going to get to a place where you won’t feel distressed when you start moving through your fears. It would not have been reasonable the first time I held a GIANT spider that I have no fear, no matter how hard I tried to logic my way through. That’s because fear is not logic-based. It’s survival-based. The only way to dismantle the impact of my anxiety is to learn to work through that fear and allow my brain to unwire and rewire itself. That means having tools so that when I DO feel stress, I can enact them and support myself in that state of distress to move through to the other side. Some of my favorites include:
You can also use the Subjective Units of Distress tool to dive deeper into understanding the range of anxiety and distress you feel, what it looks like and begin to explore what coping skills and supports help at different levels of anxiety. For example, something that may work for me when I am at a 3/10 may not work when I am at a 7/10 and knowing what helps in the moment and given my current state of pain is incredibly helpful.

Fear. The only way through it, is through it.