Facing Fears : Taming Dragons

Fear is the blockage that unresolved childhood pain becomes when it’s not compassionately held and guided toward release by a conscious, trusted adult. It literally becomes a mental trap, a prison, that blocks each and every one of us from living authentically and joyfully, and from seeing our purpose in life with absolutely clarity, and unapologetically pursuing it.  Fear is riddled with old pain that is too scary to feel to the child within, and without liberation from it, stifles our growth.  We feed an endless loop of suffering because we constantly run from this pain, by at best, stuffing it back down and ignoring it after each time its activated, or numbing it with various forms of addictive behaviors (food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, sex, etc).  

Growing up at a time when it was culturally normal to remain hush hush and sweep any and all family drama under the rug - to be ignored as if it didn’t happen, and made to believe that speaking about it was so shameful and damaging, and dangerous or threatening to my very survival - I left childhood with a tremendous amount of trauma, and thus, anxiety. My nervous system was so hardwired for survival, that fight/flight mode was my standard perception, the lens through which all decisions were filtered and ultimately made. I became an anxious human so early on, that I didn’t even know what living without it was like until I started meditating at age 41. Admittedly, I tried what most people do to escape their psychological pain - mainly the socially acceptable avenues of alcohol and drugs - but fortunately for me, substance abuse and addiction never afflicted me. Feeling utterly out of control of my thoughts and body felt even more dangerous to me than the buried pain, so instead, my addiction became overthinking.  Eckhart Tolle says all humans suffer from the addiction of thinking, and I believe he’s right.  Some want to escape that too, however, so enter in all the other addictive behaviors.

What didn’t elude me was the blockage that my (over)thinking addiction, my endless loop of suffering, would create for me.  The fear of success that has haunted me my whole life is just now coming into clearer focus. Climbing out of this trap has been quite a journey, and one that required me to first courageously regain my independence as a woman, by ending a relationship that I forged and co-created from a state of mind that would only repeatedly feed into my childhood pain and fears. Being an almost entirely ego & inner child-based dynamic, it perpetuated my childhood wiring for fight/flight, survival mode, and thus kept me stuck and never feeling safe to live authentically, grow and fulfill my purpose. It kept me overthinking and anxious, and quite literally kept my fear of success alive. 

It’s been nearly two years that I’ve lived on my own again, but a necessary two year healing period to grow and evolve to where I’m at now.  I began dipping my toes in my personal growth journey way back in 2015 (after a series of events that I’ll discuss in future blogs) but the the acceleration of my conscious awakening journey truly began in 2018 when I started a twice daily meditation practice, and healing my nervous system from a lifetime of anxiety.  This allowed me have faith and trust in the unknown (a tremendously difficult thing for anyone living with anxiety), overcome co-dependency and a fear of survival if I left my marriage, and evolve a relationship that was just plain unhealthy for everyone involved. I’ve taken these last two years to sink as deep into my healing as I could go, while pursuing the hypnotherapy/coaching career I had started back in 2018. Yet, there was this pervasive fear of success that continued to plague me. Healing from the 15 year ego-based relationship I was in was necessary, but how did this tie in to my fear of success? And then the AHA! moment came: Speaking my truth publicly feels scary to me because of what I was conditioned for as a child. 
Sweep all family drama, all trauma, all shame & pain right under that rug.  
Don’t speak of it.  
Don’t tell a soul.  
Because if I do, it threatens my survival.  
As children, we must preserve our attachment relationship to our parents at all costs, as we are dependent on them for our survival.  We do so, even at the cost of our own authentic voice and expression.  This looks different to each person and each family, but it happens to every person, in every family. 
My authentic expression is to speak to truth to power.  To use my strong voice and intuitive gifts for the betterment of humanity and bring peace to this world. This was threatening to my family structure (where there was a lot of drama, abuse & violence), and therefore, my survival, so I learned to mute myself.  And this mental pattern, along with the intense pain I felt as a result of the trauma I experienced, kept me blocked from fulfilling my purpose; and thus, riddled me with anxiety and turned succeeding in life into a fear.

I was working with a couple-client recently, and the husband, who, through the process of conscious coaching, has realized many of the same things about his childhood that I realized about mine; that it left him with an inability to know his purpose, let alone fulfill it and succeed.  He realized that he lived with mild depression his whole life and an impotence in follow-through on dreams and aspirations because they were culturally and familially shot down from an early age.  He became his own dream-killer because that felt safer than faithfully pursuing that which he was being called toward.  Like me, he lived through traumatic experiences, and grew up in the same era and geographic area as I did, where none of it was properly dealt with, either in the family or through counseling. Under the rug it was swept.  Through our work, he’s been able to safely go inward, look at and deconstruct his ego defenses, begin to see and heal his buried pain, and become inspired again to pursue a career he feels passionate about, bucking fear and cultural norms/expectations.  He has a journey in front of him, being mid-life like me and starting over, of continuing to face a lifetime of pain and fear, and looking those ego-parts in their little faces, send compassion and gratitude to them every time they naysay and try to block him from being his most authentic self and pursuing his passions, and remember that they were creations of his mind at a time in his childhood when he was isolated and alone with his pain and quite literally needed them to survive. He will, like me, continue every day to journey toward liberation from the trap of suffering and hold space for the child within, reparent himself, and unapologetically, unabashedly, authentically live his life, pursue his purpose and, yes, be and know true success.
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Tell me about facing your fears and taming your dragons. Comment below or PM me anytime! :)

Much love xoxo,
Carrie