In the first post I talk about how Dr. Oz stated that each person's body changes every 7 years on a cellular level, leaving each of us an entirely different person. I talk about how I struggled in my different body with Fibromyalgia and what I now had to do when faced with my body being different- learn how to deal with the changes and discover myself all over again.
In the second post I talk about having to grieve my losses and let myself feel all the negative emotions so that my heart could have emotional freedom and space to discover myself.
In order to discover more of who I am, I needed to get rid of things that were holding me back. The biggest of these is my fears. This post is all about facing my fears.
I have had fears running through my head for as long as I can remember but they were always controllable. However, around the time I was pregnant and after my first son was born these fears ramped up and almost took over my life. Post Partum Depression didn't help with this. I could see in my head, like a horrible dream or fantasy, every single possible bad outcome that my fears predicted.
They swirled around and around in my head over and over and over. It was like a repeating slideshow or movie of everything I never wanted to see happen. A lot of my mental energy was directed at trying not to see them and they kept coming anyway, so that wore me out. It was a really dark, depressing, and terrible time for me. I just wanted to run away and hide from life, and I often did that as much as possible (avoidance coping mechanism!).
After some counseling, adjustments, medication, and some longer periods of sleep (newborn, remember!?), I realized I couldn't keep living with fear like this. It was hurting me. It was hurting my relationships, especially with my husband and my new son. It was keeping me from going out of the house and doing much of anything at all.
So, after a lot of reflecting and working my courage up, I decided to do something scary.
Seriously scary.
I told myself that for one minute I would let my fears and horrible fantasies about my fears just play out in my head till the end. All the fears about losing my husband and son in awful tragic ways, all the ways others might be hurt by painful things I caused, all the rejection I could feel from those around me, all the love I longed for and was afraid I wouldn't have... every single thing.
It was hard. One of the hardest things I've ever done. I wasn't sure I could do it without being sucked into a vortex of emotion that would just consume me. But, I knew I needed to try something. I couldn't keep living the way I was.
So, when a fear came over me and was too strong for me to ignore, I would let myself feel it, experience it, and live it out in my head. But, only for a minute.
When that minute was done I would stop that internal picture, the self flagellating monologue in my head, and just breathe.
And breathe.
And breathe.
Then I would tell myself, and show myself an internal picture, that even if the worst should happen with this fear I would still be ok. God has His hand around mine and will not let me be destroyed. I would be shaken, I would be hurt, I would be wounded, I would be saddened, but I would not be destroyed and ultimately I would be ok.
This took a lot of courage and some scary times over a several month period, but it changed my heart and my circumstances in ways I'm still feeling the effects of today. This also came hand in hand with working through my faith, which I will share in part five.
I no longer have the consuming fears that threaten to swallow me up. I still have fears that are hard, but most of the time I can push them aside because I know now that I will be ok without having to play it out in my head. I am in a much better place now after going through this step.
As we were in the process of choosing the name for our son I had just started to feel the wave of fears wash towards me. One of the reasons I was drawn to the name Reilly, spelled with the Irish spelling (has to be the Irish spelling!!), is because one translation stated that Reilly meant brave and courageous.
I paused on it every time I read that because that was what I so wanted to be! Every so often along the way we have told him what his name means- brave, courageous, and what those words and ideas mean. He loves it. And, he lives it. When he gets scared sometimes he will shy away or say something about it being scary. But, then he tells himself and us, "It's ok! I'll be brave!".
[This picture was from our trip to the beach last year. Previously he had been afraid of the water
because it rose really high on him all of a sudden and knocked him down a couple years ago. This trip he
played in the sand and kept looking at the water. Then he just stops and says, "Mommy, Daddy, I'm going
to be brave and go in the water!". He did. He went in the part that had almost no waves, and towards
the end he went into the water with the normal waves. We were/are all proud of him and his bravery!]
to be brave and go in the water!". He did. He went in the part that had almost no waves, and towards
the end he went into the water with the normal waves. We were/are all proud of him and his bravery!]
I don't think I would have been able to tell or show Reilly effectively what it means to be brave if I hadn't decided to face my fears and be brave myself! It was and still is so hard to do, but it is definitely worth the effort!
Read Strength From Within, Part 4: Recalibrating My Thinking
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