The intensity of the fear doesn’t make it yours either

Gosh this is such a big message. The intensity of chronic anxiety comes from all the layers of suppressed fear that we stuffed down into our bodies and our minds, all the way back into childhood – each layer of fear intensifying the next until we can have anxiety and panic attacks triggered by the smallest things. Even that pervasive horrible feeling of dread – even when we think we know what we’re dreading – is made up of layers of old fear that probably have nothing to do with what’s happening now.
And it’s all utterly fixable.
Here’s 30 seconds whose repercussions is gonna’ change lives.
Read this slowwwwlyyyy and feel into my words as you read.
Paying gentle attention to your next outward breath and the way that the lower part of your ribs just … squash the breath from your lungs.. And you’re not doing that on purpose, you’re just noticing the movement of your ribs on the outward breath.
And the next breath…
And the next…
Now smile just a little on another breath. That’s right, there’s that smiling thing again. Notice the feeling of the smile.
For another breath…
And another…
Can you feel curious about the truth or not – for you – of these words:
“The intensity of fear comes from the buried layers of old fear, vast amounts of which will not be yours and some of it will be irrelevant now anyway. Remember – we don’t have to go hunting for this stuff or trying to understand it. Simply noticing the feeling, getting curious about it’s message, breathing into what comes up in any given moment will cause the fear to release from your body and disappear.”
Just curiosity. Is all that really true?
Feel me smiling?
And another breath…
And another…
Photo: Horses are another animal that can teach us a lot about the usefulness of fear and how clearly we feel others’ fear as intensely as it if it was ours. You can thank this particular horse for all this beautiful work. This is my precious Bobby jumping Nar Nar Goon Pony Club’s cross country course at liberty. Just thinking about him brings tears of gratitude to my eyes – that was a horse who had my back.
