HEAL YOUR FEAR | Restoring Resilience & Accessing Your Inner Power by Unifying Therapy & Spirituality
When I was a child, I snuck into the television room late one night, and watched the movie Jaws. It scared me to death! I couldn’t sleep for weeks; filled with fear, hiding under the covers. I was convinced the massive shark from the movie was hiding in my bedroom wardrobe, waiting for me to go to sleep so it could eat me!
Today, looking back on it, I can’t help but laugh at the thought of a giant fish living in my wardrobe, but at the time I was so scared I would sweat and shake from my fear.
When my dad eventually sat me down to tell me that Jaws wasn’t in my wardrobe, but was only in my mind and imagination, I didn’t believe him - because it felt so real. But he spoke the truth, and gave me one of the most important lessons of my life.
“I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” — Mark Twain
I’ve since discovered that the majority of my fears exist mainly in my mind, in either my imagined past or future, but rarely in the real world of this moment. Meaning, although we might be feeling some very real feelings of fear or anxiety, these emotions are partly caused by ‘feeling our thinking’, and by being more in our mind, than in reality.
Your body doesn’t know the difference …
Numerous scientific studies have now discovered that, biochemically speaking, your body cannot tell the difference between what is happening in the real world and what is imagined in your mind. Meaning that even if you are only thinking about a scary scenario or stressful situation, your body still experiences the same physical reactions as it would if these events were actually happening in reality.
“Your brain produces stress hormones (like adrenalin and cortisol) when you feel stressed in a stressful situation, but it also produces them when you imagine a stressful situation.” — David Hamilton PhD
The implications of this are immense – especially due to the other mind-body connection knock-on effects that occur when we are caught up in our mind.
When feeling our thinking about worrisome things, we are more likely to operate from our Sympathetic Nervous System, activate the fight-flight Autonomic Nervous System responses and operate from our brainstem. The primary objective of these aspects of our nervous system and brain is survival and as a result, our thinking becomes more ‘black and white’ and fixated on potential problems and threats.
Consequently, we can end up in a vicious cycle: feeling our fearful mental thoughts, activating our physical survival-stress responses, and then repeatedly finding even more potential threats to confirm, justify and compound our perceived reality of being unsafe and in danger. Inevitably, we can end up experiencing an underlying chronic anxiety, along with a disempowering sense of powerlessness and undermining unsafety.
So, what can be done about this problematic predicament – of the mind negatively affecting the body, and our body then responding to reinforce the fearful perceptions of our mind? As a trauma-aware therapist and meditation teacher, I suggest a dual-healing strategy that combines both therapeutic and spiritual solutions.
The power of unifying therapy and spirituality …
From a therapy perspective, it is important to understand that past traumas dysregulate our Autonomic Nervous System; making as more likely to live in fight or flight, for example. Trauma also undermines our inner trust and safety. We stop trusting ourself; our perceptions, intuitions and capabilities, and we can find it harder to trust others and life in-general, or even God, source, or ‘the universe’.
Trauma also corrodes our inner safety, making us more prone to feeling unsafe and anxious, and so by identifying, healing and releasing our early-life traumas, we naturally regain our resilience and restore our innate inner secureness, self-confidence and empowerment.
From a spiritual perspective, we want to practise the art of letting go of over-thinking, and use forms of meditation that help to calm the mind. When we are not ‘feeling our thinking’ about the past or future and are instead attentive to ‘the now’, we naturally activate our Parasympathetic Nervous System and relaxation response, which in turn, is proven to create a calmer mind and body.
“Calm mind brings inner strength and self-confidence.” — Dalai Lama
I’m not saying: ‘It’s just your imagination’ …
I appreciate that some of our fear is caused by real stuff that’s going on in our life. Also, like I’ve already said, some of our chronic anxiety can also be the result of unresolved past trauma that has primed our brain and body for fear. These causes are not just your imagination, and may require some healing and change work, to be fully resolved. However, what I am saying is that, if we spend our days lost in worrisome thoughts and thinking, then we will inevitably feel more fear. And so, by shifting our attention from our mind to the moment, we can eliminate the fear that is caused by the unhelpful habit of over-thinking.
So please take this as an invitation, or reminder, to explore a healthier relationship with your mind, and explore the potential benefits of calming your mind and being more present- with meditation and other ‘spiritual techniques’ - as part of your strategy to heal chronic fear.
Words cannot describe the relief that came to me the day I discovered that my memories from the past, irrespective of how bad or sad, are only accessible now via my imagination. The same went for my future fears. For years I was scared by my shadow, my imagination. If you can relate to this, and for the sake of your own self-empowerment, I invite you to explore the reality that this moment is the only moment that exists, and therefore, the only moment that is real. This one! Not some past memory or future fantasy, only now.
By healing any disempowering past traumas and dwelling less on the past or future by living more in the moment, you can harness the power of your mind-body connection and the present moment to massively increase your inner peace and empowerment.
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About the Author
Sandy C. Newbigging is a trauma-aware therapeutic coach, meditation teacher, author and award-winning coach trainer. For twenty years, his research, clinical work and academy courses have been dedicated to uncovering and curing the unconscious causes of mental, emotional, physical, spiritual and life issues.
Sandy specialises in releasing past traumas, understanding and harnessing the mind-body connection, improving mindset, and gaining an optimal relationship with life. To work with him, check out his One:One Sessions, Calm Clan Membership and Academy. Sandy recently won the FHT ‘Tutor of the Year’ award!
