Contents
Step 8: “The more you recognize a fear to which you are attached, the more you detach yourself from its attachment”
The 88 rungs of happy people
In this eighth chapter or step of “The 88 steps of happy people” I explain how to learn to let go of fear
In the examples on the previous Step, the solution is not to fight anger, to take a course on aggressiveness, to come to an agreement to avoid jealousy or in solving despair by finding a job (since the problem of despair would remain to be solved). In all cases, the solution is to cure the fears, since a fear that has not been cured today will manifest itself again tomorrow, either with that or with another face. If you start treating jealousy, anger, sadness or anxiety without analyzing the origin, you will be treating the symptoms, but … perpetuating the problem.
Eliminating a problem and not observing its causes is like drying up the water and not turning off the tap. (Or if you like it warmer …)
Every time we take a pain reliever without solving the problem, we are turning off the alarm without extinguishing the fire.
– AND what do I have to do to heal every fear what do you have?
Count it! Fear is healed by exposing it. How? Pulling the thread.
– I recognize that when my son told me he wanted to go abroad to study, my body was gripped.
– OKAY. Why was it gripped?
– Because it made me feel that I was going to suffer a loss (of control, of closeness, of love …).
— OK. What’s behind that feeling? What causes it?
– I think I’m afraid of loneliness, or even that my son will forget about me.
– Well there you have it. That is your fear.
Fighting symptoms lengthens the problem. Better look for the origin by pulling the thread with questions like the previous ones and you will see that the whole chain always has a fear as its origin. In serious cases of course you will have to seek help from a professional, but the process will always be the same: recognize, out loud, that fear. Tell it! Every time you expose a fear, a part of that fear dies.
One day, years ago, I was driving through Madrid in my friend Jesus’ car while he was driving at the speed of a turtle, that is, a turtle according to my impatient perception. He was a person who knew how to go through life calmly. I had a lot of knowledge (it is rhetorical), but of course that was one of what I was lacking. While he was enjoying the ride, I was dying every time I saw a green traffic light from afar. He’s going to miss it, I thought to myself. And he was right. Indeed he was missing it.
The problem was that that fact sabotaged my inner happiness, while he, of course, did not care. I started to pull the thread of my (acute) impatience, and through various regressive whys I discovered things until I found my fear. Why was he impatient? Because I didn’t want to waste time. What was behind that feeling? What if you felt like you was wasting your time? That I could do less. And what if I did less? That I could feel like an insufficient person, which could lead to not being accepted by others or even by myself. Voilà! That was my fear. And by exposing it, observing it, recognizing it and above all telling it (to someone who listens to you without judging you), it allowed me not only to increase my awareness and, therefore, my learning about it, but also to free myself from a huge part of its slab.
Why? Because telling it is shedding light on it, exposing it, and only what is exposed can be healed. If you want an exercise to address this topic, use this one: the fear session. It consists of sitting down with another person and simply expressing and telling a fear, pulling that thread and relating what you fear and what each of those fears makes you feel. You will see that as you open up, a part of your fears dissipates just as the shadow dissipates at dawn. Test it. It is tremendously liberating.
# 88StepsPeopleHappy
«The more you recognize a fear to which you are attached,
the more you detach yourself from its bondage ».
@Angel