Being Free from Fear

NumberNine

Hello guys,
I find myself constantly afraid of suffering. I'm afraid all the time, anxious. Every time I get an email I brace myself for the worse.

How can I free myself from fear?

NomaDBuddha

Hard to say. I have problems with fear, but in my case, they are just related to bullying and my own physical integrity.

I have to ask, how is your fear developing? What is your real source of fear ?
What makes you afraid ?

But, the first step of freeing yourself from fear is to act cool. Just maintain your composure, even if your level of fear is off-chart.

jll

Accept fear. Its a natural response. Observe it. Make peace with it. The more you dislike fear, the more power it has over you.

Thao

i do believe we need more information than what you have given. i think we are all afraid of suffering, but it sounds like yours is out of hand.

Glow

Fear is natural. If you're going through a stressful time or living through a somewhat difficult situation, it's natural for some feelings of apprehension to arise. However, fear can be a horrifying dragon or a tiny lizard depending on the scale you are thinking on. If you are thinking realistically -- on a human scale, in terms of what you can and cannot control -- your fear will be much more manageable and tolerable. If, however, your thinking is clouded with self-judgment (perhaps internalized from over-demanding or hyper-vigilant parental figures), it will be magnified to the point where you will be overwhelmed and inevitably feel hopeless and helpless.

Try looking at this list of cognitive distortions and see if any of them are needlessly intensifying your fear. I recommend reading it often, so that you become better able to recognize them in your thinking and "shrink the dragons" in your life into smaller lizards.

NumberNine

I don’t honestly know where it comes from.

I have a difficult time with making mistakes and I’m afraid to make some. I don’t know why I have such repulsion towards mistakes in general. I think that I might not forgive myself for failing at something, like I can’t afford to fail anymore in my life if I want to get somewhere. I know, it’s not very rational but it honestly is the way I feel.

I think there are certain situations I’ve experienced in my life which generated a lot of suffering and I’m afraid to experience them again. I think I’ve been traumatised in some ways.

Only the thing is, by avoiding and running away from those situations, I do end up avoiding painful situations, but my day to day life becomes unbearable as I’m choking on anxiety most of the time I’m awake. What I run away from is actually what I truly and honestly desire in my life.

Everybody likes me but I don’t feel like I’m really myself and it’s choking me up. I’ve adopted this persona who is really charismatic but who isn’t really who I am. I’m terrified to show people who I really am and end up being rejected. As much as I hate to say it, I’m really dependent on other people’s opinion of me to the point where it regularly stops me from doing what I really want to do.

I’ve been rejected by other people who were important to me in the past and it has happened in the past and I’m still struggling to recover from those rejections which came from very important people to me.

If only there was something I could *do* to be free. All the intellectual gymnastics in the world are not freeing me from this constant state of anxiety.
Thank you for reading.

PS: Thank you for the reponses. @Jill: I think you might be on to something.

NomaDBuddha

Well, try to do some mistakes. No, really, before entering high-school ( I finished it this year) , I was a guy who couldn't deal with a bad grade. I mean, I had straight A's (10 and 9 in my country's educational system) and when I got, a 4 , I would be depressed and sad for weeks. Years passed, and those bad grades that I have taken since then (not many) made me laugh ( big change ). But, when it comes to major things, try not to think about mistaking. Try to do things as if you were always doing them.

I've been too. Bullying. After years of martial arts practice and not landing a single punch on some bullies' faces (I beat some guys who tried to beat me, in my childhood), because my brain suddenly had a "change of attitude", switching from rage to fear...Shame !

Then why don't you search for what you want ? Why are you rejecting the things that you desire ? For start just forget about who you are and what you want. "Restart" your own "Campaign". (I've been playing some old Heroes of Might and Magic lately).

Why do you need to pretend to someone ? Rejection ? Why do you need to fit in, in a group that doesn't accept your own true persona ?

Life isn't fair enough. Accept rejection ( I learned it while being put in a classic Friend Zone) . No means no. When someone says no, you say goodbye or good luck, or something polite, turn your back, leave and never come back.

Freeing yourself from fear depends only on you. You want to gain courage ? Break your "SELF-imposed laws".

mugzy

I would recommend the book Smile at Fear by Chögyam Trungpa.

SherabDorje

I'm almost always the first one to say "seek professional help". There would be no harm if you were to talk this over with a psychologist on a one-time basis. Or, something like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can be done without medication (or with). But based on what you say about your fear and your thoughts that you may have been traumatized, I would say to seek the advice of a qualified mental health professional.

Sumaruff

Gotta get on a mat and start to look at who is fearful...

Sabre

Fear is basically a worry gotten out of control. It feeds on itself, that's the main problem. Fear of fear makes more fear. If you would be able to catch it early on, it wouldn't grow. Because fear is always aimed towards things that will happen in the future, a thing to practice is being more in the moment. You could practice awareness of the moment (the sounds, feelings, whatever you experience right now) instead of awareness of the breath. A mind more inclined to the moment is less inclined to go into fear. People who have experienced something that brings them close to death often say they weren't afraid because they sort of accepted it, but if you look forwards towards such a moment it can be terrifying.

This all sounds easy, but the only ones without fear are people who are fully enlightened, so it is nothing to be ashamed about. We can work on it, but we first have to accept it. Also, if there are certain situations that can make you fearful, you can try to find out why and handle that by looking it from another point of view.

For example, you could have fear of losing a job, but on the other hand being fired will create a lot of free time!

This is what I did and do and what worked for me. If it is really a problem you could try and seek some more experienced teachers/help.

I wish you much happiness and fearless times,
Sabre