My Evolving Relationship with 'Fear'

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I have felt a need to share some of my own experiences with the emotion 'Fear' today. It has been something that I have been actively processing, working on and making sense of for a number of months now. There are many experiences and variations of this emotion in my own life and in the lives of those closest to me and it is certainly not an easy emotion to get my head around. That said, which ones are!

We struggle to admit to our deep set fears:

One common theme I am starting to see more of is a fear of fear itself. Anyone who has read some of my earlier writing will know that I have lived with Anxiety for most of my life. I am pleased to say that I have healed from this in so many ways and I am at a point in my life where I am able to use my own experiences to conceptualise how I would like to work as a psychotherapist and practitioner but also in my personal life. 

Anxiety is a fear based disorder. I have unpacked so many of my deep set fears and this has been a gradual and difficult process. Fear comes out in the form of instability, insecurity and worry amongst other things. We do not live in a world that accepts these traits, let alone help you with them. Many of you, like me, will have shame attached to your fear. This is because we were shamed for feeling fear as children. We were either dismissed, ignored, left to soothe ourselves or our emotions were unintentionally unattended to.

We may have had parents that tried to change how we were feeling and would say things like 'you have nothing to be afraid of' or would distract us from our emotional experience. The very act of our fear being stomped out and not processed often creates shame. The way the world seems to repress emotions shows me that unless something changes, we will continue down this path without realising it. This is shown to me time and time again. Unfortunately we seldom get our needs met by other people when we are feeling scared, insecure or unstable. We often don't meet other people's needs when they feel that way too. The shame associated with our fear means that we often feel like fear is a weakness or embarrassing. We feel that we are going to be seen in a negative light for admitting to our vulnerability and insecurity. The truth is though, this often is the case! So many of us have an unhealthy and avoidant relationship with fear. This stems from childhood.

My personal discovery:

Throughout my healing journey I have been piecing things together. I have been trying to make sense of my patterns, behaviours, feelings, reactions, memories and triggers. I have been exploring and re-experiencing my emotions predominantly through inner child work processes. I have had to admit that I, like most people, have fallen prey to childhood emotional neglect. This is something that has run through many generations in my family. Emotional regulation continues to be a rather foreign concept and was certainly not known in my childhood growing up in South Africa. My mother had much of her own emotional trauma, so did my grandparents. No one taught any of us how to cope with difficult emotions such as fear. Strength and courage were applauded traits in my family, which is not a bad thing in the slightest. The problem comes in when the interpretation of strength comes to mean an 'absence' of fear. This is a false belief and one many people hold. This belief, in my opinion, is one of the most destructive forms of thinking we have. It creates an unhealthy relationship with this emotion and people develop a deep set shame because fear is unavoidable. It is one of our core emotions, we all experience it!

Fear builds up and is experienced in many different ways!

Well intentioned deception: 

I personally had a mother who liked to tell me that everything was OK and I had nothing to worry about. Looking back, I knew full well that this was not the case. I have been remembering many occasions where I have picked up on the stress and hardship in the home. I knew we had financial struggles. I knew my mother found it difficult to cope. I knew that my mother felt bad about herself. I knew that my uncle had gone missing on a sailing trip to Portugal and that my mother was staying up all hours of the night calling the Red Cross in various parts of the world. I could hear my mother and grandmother cry. I knew something was horribly wrong. I knew so much more then my mother could possibly have imagined. If I tried to express my worry, I was 'reassured' that everything was OK and there was nothing to worry about. This seemed to be a trend.

This continued throughout my childhood and into my teenage years. My mother continued to deteriorate under a pressure she refused to acknowledge to me. Our financial situation was dire and it was extremely obvious. There is nothing like no petrol in the car to drive this point home (excuse the pun). My mother was unemployed and shutting herself off from the world. Instead of attending to my fears and providing reassurance, validation and inclusion, she hid from the world. She taught me how to do the same in so many ways. This was her shame. She was frightened and was too embarrassed to ask for help, especially from my grandparents.  My grandmother refused acknowledge how bad things were for us and tried to motivate my mother by being critical. Thus my mothers' fears were punished due to my grandmothers fears. No one had any control, least of all me. It was no wonder I developed an Anxiety disorder that manifested in the form of needing to control my environment and struggling to trust other people. My environment was riddled in a survival based fear from the get go. I was never taught how to process my fear, I carried it inside me and it started to grow and permeate all aspects of my being as the years went on.

I learnt that the only person I could rely on was myself:

I developed a severe and unconscious problem with trust. I over compensated for this in ways that made me out to be overly trusting. This was such a good deception I even had myself fooled. It was a coping mechanism for my shame as we seem to do everything in our power to hide the truth when coming from a place of not feeling worthy or as if we are different from everyone else. The truth was though, I was let down again and again, particularly in my personal relationships. The love I experienced always felt extremely conditional. In many ways it was but this was partly due to the fact that I was not being true to myself. The self love I had was almost non existent. What love I did feel towards myself was the most conditional of all.

I let people down too. I valued honesty on the surface but deep down my inner child laughed at this concept. The world is unsafe she said to me. People will abandon you, they will dismiss you, you need to act a certain way in order to keep people in your life and on your side. Due to this childhood trauma around my fear, I developed the belief that people only liked me for what I could do for them in their lives. I had no money or nice things. I did, however, have a real knack for helping people with their personal problems. I was an excellent shoulder to cry on and ear to listen. I became the resident Agony Aunt. Good thing I love this role, in fact I chose to make this my profession. The problem was though, I never felt as if people liked me for me. In certain friendships and many romantic relationships, this was certainly the case. This was one of the hardest realisations I have had to face up to. The more I learn about myself,the more I realise that people couldn't have liked me for me because the real me was very lost. I didn't even know who I was outside of my practical identity (student, daughter, female, loves cats, has a sense of humour etc). The fear was so ingrained and I was so conditioned to act a certain way or I feared I would be ostracised or lose my sense of belonging in the world. It felt like the only person I could truly rely on in the world was myself. I struggled to trust anyone and still do if I am to be honest. I find it very hard to let people truly help me, especially emotionally. 

Fear is not and has never been the enemy:

I have called this blog 'My Evolving Relationship with Fear' because my understanding of my fear is continuously evolving and transforming. If I had to go into all my childhood issues we would be here for a year. From fear of the dark to fear of snakes to fear of being alone...I had many. We all do. Children are experiencing the world for the first time and fear is a natural part of this. Fear is not a bad emotion at all. Our reactions and resistances to fear are what cause us hardship and struggle. It is our experience in the world that determines what we find threatening and frightening. The less we are attended to emotionally, the more we will struggle to feel safe in the world. The more our emotional needs are not met, the less skills we will have to cope with life's challenges and the less self esteem and self trust we will have.

One thing I have recently thought about is my fear around very real danger. Living in South Africa with an extremely high crime rate means that safety is a very physical reality to this day. My house was not very safe and we didn't have much security in place. My mother had a responsibility to keep me physically safe and in this area she was unable to, predominantly for financial reasons. I lived with a high level of genuine and relevant Anxiety on a daily basis and in the end, my worst fear came true and my mother was murdered in our home. One could argue that the fact that my mother dismissed my fears and ignored her own had tragic consequences. Fear is often there to alert us to harm and danger. That is how it has been designed. As a child we are powerless to gain control in terms of our living environment. This feeling of powerlessness is where the link to shame comes in.

Emotions are here to benefit us, not make us suffer!

We become so cut off from our difficult emotions that we lose touch with the benefits of them. We turn off our internal guidance system that is really the basis of our authenticity. We cannot be our true selves without having a relationship with our emotions. We can't pick and choose what emotions we feel, this creates a mask that will end up making us sick and impacting our relationships. Most importantly though, we cannot have a positive relationship with ourselves and who we genuinely are without having a relationship with our emotions.

Most of the time we are really fearing the shadows from our past!

Lots of love

XX Paula

What is your 'Inner Child'?

Please check out my video's on my Youtube channel or like my Facebook Page for parenting support and information XX 

Understanding why we all have an Inner Child:

What is an Inner Child?

We are very complex creatures us humans. Many theorists will talk about the concept of 'plural selves' or multiple aspects to us that make up our whole being. Gestalt therapy will teach you that we are the sum of all our parts - Gestalt means 'whole'. The term 'inner child' is a psychological way of labelling that 'part' of you that is your younger self. This part of you is the part that carries all your unprocessed childhood experiences, particularly the difficult ones. This is also the part of you that holds your imagination, playfulness, innocence and some would argue, your true identity before you were socialised (your authenticity).

Your inner child is often a very neglected part of you and is usually the part of you that you repress and is thus situated largely in your unconscious. That is because many of the memories you have as a child are still in a feeling state rather than an intellectual or cognitive (thinking) state. As actual children, our cognitions or thoughts are one of the last areas of our brains to develop. We are guided by our emotions and felt sense of the world. When experiences happen that we fail to understand and make sense of, we have no place to put them. We need someone to teach us about our emotions and what they mean in order for us to process what has happened to us. We know this now to be called 'emotional regulation'. 

Each time we experience something difficult and have no understanding of it or how to integrate it into our reality, we develop an emotional trauma. We then have a part of our childhood self that gets 'locked' or stuck in this point and time, unable to move forward from this. As we grow older, we develop many of these trauma's and as they are unconscious to us on a cognitive level, particularly the very early trauma's, they make up a part of us we have come to label 'The Inner Child'.

How does our Inner Child affect us?

Most of us have a basic knowledge of the unconscious. Freud coined this term and identified that we have drives, wishes, reactions and motivations that come from a place outside of our awareness. Our dreams are a good example of how our unconscious works. It is not something we understand. The minute we do, it has become conscious and within our control. Our unconscious may feel like that part of you that you feel 'at the mercy of'. Those feelings and reactions that appear to come out of nowhere. We call those 'triggers' (please read my blog on 'Emotional Triggers' to learn more). Triggers are like overreactions to put it simply. Everyone has triggers because everyone has unprocessed emotional baggage. Unprocessed emotional baggage is another way of looking at our Inner Child. Dreams and triggers, therefore, are an attempt to bring our unconscious into our awareness, particularly if this is something that has been at the foreground of our reactions. Our bodies are actually designed to heal not suffer. Most things we have termed suffering is actually our trauma re-emerging in order to alert us to areas that need healing. Unfortunately we often have to re-experience those difficult emotions such as shame, fear, anger, disgust and sadness in order for us to release them and heal these wounds. This is not easy and many of us develop many defence and coping mechanisms to resist this process. Most of the time we do this unconsciously.

These emotions come back up when we have been triggered by something in our present lives and therefore, as the trigger is often unconscious, we assume the experience has made us feel this way. We react to the experience in the present and repress what is really going on (without even knowing it most of the time). We then add the new experience to the trauma which reaffirms our false belief about ourselves and carry on until the next trigger emerges. There is no escape. Our triggers will continue to emerge and occur until we address the core experience and heal the wounds of the inner child. Most people are forced into finding help as life becomes more and more difficult. This is where you see mental illness developing, escapism such as substance abuse and addictions, broken relationships, inability to feel happiness and patterns that seem to repeat in cycles.

We are all unique

Everyone is unique and will be affected in different ways. This is due to a number of factors such as your level of emotional regulation and how you were attended to as a child on an emotional level. The level of 'attachment' you had with your parents or parent (the person looking after you) is also very important. This is the bond between you and your parent and the level of emotional safety and unconditional love and nurturing within this relationship you received. Your environment and stability in the home comes into play. Other traumatic experiences outside of your family may impact you as a child. Your personality and gender, your extended support and interactions, exposure to certain stimuli (TV, games, cultural practices, pets, activities etc) may also effect you. We are all made up of many layers, experiences and social influences/conditioning. Thus the more difficult your upbringing and personal experiences of situations, the more emotional trauma you will develop. The more experiences that have been left unprocessed, the more triggers you will have and the more wounded your inner child will be. That is why child abuse and neglect have such long term, harmful affects.

Childhood Emotional Neglect

Certain theorists and practitioners such as Dr Jonice Webb (author of 'Running on Empty: Overcome your childhood emotional neglect') will tell you that you can have childhood emotional neglect without child abuse but you cannot have child abuse without childhood emotional neglect. Basically it is possible to have childhood trauma without coming from what most people would term an 'abusive' family life. The reason for this comes from a 'lack' of emotional regulation where emotional needs have not been met to some degree. For most parents, this is not deliberate and it appears to be a cyclic process where parenting is generational and influenced by how people were parented. The emotional neglect transfers from generation to generation and people are largely unaware of this even occurring. Think about it, you can't know what you need if you have never experienced it and have no conscious awareness of how it 'should' be. With other forms of abuse, even emotional abuse, something is 'done' to you. You have something tangible to identify, to explore, to question. If you are unaware of emotional needs, you are unaware of the areas of struggle you may be faced with. Your coping mechanisms ensure that you are in resistance to your difficult and traumatic emotions and your emotional needs start to play out in present day experiences. You start to believe it is the present day experiences and your current relationships that are the problem and don't identify the root causes. Thus your triggers persist and patterns are formed and repeated.

Understanding your Inner Child is key for deeper healing and positive change

To end off I will leave you with these thoughts. Your inner child is not only made up of emotional trauma from childhood. This is also the part of you that is able to feel joy, happiness and freedom. This is the centre of your creativity and authenticity. To shut out and repress your pain is to shut out and repress these other parts of yourself too. The more cut off from yourself you are emotionally, the more unhappy and uninspired you will thus become. Some, like myself, believe that there are links between physical illness and unprocessed emotional trauma. There is growing research on the links between the mind, body and spirit (emotions); these parts of us are all connected.

Think of your inner child like an actual child. Children are free from social stress and pressure. They want to play and have fun. Children tell it like it is and react to their needs without talking themselves out of them. They honour their true feelings and do not see all the systems and categories we have constructed in our societies such as race, class, gender etc. They are pure of heart and innocent with a fundamental drive to trust and love. This is something inherent in each and every one of us. Many of us suppress this part of ourselves because of the trauma we have endured and the pain we experience when allowing this trauma to surface for healing. We are built to heal and in order to heal we need to work with our wounds. The more we run from ourselves, the more suffering we will endure. Often we become our greatest abusers and would never treat a child in the same way that we treat our inner child. The judgement, dismissal, ridicule, punishment and avoidance that we put our inner child through is often larger than we even realise. 

Always treat yourself with kindness, there are very relevant reasons why you behave and think in the way that you do. Give your Inner Child a voice and start getting to know this part of yourself. You may be surprised at just how beautiful and special you are inside! 

Much Love
XX Paula