Understanding and Busting the Fear Levels

 As a child how many times have you heard the word be careful from your parents. As an adult or a parent how may time have you asked you child to be careful ? I have heard these words of carefulness being dished out by my parents and I am guilty of dishing these words to my kids.

The above behaviors that is passed to us through generations could have played a significant role in our fears. Susan Jeffers [1] in her book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway [2] defines 3 levels of fear. Let me explain the these fear levels to you and show the real origin of these fears.

Level 1

Level 1 is the surface story and belongs to fearful events that happen to us. These events can be divided into 2 types, events that can "happen" to us and events that we are required to take action.


Events that can happen to us and which we do not have apparent control can be listed as below

  • Aging
  • Becoming disabled
  • Retirement
  • Being alone
  • Children leaving home
  • Natural disasters
  • Loss of financial security
  • Change
  • Dying
  • War
  • Illness
  • Losing a loved one
  • Accidents
  • Rape
 

Events we required to take action but our fears are holding back the actions can be listed as below.

  • Going back to school
  • Making decisions
  • Changing a career
  • Making friends
  • Ending or beginning a relationship
  • Going to the doctor
  • Asserting oneself
  • Losing weight
  • Being interviewed
  • Driving
  • Public speaking
  • Making a mistake
  • Intimacy

One dangerous quantity of this fear is that one area of fear may spread into other areas of our lives. For example, if you fear making a mistake, it then stands to be the reason that you also may fear changing a career, asserting yourself, applying for jobs, and so on.

Level 2

 

When deeply analyzing the above 1st level fears, you will be able find that those fear events are connected with inner states of your mind than the exterior events. Given below are the inner states that more reflect your sense of self and your ability to handle this world.

  • Rejection
  • Being conned
  • Success
  • Helplessness
  • Failure
  • Disapproval
  • Being vulnerable
  • Loss of image

Any of above fear states of mind, will affect almost every area of your life. For example, if you are fear of success it will be visible in life areas like friends, relationships, career, and so on. Wherever you find success you will down play it, and, as a result, greatly limit yourself.

Level 3

Finally, all above fears in various names leads down to single feeling that you cannot handle what ever life bring to you. Therefore, your current fears and not related to your genetics nor a sort of mental disease. Therefore to diminish your fears only thing that needs is to develop more trust in yourself to handle whatever comes your way.

Most of the fears that you experiencing mostly related to your protective upbringing as a child as indicated in the start of this article. The only way to come out of any fear is to trust that you will handle any situation that life bring into you. This should be a tremendous relief for you. You no longer have to control what your partner does, what your friends do, what your children do, or what your boss does. You don’t have to control what happens at an interview, what happens at your job, what happens in your new career, what happens to your money, or what happens in the stock market.

References

[1] - http://www.susanjeffers.com/home/bio.cfm
[2] - https://www.amazon.com/Feel-Fear-Anyway-Indecision-Confidence/dp/B011T7KWO6/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=feel+the+fear+and+do+it+anyway+susan+jeffers&qid=1638860383&sr=8-2

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