Facing Our Fears and Shadow Aspects

Fear is such a sneaky thing.

I know this from first hand experience. After a divorce in 2013, I told myself I was done being afraid of anything. I started dragging my fears out into the light one by one. I had shut down my intuition in my college days out of fear. I healed that fear and today I now use my intuition professionally, as an intuitive healer and psychic. I used to get anxious traveling alone. I’ve since moved across country twice, on my own, to places where I didn’t know a soul. I’ve overcome a fear of spiders. Okay …they still make me shriek when they catch me off guard but I’m no longer afraid of them. I actually feel a bit of an affection for them as the sacred messengers of creativity and receptivity.

My friends admire this aspect of me – that I face my fears. To be honest, I admire this about me too. So imagine my dismay when I recently discovered some pretty significant fears still lurking below the surface, such as:

• Fear of being ridiculed or abandoned. My inner child, the little girl that I once was, carries the scares of having been shamed, ridiculed and found lacking. It unconsciously causes me to shrink myself or hold parts of myself back to avoid that kind of pain again.
• Fear of not being good enough. See bullet point number one.
• Fear of losing the respect of people I like and admire. See bullet number one.

Pealing Fear Away in Layers

I’ve discovered that now that I’ve faced and healed some “bigger” layers of fear, other “lessor” fears are now able to surface into my awareness. This reminds me of my friend and soccer coach Al Magnusson’s theory on pain. He said when our body has a big pain, such as broken leg, it grabs all of our attention and we can’t feel our less obvious aches and pains until the big pain goes away. It’s the same with our fears and emotional pain. When we heal the big issues, we sometimes discover below them are a whole passel other fears and unhealed wounds.

All of this deep healing work is not for the faint of heart. It takes guts to look our junk in the eye and love all of our broken and icky bits. Luckily, we don’t have to fix all of our junk at once. Spirit is kind in this regard. Most often, we heal in stages or what I call a “healing spiral.” By this I mean, when we release and heal something big, then we often have some time off, a period of grace, to integrate, live our lives and have some fun. After a period of time, however, our higher self says we’re ready for more, at which point the healing cycle begins again, with each successive layer going a little deeper.

Fear’s Clever Disguises

You might think, why bother?  Personally, I bother because my goal is to be my brightest boldest self and I can’t do that unless I’m willing to face and heal my shadow aspects. And these latest fears of mine were sneaky fears because they were dressed up to look like reasonable expectations. I had been telling myself I needed to gain more public speaking experience before I do live videos, so as to avoid the dreaded “ums” and “and so’s” speech space fillers. It was also important to present professional material. I reasoned, if I couldn’t do it in way that was super professional (aka “perfect”), such as being able to edit videos and add snazzy introductions, than I should wait until I had the time or money to do it the “right” way.

Fear Offers a Choice – Stay Small or Live Big

These were all just clever excuses. This is the way the ego, or the fear-driven aspect of our human personality, tries to protect us. It masquerades as seemingly reasonable desires so we don’t feel bad about not moving forward, of not stretching beyond our comfort zone. If I truly want to succeed and grow, though, I can’t keep running from fear. When I run from fear, its shadow just gets longer and longer until it backs me into a corner. With no where else to go and no one else to blame or make excuses for, I can either stay small, cowering the corner, or I can turn and face the fear. Luckily, my fears are at war with the part of me that wants to follow my heart’s calling, who wants to express herself without fear or judgement, and who yearns to live daringly and boldly.

And, so today I am choosing to face the fear. Gulp.  I’ll be launching a weekly Facebook Live where I’ll be chatting about subjects I’m passionate about: intuition, energy medicine, past life healing, personal growth and creativity. I promise you, it’s not going to be perfectly produced and polished, but it will be perfectly, imperfect me and I’ll be sharing some great information, stories, and possibly even doing mini readings and mini healing sessions.

My first Facebook Live will debut on Wednesday, July 4th at 12:00pm noon EST. I love the symbology of establishing my “independence” from yet another sticky fear. If you’re not at a parade, cookout, or the beach that day, please join me and help me celebrate facing yet another fear!

Heaps of love,
Natalie