I want to continue this week talking about emotions and human function at the cellular level.  Humans have a complex relationship with emotions and I want to spend some time this week talking about different responses and expectations of the human state.  Fear is such an autonomic response that we often feel it before we can think it.  Truthfully that is the way of most emotions—we are more responsive than proactive when it comes to what we feel.  We are taught that we have to respond to something in a certain way rather than think we have a say in how we want to feel.  We are also trained that most people feel the same way about the same thing.  We discount experience and how that shapes our reactions to life.  What bothers some is not an issue for others and vice versa.  At the base level it makes sense: emotions are designed to give us a quick review of the situation and get us out of danger if needed.  Fear in particular is complex because there is a literal safety component to it so it’s easier to confuse what is necessary with fear because some fear IS necessary.

I often share my experience with anxiety and people pleasing but this becomes a key area of focus when we talk healing, self-improvement, self-care, and self-love.  We have to accept that we can’t spend our time making others happy if we ever want to find fulfillment and purpose in our lives.  The issue with people pleasers is they fear losing everyone/all support if they aren’t somehow everything to everyone all at once.  No one wants to be a lone and to a people pleaser there is the fear they will ALWAYS be alone because their worth is tied to the acceptance of others.  Learning to make ourselves the priority feels risky, honoring our needs feels selfish, and we don’t want to risk angering anyone because we don’t want to be alone.  It takes time to get in the habit of honoring self and the first step to that is understanding our relationship to ourselves better.  The relationship we have with ourselves is by far the most important one we will ever have—we are the only one we will spend our entire lives with.  The love I discussed yesterday also needs to apply to ourselves—we are never alone.

I spent so much time thinking fear was something to be conquered when my habits and thought patterns are what needed to be trained.  Instead of automatically thinking I’d be abandoned for expressing my authentic self, I needed to accept that there were pieces of me that needed to shared.  I had to believe it was more important to find joy in the truth of my expression than it was to abandon myself for the sake of someone who could always choose to leave for any reason anyway.  While we are social creatures and we need each other, our lives aren’t contingent on one single relationship.  There is strength in partnership, but that partnership is flawed if both parties aren’t operating from truth.  The point is also that fear leads us to believe things are going to be worse than what they are—the truth is the loss of self is greater than the loss of any person.  We don’t need to spend time fighting the emotion if we spend the time accepting who we are.  Also, there is nothing to fight if we embrace who we are.