Here is my confession fellow HSPs… I’m cautious and I make no apologies for it. For me being Highly Sensitive comes with its own ‘fear factor’. I also know that fear no longer makes me feel powerless. I will never again be held hostage by my fears. As long as I stay in touch with my highly sensitive fear factor I can trust myself to take risks, have adventures, get out into the world and get on with living.
Accepting and embracing my HSP fear factor means
I’m free to defy ordinary!
I haven’t always enjoyed this freedom. My mum used to say, “I won’t live in fear” and I (being small and impressionable) believed this was how ‘larger than life’ I should be! My natural HSP cautiousness made it hard to live up to that belief.
Over time I began to feel ashamed about being fearful (and that was pretty darn often). Fear made me feel weak, sometimes ‘crazy’ and wrong, very wrong. Instead of trusting my fear I lived with constant stress, worry, anxiety and eventually panic attacks. That was the result of losing my natural, innate connection to fear and trying so hard to “not live in fear”.
Then I read a book that changed my relationship with fear, The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker (Little, Brown & Company,1997) and it truly was a gift. From that day forward I have recommended this book to every woman I have had the honour of knowing and working with.
I began to understand that living with fear day in and day out was creating white noise that everything was filtered through. With all that inner static I didn’t know when to be afraid and when not to.
Fear is involuntary…worry & anxiety are choices.
It wasn’t easy to recognise and change my fear factor. Fear has many disguises! I began by asking myself questions about my fear on a regular basis and as I did the inner static began to subside:
- Is anything bad happening right now?
- Are the knots & butterflies in my stomach about anything real?
- Do I need to be afraid?
Fear is anticipatory. Fear in and of itself is a warning that something bad might happen. This gem changed my relationship with fear. Pause and let this revolutionary thought sink in.
If I am feeling fear nothing is happening at this moment!
If you are slightly perplexed by this new way of conceptualizing fear a couple of my own experiences might make it clearer. I looked up and saw a car heading straight for us. I felt Fear (yes with a capital F). In the next second fear was gone. Why? I was in action, responding to the actuality of the accident by extricating myself from the car. Here’s another: it was 2am and a very loud invasion-type burglary begins at the front door! I woke in absolute terror. Then I was on my feet, on the phone, and although my heart was pounding I didn’t have time to feel the actual fear. (Just so you know it was the next door office!) We don’t need to be afraid of fear, we need to listen to it.
Fear can make you second guess everything about yourself.
Fear keeps you clinging tightly to the old instead of being open to the unfamiliar and unexpected. When we don’t understand fear, life begins to revolve around our fear. Fear stops us from taking chances, stops us from being creative, and stops us from chasing our dreams. Fear stopped me from truly being myself.
Fear rules when you burnout!
Fear plays a major part in burnout. You can’t get over burnout when you live in fear. Fear makes us tighten the reigns, push harder, try to get more control over life and those around us. We are fearful we are going to be ‘discovered’ and found lacking, fearful we can’t keep going, fearful ‘it’s’ never going to change, fearful for our health, our relationships and fearful we are ‘ruining’ our life. Fear keeps us trapped in the same old patterns that led to burnout in the first place, patterns like perfectionism, people pleasing, and trying to be everything to everyone.
I used to curse my ‘overly’ cautious nature: I was embarrassed by it! For years my fear caused me shame. Now I cherish my Highly Sensitive pause-to-check advantage. My natural intuition, coupled with a dose of healthy HSP caution, gives me the time and ability to assess and consider whether the fear I am feeling is relevant and imminent… or simply white noise. Now that’s an advantage I can use!
Until Next Time…Defy Ordinary!
P.S. The BOQs would love to hear from you! Leave your wisdom and comments in the box below.