My anxiety at its worst made me spiral into a worrying loop of “what if the worst happens”, yet I couldn’t stop but try to anticipate every possible solution to my worries. In the past, I never understood why people worried: “It makes no sense, it won’t happen and if my biggest fears were to come true I’d have to be extremely unlucky.” was how I used to rationalise my own worries. My fear was crashing my car and killing myself and every other road user. I knew it was ridiculous, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it, hyperaware to every noise, movement, and speed of all of the other cars on the road.
I wonder what your biggest fears are? We all have one deep inside, one we probably haven’t discussed with anyone. Some clients have shared fears as:
Spending so much time overthinking was exhausting, I struggled to relax because when I stopped, my thoughts took over and I felt the fear closing in. Instead, I filled my days with work, socialising, exercising and scrolling through social media because when I was busy I thought the fear wasn’t there but it was always in the back of my mind. In fact, by keeping myself busy I was actually making things worse. The negative thoughts were always lurking, waiting for an opportunity to sneak in, second-guessed myself and tried to control the situation.
The interesting thing about fear
The common denominator of fear is that is keeps us from experiencing life in the way we want to. Keeps us from being honest and open with a friend. Fear can affect us emotionally, physically and spiritually. Keeps us safe, perhaps too safe.
We all have different fears, but when we dig a little deeper, we can break them down into three levels:
Level 1 - The surface story - Things that happen to us or that require action.
Level 2 - Not situation-orientated - Things that affect the Ego.
Level 3 - which underlies most fears and really does hit the route of the problem is at the bottom of every one of our fears is simply the fear that you can’t handle whatever life may bring you.
