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By Root 1012 0

to control a person or situation, ask yourself, “What am I afraid of?” Stay with this question and peel down through the surface layers, even though your ego self may want to resist. Then drop all the words, and allow the fear to exist against a background of stillness until you actually feel it as a physical sensation in your body. The idea is not to escape, push away, or abolish fear; rather, it is to be aware of its existence. This presents a paradox: while we want to have less fear, the approach is not to get rid of it or push it away because that only creates inner warfare. The first step is to acknowledge its presence.

Many of our daily fears are based on anticipating shame, hurt, uneasiness, emptiness, sadness, or grief that might occur. We fear feelings that might arise, depending on our interpretation of an event. For example, I might say I’m afraid to go back to school because I might not do well, and then believe I’m unworthy. I create a story that gets me agitated or afraid. If there’s no story, there’s no fear.

We need to remember that it’s words, concepts, and beliefs that often keep us afraid. Telling ourselves we’re inadequate can lead to dreaded feelings of shame and guilt. If we didn’t have those concepts and ideas in our minds, experiences would not hold the risk of so-called failure. Mary’s story went like this: “I got back an English paper with generally positive responses, but on one page there was the comment, ‘this is a bit of a cliché.’ My mind started down the track of, ‘I’m a failure, I can’t write, I might as well give up, why did I come to graduate school anyhow. I might as well quit and kill myself.’ ” She laughed, then continued: “The next day when I was calm, I looked over the paper again and was able to see all the positive remarks. When I got to the cliché remark, I realized it was true and not a big deal. I keep wondering how did I get so totally messed up by that one remark?”

Fear is also biological. It is a hardwired reaction to perceived danger and often manifests itself by momentary freezing or feeling stunned. That’s what triggered Mary’s reaction. Because fear so automatically arises out of the past, we forget that it is a conditioned reaction. Fear usually means that a childlike part of us is perceiving the situation.

Adults with a history of childhood trauma or attachment injuries often have automatic fear reactions, particularly in close relationships. This could include worries such as, “What will people think of me?” “Am I doing it right?” “What will happen if I’m alone?” You can ask this question: “Which part of me is feeling the fear?” When I help clients to delve into their fears, we often discover a tiny child part of themselves whose very survival feels at stake. A terror of nonexistence comes up that began years ago because no one responded adequately to their basic need for touch, food, comfort, and connection. As a child, this fear made biological sense because the child was dependent on the parent. As an adult, however, it is not rational from a survival perspective because we can now take care of ourselves.

If someone being late or saying no to you rekindles these dreaded childhood feelings, you can elicit your adult self to observe and handle the situation. There are two things you can do. First, look inside to the part of you that is afraid, look him or her in the eyes, notice how old he or she is, pick up that child part and hold him or her internally and give comfort. Second, bring the situation into current reality by saying to the child part, “I understand why you were scared as a child, but it’s now the year ____. I’m __ years old and I can dress myself, feed myself, walk, go potty, buy food, earn money, and take care of my basic needs.” This is necessary because the child part got frozen in time and is reacting on automatic without knowledge that time has passed.

It’s like helping a child at night who is afraid of dragons in the closet. You kindly go in, open the closet door, and turn on the light of current time. “See—let’s take a look behind the clothes,