Fear v. Reality

Today I have been doing a lot of reflecting. One of the single most valuable exercises for me to do is what I call a Fear and Reality Deconstruction/Reconstruction activity. The idea around it was suggested to me by my husband while we were dating. Let's just say that my family has had its fair share of dysfunction and tough times over the years. We are still in the healing process. As part of the frailty of close relationships, someone fails someone else at some point and I've come to accept that it is merely part of this existence.

Sometimes this healing can take a long time and there are side effects of it. In my life, those side effects have come in the form of fear. Nick reminded me while we were dating that my life is my own. I can deconstruct the fears I have and reconstruct my life based on the realities. Although my mind had already believed that for a while and I thought I had a handle on it, I realized that my fears were holding me back. They were paralyzing me in certain ways. This activity reminds me that I am not my fears. I went home from that conversation and got a paper out. On one side I wrote Fears. On the other side, I wrote Realities. I wrote down every last fear that I could bring to the surface. Even though I was alone, without any intention of showing this list to anyone, it was surprisingly hard for me to get that vulnerable. I then wrote down all the realities, the things I am currently doing that would block those fears from becoming my reality. It was empowering.

Five years later, I did that again today. When I was in the shower, I realized I had a bunch of fears swirling around in my head that I haven't had the courage to face head on. Instead, I just think of myself as bad for having the fears. I forget that I can put it out on the table with myself and sort it out. I don't have to keep it in my head going only into negative energy. The best way for me to do that was write it down and write down what I am doing with those fears to keep from self-sabotaging.

This time was a little different in that I have only recently (within the last five years or less) grown these fears. Thus, haven't had as much time to work on the reality around it so that those fears don't come to pass. Some of them I had been working on. Others were fairly new and I didn't have satisfactory answers yet. That's ok. The best thing for me today was to put them on paper and recognize that I need to work on some of them to have a more solid path for my reality in those ways. Despite not having all the realities in place, I feel empowered toward it. Maybe you could try this, too.