The Fear of Feeling Exposure Therapy Experiment

I’m using this space (a draft on my website) to get this thought down while I have it, void of the need to put it out. I think it’s just important for me, right now, to write in this intentional way as it is a way that I’ve confined to my monthly posts, as of late.

Okay, now that we’re through the disclaimer, what are we talking about?

I asked myself “what do I fear and how do I work through my fear(s)?” This is a question that I asked myself maybe a week ago, but thinking on it again today, something came up. I have a fear of feeling. Somewhere down the line, despite my logic knowing otherwise, my body and mental space has learned that there are good feelings and then there are feelings we just don’t want. Sadness is one of them. Fear another. Even anger, though that is one I think I’ve done the most work around. Despite that work, anger and a lot of these other feelings just tend to get avoided.

It doesn’t really help that this avoidance is also an auto response. It’s not one that I think about or necessarily decide on. Aside from my constant curating of “light” content to watch, read, and listen to. I’ve missed out on so much television, so many movies and books because I never want to feel sad or angry. I don’t want to be heartbroken more than I believe I already am by life. I don’t want to feel the hatred bubble up in me as I acknowledge the injustices that still persist in this world.

I want to expose myself so that I learn that these emotional experiences are safe for me to have. As it currently stands, I treat certain emotions as if they are deadly. I’m sure I don’t want to die any time soon, so I avoid all things that could potentially kill me, this is the same way that I avoid these so called negative emotions. And I think I’m ready to stop.

I guess I need a why. At least someone within me is currently demanding one, maybe as one last stitch effort to convince me that these “negative” emotions are not worth feeling. This someone within me wants me to tell her what the point is and assure me that there actually isn’t one. While I don’t think I can really think of a deep why - I know my why is enough. I’m tired of holding back. I want to feel the fullness of my humanity, knowing that empathizing with others, feeling deep anger for wrongdoing, these are the things that make me my type of human.

So much of my experience has been rooted in a lack of trust and that’s not who I want to be. I want to trust that I can feel and express what I’m feeling and still be Loved and accepted - by the people I’m in community with, but mostly, by me. I want to trust myself actively. My trust only goes as far as I’m willing to stretch it and that baby ain’t been stretched in eons.

I do want to live fearlessly, exist fearlessly. I do want to open myself to experiences and connect myself to what makes us all human. I want to fill myself with life in all of its color. Even the dark, the grey, the muddy. I want to know that I can. I want to come out the other side, present, not anticipating the next time I’ll feel it again. Not fearing the next hit.

This life is an ocean and each wave has a story, a purpose, some of them hit us so hard that we think we’ll drown; or we come up thinking we did drown, that we’re no longer here, that we didn’t make it. But we make it every time. I want to honor that.

I admit, I am afraid right now that I am potentially calling in difficult experiences. But I mean. Fuck it. I don’t know. I have to put my mouth where my gut is, my deep inner knowing that tells me that all truly is well. That the full range of emotions is valid. That it all matters.

I don’t know exactly where to start outside of experiencing some content that I’d usually avoid. So, I guess I’ll set the intention to start there, knowing that the Universe always fill the gaps of my intentions - often, bringing just what I didn’t know I needed around to me on life’s lazy susan.

Inhale - exhale.

Here we go.