Almost on a daily basis I am a little afraid of something. The fear might be felt like the flaps of a little bird inside my chest. Or it might feel like a pressure over my chest. Or an uneasyness. Or the whispers from my inner critic.
What I usually do is letting the fear be present. Just breathe with it. See what happens if I walk through it. Sometimes, I turn to the fear and ask: ”What do you want to tell me in this moment?”
And slowly, the fear evaporates. And it happens that this little process learn me something new about myself, sometimes it’s actually what is needed, not to be ruled by the fear.

My truth is that we can learn to handle difficult feelings, just by letting them be there, and not acting on them. This is simple on one level, but might also be overwhelmingly difficult on another level - because it requires something of you: To be responsible for your wellbeing, your thoughts, your actions, your words, your feelings.

I want to share a metaphor. Let’s say you are at a beach, you walk into the water. When you are standing in the water, you suddenly see a ball, or a balloon, filled with something you fear, or are afraid about. It could be anything. One ballon is filled with one fear/shame and you push that balloon under the surface. You have to use force to keep it under the surface, and you really want it to stay there, for no one to see. And then there comes another thought, fills another balloon, and you press that one under the surface as well. And then comes another. And in the end you might have a bunch of ballons of repressed feelings under the surface. You think you are in control. And then, someone yells at you, saying something that you, normally, could cope with like: ”Didn’t you hear, it’s time for lunch, you have to go out of the water?”.

Instantly you feel extremely guilty and you start screaming something nasty at the person, wanting you to take part of the meal. The other person is stupefied… how could you be so angry in an instant? What happened was that you lost grip of one or two of the ballons, and they popped up in the face of your friends. And you had no control what so ever.

When trying to push down what you might consider as your shadows, or what you don’t like, fear or are ashamed about, they risk to pop up in any situation, you showing for example outrageous anger for something tiny.

If you, and that’s what I practice (and sometimes fail) is to not press the balloons under the surface, but letting them rest on the surface, so I and other can see them. On the surface I don’t need to use any of my energy, but to press them down takes a lot of energy.

So one way of becoming more free is to slowly, one at a time, let the balloons rest on the surface. One epiphany I got when starting to do this, was, (time to blush a little), that vert few saw the balloons on the surface, or didn’t bother if they saw them, or even embraced me, saying… I am also afraid.

What if you try to identify something you push down under the water, or be lingering in the shadows, and just let it be there, visible? 

Notice what is happening to you. Notice what is happening to people around you.

What happens to me then? Sometimes something in me relaxes. Before I was really really tense… and now… it’s a softness in my system, which comes from relaxation.

Reflections from a love warrior