Ten Ways To Discover The Gifts From Anxiety
- Aug 5, 2024
- 5 min read
Written by Royce Morales, Transformational Facilitator, Teacher, Podcast Host, Speaker, Author, Columnist
Royce Morales is a renowned trailblazer and creator of an innovative, spiritually-based approach to inner transformation. Her program, Perfect Life Awakening, emerged from a lifetime of frustration searching for inner work that worked. She discovered that by revealing specific subconscious origins of self-sabotage and removing its persistent influence, life can shift.
If you’ve been living on planet earth these last few “interesting” years, it’s safe to assume you’ve been strapped into a rollercoaster ride of justifiable anxiety. A global pandemic, a brutal coup, two endless wars, the loss of female reproductive rights, (and of course) the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Oh, and mustn’t forget an assassination attempt!
This unprecedented universal shake up has been unnerving to say the least.
Perhaps you’re participating in various strategies to numb yourself, ways to soothe that gut-wrenching, perpetual angst. Are you curled up in fetal position binge-watching Netflix? Doom-scrolling social media posts while consuming handfuls of chocolate chip cookies? Guzzling mixes or straight-ups until you pass out?
Have any of those tactics worked for more than a few minutes? Or at all? Maybe not.
As humans, whether we know it consciously or not, we grapple with various degrees of anxiety all the time. We give it different labels: Concern, nervousness, apprehension, trepidation, worry. It’s a collective experience, a perpetual, uncomfortable, oft-times painful front row seat, waiting to see what the heck might happen next.
Anxiety is a softer sounding euphemism for fear, which is what you are indeed feeling. That chosen word makes it sound more palatable, safer, less personal, more clinical.
Fear of fear
The problem is, for most people, feeling fear is scary. Sometimes even admitting they are afraid is unthinkable.
How come?
As a child you may have received repeated messages giving fear a bad rap. You were told fear means you are weak; fear is for cowards; don’t let on you are afraid. You learned that fear is to be resisted and conquered, not felt, understood, and embraced.
Those notions were instilled by people who had mastered ways to suppress and deny their own fear. They were brought up memorizing Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s commandment that “The only thing to fear is fear itself.
A fear response is a primitive, built-in tool to make sure you survive. Automatic default reactions of shock, withdraw and defend are imprinted permanently on the hard drive of your brain no matter how evolved or rational you become.
Fear’s job description is messaging you to fight, flee or freeze which came in handy back in cave-dwelling times and useful when faced with actual danger. Now, with fewer dinosaur attacks to be concerned with, you are probably not faced with as many blatant, life-threatening situations. In fact, some of the most powerful fears are subtle or subconscious such as fear of change, fear of commitment, fear of success. Some are illogical phobias, like fear of flying, fear of crossing a bridge, fear of clowns.
But the scale doesn’t matter to your fear-based Operating System. It’s on high alert, triggered to be on the lookout for any degree of threat that may have nothing to do with actual survival.
Now, with instant updates from around the world, your OS takes its job just as seriously as if it were a dinosaur attack. These few years of uncertainty have caused your survival mechanism to be perceiving danger everywhere. It is thrust into hyperdrive on a daily, with an equally strong desire to suppress, deny and numb your fears because ‘fear is scary.’
What’s the solution?
It may sound contradictory, but by not denying fear, it has less control over your life. So, the first step is to bravely face it. Turning on the light and discovering there are no monsters under your bed helps you realize there’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s also a reminder that you can handle more than you think.
Choose to mindfully observe and feel fear without pushing it into a corner. Notice your false programmed beliefs about fear and be the compassionate adult for your frightened inner child. Then, ask to see what the fear is really about. That will help you make wiser, calmer choices.
Trust yourself to feel the fear and do it anyway, as the saying goes. However, don’t try faking it hoping no one catches on.
Don’t use tactics to suppress fear such as: “Everything will be just fine!” Or, acting-as-if (“Look at me, I’m so happy!”). Or using spiritual bypass clichés (“Everything happens for a reason!"). Or dulling it (“Another martini, please!”).
Allow yourself to verbally express your fear, getting it all out. Choose someone who will listen compassionately, not try to fix you, save you, or tell you not to feel that way. Doing this instantly releases that angsty energy, bringing you into the present moment since fear just wants to be recognized and heard.
Simultaneously, don’t buy into or believe your fear; that only makes it stronger. Repeat this mantra: It’s just fear, False Evidence Appearing Real. It is your primitive survival mechanism temporarily running the show.
Moving fear up to your logical mind can often help you realize how silly it sounds, throwing it into the junk file. For example, understanding what causes turbulence while flying can help you be less terrified that the plane will crash.
Even with all the planetary drama, fear is still trying to show you a trigger of something unhealed from your past. These unprecedented times offer gifts to help you locate your subconscious triggered sources. Not so you can wallow in fear, rather so you can rise above it since you can only heal what you feel. Yes, it is possible to change your programming about fear by understanding what it’s showing you.
Fear offers a profound gift of awakening. As a spirit, you chose to be here to learn, evolve, clean things up and get in touch with denied, subconscious aspects of yourself. Listen to fear’s wake-up-call messages and you can receive wise lessons and intuitive guidance. Not only for yourself, but for the planet.
Be grateful for your fear. Maybe even love it. It’s a gift from your soul to help you evolve by accepting unpredictability, riding the perpetual adventure called life. It’s waking up your subconscious past so you can discover your unique life purpose and live it, fearlessly.
Keep in mind that unrecognized, unacknowledged fear can turn into despair, apathy and hopelessness, not options during these extraordinary times. You are here to help usher in this global transformation, one fear at a time.
Royce Morales, Transformational Facilitator, Teacher, Podcast Host, Speaker, Author, Columnist
Royce Morales is a renowned trailblazer and creator of an innovative, spiritually-based approach to inner transformation. Her program, Perfect Life Awakening, emerged from a lifetime of frustration searching for inner work that worked. She discovered that by revealing specific subconscious origins of self-sabotage and removing its persistent influence, life can shift.
She developed a clearing technique that releases programmed, false beliefs from this as well as previous lives. Negative patterns and hidden fears resolve so paralyzing issues lose their impact. This exclusive, time-tested work takes students from triggered to empowered, uncovering their authentic, purpose-driven life.
PLA also provides applicable tools to navigate daily life – ways to rapidly shift from anger to calm, fear to acceptance, judgement to connection. The work emphasizes awareness of, trusting and following one’s innate intuitive wisdom, then taking bold, inspired, real-world action.
The Perfect Life Awakening courses take place remotely and are presented in small groups to provide individual attention. Royce offers private inner discovery sessions to facilitate deeper work, utilizing her proprietary spiritual clearing technique called Spiritual Cognition Integration.
Royce is the author of three books about her teachings: Want – True Love, Past Lives and Other Complications; Know: A Spiritual Wake-up Call and Back: Rebirth After Stroke, all available on Amazon.
Go to Royce’s YouTube channel where she shares enlightening information about her teachings. She posts weekly blogs and writes articles for several other publications.
