83: Steps to Overcome Fear: Why Do I Fear Everything & Have So Many Fearful Thoughts and Anxiety?

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Dec 13

Do you find yourself having fearful thoughts and living life in fear? Do you struggle with anxiety or always fear that bad things are going to happen and you have no control? In this episode, I’ll be discussing what to do when we are living life with fear, general anxiety, or anticipatory anxiety over things that we can’t predict or control.

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I’ll be answering a question from a listener who is struggling with feeling like they are afraid of everything and always coming up with worst case scenarios (such as constantly thinking about a loved one dying). My intention for this episode is to help you to learn how to move out of fear-based thinking and into loving thoughts that will help you be more peaceful and grounded in your day-to-day life. We will also discuss where fearful thoughts come from, why we have so many fear based thoughts, and fear vs love.

Recommended Episodes 🎙️

Book Recommendation 📚

The Universe Has Your Back: Transform Fear to Faith by Gabrielle Berstein
The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level by Gay Hendricks

Timestamps ⏱️

Introduction: 00:15
Question: 02:00
5 Steps to Overcome Fear: 11:37
Outro: 30:33

Learn More ✨

How to Reframe Negative Thoughts (Gabby Bernstein)
How Many Thoughts Do You Have Each Day? And Other Things to Think About (Healthline)

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This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Castmagic. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:01]:
Welcome to New View Advice. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I invite you to join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever problem or trauma is holding you back from living life to the fullest. Let's get started. Hey, beautiful soul. My name is Amanda Durocher, and this is new view advice. If you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast where I offer guidance for the healing journey. It's not my intention to give you all the answers. I believe you have all the answers.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:26]:
You just may need a new view and a little help along the way. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. Today, we are discussing what to do when we are living with fear, general anxiety, or anticipatory anxiety over things that we can't predict or control. Do you ever find yourself having fearful thoughts, or do you sometimes feel like you fear everything, or do you feel like you have trouble overcoming these fears of things you cannot control. Do you struggle with anxiety or always fear that bad things are going to happen and you have no control? In this episode, I'll be answering a question from a listener struggling with just that. This listener feels they are afraid of everything, and their mind is always coming up with worst case scenarios, such as constantly thinking about a loved one dying or thinking about losing their job, and they wanna know how to change their thought patterns. My intention for this episode is to help you to learn how to move out of fear based thinking and into loving thoughts that will help you to be more peaceful and grounded in your day to day life. I think living in fearful thoughts is all too common, And so many people can relate to this, so I'm excited to dive into this episode.
Amanda Durocher [00:01:25]:
I know that I can relate to fearful thoughts. And today, I'll be talking about fearful thoughts, first loving thoughts, as well as outlining steps that you can begin taking today to assist you with moving out of fear based thinking. Before we jump into the episode, I wanted to mention that if you haven't checked out my website, I invite you to check Get out after this episode for more free resources, including journal prompts, meditations, blog posts, and podcast episodes about the healing journey, and you You can check that out at newviewadvice.com, and today's episode show notes will be at newviewadvice.com/83. Let's jump on in.
Listener Question
Hi, Amanda. I have a question. I'm struggling with so much fear, Fear of everything, fear of losing loved ones, fear of losing my apartment, losing my job, me dying, and the fear of driving, the fear of love, fear of judgment, and fear of really everything. My mind always keeps coming up with worst case scenarios, and I've been having a lot of nightmares.
I don't really know what's causing this, and I don't know how or what I can do to help this situation. Any advice? Thank you.
Answer
Thank you so much for this question. I want to acknowledge that this is a great question, and I think it's very common. I think many people have experienced this, and I know that I have experienced this as well and that it is definitely something our mind does go to worst case scenarios. So I just wanna honor this. And I also wanna honor that right now in the world we're living in, there is a lot of fear. It's definitely hard to go on the Internet or to turn on the TV or even meet up with people and not hear fearful thoughts, fearful situations.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:53]:
And so I just wanna honor that because I think that when we live through fearful times, more fear based thoughts can come up. And so this is a great question because we wanna learn how to move out of fearful thoughts and into loving thoughts, but that's a practice. Right? So many of us live with fearful thoughts every day. I know that I still have a lot of fearful thoughts, and we'll talk about some of those today. So I just wanna honor this because there's nothing wrong with you, And we talk about that a lot of here on the podcast. I believe there's absolutely nothing wrong with you. You are just learning to navigate your inner world and navigate your thoughts, and That's part of the human experience, so I just wanna honor that here. Because I think that sometimes when we have fearful thoughts, they can begin to pile on because we can Judge those fearful thoughts.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:33]:
So you find yourself having 1 fearful thought at least to another and another, and they can create, like, a negative thought spiral is how I view it, kinda like a tornado. And The more we judge ourselves, the more those fear based thoughts pick up and that tornado gets bigger and bigger. So I think that one of the first things we can do when we have fearful Full thought is to be compassionate with ourselves and to honor ourselves and to take a step back from those fearful thoughts and to remind ourselves that in this moment, we are safe. And I want to acknowledge that I'm answering this question from the place of, you are safe right now. I know that there's a lot of stuff going on the world and not everybody Always in a safe situation, but I think a lot of us have these fearful thoughts even when we are safe. Right? Like, we're safe at home in our bedrooms or something like that. So I just want to acknowledge that I'm taking this question from the perspective that you are safe in this moment even if it might not feel that way because it may feel like you're being by your thoughts or the media or social media, but really taking this question from the place that you are safe, and what can we do to move together that fearful thinking into loving thoughts. So I wanna start this question by addressing why do we have fearful thoughts? Why does our mind go to worst case scenarios? I think it's important to address that everyone has fearful thoughts.
Amanda Durocher [00:04:43]:
Fearful thoughts are really a part of life. I looked it up before this episode, and our mind has about 60,000 thoughts a day. That's a lot of thoughts, so be kind to yourself if you have some fearful thoughts arise. Out of 60,000 thoughts a day, I think it's common for some of them to be fearful. And the mind has fearful thoughts oftentimes as a survival mechanism. It's a form of control because the mind doesn't like change. So if we can prepare for worst case scenarios, we'll never be caught off guard, or we'll be prepared for the bad thing we're thinking about, or it's a way for our mind to think that we can somehow Change the future, and we can somehow stop that make believe thing from happening. But oftentimes, fearful thoughts are the mind trying to keep us safe.
Amanda Durocher [00:05:25]:
Oftentimes, something triggered the fearful thoughts, especially if you start fearing everything, and it's the way the mind is trying to survive. It's trying to to keep you alive. But this creates anxiety and fears of the future and can cause us to feel ungrounded. And so it's important for us to Come back to the present moment and to reassure ourselves that we are safe here and now. I think another example of fear based Thinking that often arises is when we're going to venture into something new. The mind hates change, and it will use fearful thoughts to keep us stuck in our regular day to day life. It wants us to be safe. So as I mentioned, oftentimes, these negative thoughts, there's a trigger, and we don't have to attach to the trigger or to the negative thought.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:08]:
But if we do end up going down a cycle, right, like a spiral of negative thoughts. It can be helpful to identify what the trigger was. And sometimes if we're trying to change something about our day to day, Say we're trying to go to the gym more often or say we're trying to switch jobs, the mind might begin creating a lot of negative stories and a lot Fearful based thinkings to keep us from going to the gym or to keep us from a new job or from some sort of change because the mind is just there to keep us safe, and it finds any sort of change to be scary, especially when we're not used to change. So the more we can step Out of our comfort zones, the more the mind can adjust. But if we live very patterned lives, the mind can find it very scary, any sort of Age. I know that whenever I change anything about my life, fear based thoughts come up, and it's my job to not attach to these thoughts. Right? It's my thought to just see that that's all they are. They're just thoughts.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:01]:
So a big part of beginning to heal these fear based thoughts is to begin to befriend your mind and to recognize So these thoughts are just that, thoughts. These situations you are feeling are not real. Your mind is afraid of change or it's afraid of something or a fear is arising, and those Fear based thoughts are a way to keep us stuck in the same. So when moving out of fear based thoughts, we wanna begin shifting our thoughts to more loving thoughts. So many thoughts fall into 2 categories, love versus fear. So, basically, we live most of our life in a state of love or a state of fear, and love is really the present moment. It's Trusting life. It's trusting yourself.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:34]:
It's knowing everything is going to be okay and trusting in a higher power, trusting in God, trusting in your own heart, trusting in your higher self. It's learning to dance with life rather than fear life. And fear is when we move out of the state of love. It's when we try to control life rather And trust life is when we want those reassurances. Right? I was just talking to somebody today about how so often our mind and fear based thinking wants Us to have a guarantee before we take a leap of faith, and the truth is life is about leaps of faith. It's about trusting. It's about learning to trust yourself and learning to lean into love rather than fear. You know? I think life really is about facing our fears.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:14]:
And so when we have fear based thinking come up, Instead of judging the thoughts, which creates more and more fear based thinking, we can really just try and remember, like, life is about facing fears, so these are some fears arising. You know? I love the quote, everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear. I think that is so true, and I found that true in my own life is that the things that bring me gratification are the things that force me to face my own fears. And it's a humbling journey to be human to face our fears because we have So many fears. It's so common to have fears. But as we face our fears, we see our own strength. We see our own love. We see Our own capability, and we see our own courage.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:55]:
And I think that's part of the beautiful journey of being human because our fearful thoughts often forget that life is a journey, not a destination. Fear is often also connected to the shoulds. Like, I should do that. I should do this. And love is really about being in a place of alignment and peace with life. Does this mean we never have feelings? Of course not. But we continue to be in love when we allow our feelings, our memories, and our fearful thoughts to arise and love them rather than attach and judge them. We remain in a loving and a peaceful state when hard things arise, but we don't attach a meaning or a belief or a story to them.
Amanda Durocher [00:09:31]:
We just allow it to come up. And so I just wanna give a few examples of fearful thoughts versus loving thoughts because when we are beginning to witness our fearful thinking, we wanna begin to shift into more loving thought. So fear based thought, I fear my loved one is going to die. Loving thought, I am so grateful that I get to spend the day with this person. The exact same situation you are in, but 2 different thoughts and two different perspectives on the situation. Same with I fear losing my job, verse a loving thought could be, I'm so grateful to be at work today. A fearful thought could be, I fear dying. A loving thought could be, wow.
Amanda Durocher [00:10:02]:
Life is such a gift. How can I show up more for myself today? Or a fear based thought is I never have time for myself that's living in lack. And when we live in lack, those are fear based thoughts. And a loving thought would be, I See that I have been really busy. What can I do for myself? I personally find that when having fear based thoughts, it could be really helpful to begin to ask ourselves questions such as, what do I need right now? Why is this fear here? Or what is my body trying to tell me. We wanna begin to practice moving back into loving thoughts because fearful thoughts often lead to more fearful thoughts. And I think that's why with this question, you're like, I feel like I fear everything, and I think it's because you keep getting caught in the cyclone. And with that cyclone of fearful thoughts, These fearful thoughts can begin to tell us stories, and we can create whole stories and worst case scenarios about just 1 thought that arose.
Amanda Durocher [00:10:49]:
Right? So it takes conscious effort to realign with our hearts in the present moment. I know for me, I've feared the loss of loved ones before. I actually really worked through this last year. I had this fear that my partner Evan would die. And anytime it arose, I, all of a sudden, was envisioning all these different ways he could die. Like, if he wasn't home, I'd be like, oh my god. He might have just been in a car crash. And my mind would go into these stories, but that's all they were.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:12]:
They were just stories. Right? They were not real, and they weren't based in reality. They were based on a fearful thought that took on a life of its own. But what's beautiful about life is when we begin to shift into those loving thoughts, those loving thoughts can also take on a life of their own. And they often lead to more of those enjoyable emotions such as joy, happiness, love, and peace. So now that we've talked about fearful thoughts, where they come from, fear versus love, I want to offer steps for over coming fear. So I've outlined a 5 step process to assist you in overcoming this fearful thinking and beginning to align more with love, your heart, and the present
Amanda Durocher [00:00:01]:
Welcome to New View Advice. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I invite you to join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever problem or trauma is holding you back from living life to the fullest. Let's get started. Hey, beautiful soul. My name is Amanda Durocher, and this is new view advice. If you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast where I offer guidance for the healing journey. It's not my intention to give you all the answers. I believe you have all the answers.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:26]:
You just may need a new view and a little help along the way. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. Today, we are discussing what to do when we are living with fear, general anxiety, or anticipatory anxiety over things that we can't predict or control. Do you ever find yourself having fearful thoughts, or do you sometimes feel like you fear everything, or do you feel like you have trouble overcoming these fears of things you cannot control. Do you struggle with anxiety or always fear that bad things are going to happen and you have no control? In this episode, I'll be answering a question from a listener struggling with just that. This listener feels they are afraid of everything, and their mind is always coming up with worst case scenarios, such as constantly thinking about a loved one dying or thinking about losing their job, and they wanna know how to change their thought patterns. My intention for this episode is to help you to learn how to move out of fear based thinking and into loving thoughts that will help you to be more peaceful and grounded in your day to day life. I think living in fearful thoughts is all too common, And so many people can relate to this, so I'm excited to dive into this episode.
Amanda Durocher [00:01:25]:
I know that I can relate to fearful thoughts. And today, I'll be talking about fearful thoughts, first loving thoughts, as well as outlining steps that you can begin taking today to assist you with moving out of fear based thinking. Before we jump into the episode, I wanted to mention that if you haven't checked out my website, I invite you to check Get out after this episode for more free resources, including journal prompts, meditations, blog posts, and podcast episodes about the healing journey, and you You can check that out at newviewadvice.com, and today's episode show notes will be at newviewadvice.com/83. Let's jump on in. Hi, Amanda. I have a question. I'm struggling with so much fear, Fear of everything, fear of losing loved ones, fear of losing my apartment, losing my job, me dying, and the fear of driving, the fear of love, fear of judgment, and fear of really everything. My mind always keeps coming up with worst case scenarios, and I've been having a lot of nightmares.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:17]:
I don't really know what's causing this, and I don't know how or what I can do to help this situation. Any advice? Thank you. Thank you so much for this question. I want to acknowledge that this is a great question, and I think it's very common. I think many people have experienced this, and I know that I have experienced this as well and that it is definitely something our mind does go to worst case scenarios. So I just wanna honor this. And I also wanna honor that right now in the world we're living in, there is a lot of fear. It's definitely hard to go on the Internet or to turn on the TV or even meet up with people and not hear fearful thoughts, fearful situations.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:53]:
And so I just wanna honor that because I think that when we live through fearful times, more fear based thoughts can come up. And so this is a great question because we wanna learn how to move out of fearful thoughts and into loving thoughts, but that's a practice. Right? So many of us live with fearful thoughts every day. I know that I still have a lot of fearful thoughts, and we'll talk about some of those today. So I just wanna honor this because there's nothing wrong with you, And we talk about that a lot of here on the podcast. I believe there's absolutely nothing wrong with you. You are just learning to navigate your inner world and navigate your thoughts, and That's part of the human experience, so I just wanna honor that here. Because I think that sometimes when we have fearful thoughts, they can begin to pile on because we can Judge those fearful thoughts.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:33]:
So you find yourself having 1 fearful thought at least to another and another, and they can create, like, a negative thought spiral is how I view it, kinda like a tornado. And The more we judge ourselves, the more those fear based thoughts pick up and that tornado gets bigger and bigger. So I think that one of the first things we can do when we have fearful Full thought is to be compassionate with ourselves and to honor ourselves and to take a step back from those fearful thoughts and to remind ourselves that in this moment, we are safe. And I want to acknowledge that I'm answering this question from the place of, you are safe right now. I know that there's a lot of stuff going on the world and not everybody Always in a safe situation, but I think a lot of us have these fearful thoughts even when we are safe. Right? Like, we're safe at home in our bedrooms or something like that. So I just want to acknowledge that I'm taking this question from the perspective that you are safe in this moment even if it might not feel that way because it may feel like you're being by your thoughts or the media or social media, but really taking this question from the place that you are safe, and what can we do to move together that fearful thinking into loving thoughts. So I wanna start this question by addressing why do we have fearful thoughts? Why does our mind go to worst case scenarios? I think it's important to address that everyone has fearful thoughts.
Amanda Durocher [00:04:43]:
Fearful thoughts are really a part of life. I looked it up before this episode, and our mind has about 60,000 thoughts a day. That's a lot of thoughts, so be kind to yourself if you have some fearful thoughts arise. Out of 60,000 thoughts a day, I think it's common for some of them to be fearful. And the mind has fearful thoughts oftentimes as a survival mechanism. It's a form of control because the mind doesn't like change. So if we can prepare for worst case scenarios, we'll never be caught off guard, or we'll be prepared for the bad thing we're thinking about, or it's a way for our mind to think that we can somehow Change the future, and we can somehow stop that make believe thing from happening. But oftentimes, fearful thoughts are the mind trying to keep us safe.
Amanda Durocher [00:05:25]:
Oftentimes, something triggered the fearful thoughts, especially if you start fearing everything, and it's the way the mind is trying to survive. It's trying to to keep you alive. But this creates anxiety and fears of the future and can cause us to feel ungrounded. And so it's important for us to Come back to the present moment and to reassure ourselves that we are safe here and now. I think another example of fear based Thinking that often arises is when we're going to venture into something new. The mind hates change, and it will use fearful thoughts to keep us stuck in our regular day to day life. It wants us to be safe. So as I mentioned, oftentimes, these negative thoughts, there's a trigger, and we don't have to attach to the trigger or to the negative thought.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:08]:
But if we do end up going down a cycle, right, like a spiral of negative thoughts. It can be helpful to identify what the trigger was. And sometimes if we're trying to change something about our day to day, Say we're trying to go to the gym more often or say we're trying to switch jobs, the mind might begin creating a lot of negative stories and a lot Fearful based thinkings to keep us from going to the gym or to keep us from a new job or from some sort of change because the mind is just there to keep us safe, and it finds any sort of change to be scary, especially when we're not used to change. So the more we can step Out of our comfort zones, the more the mind can adjust. But if we live very patterned lives, the mind can find it very scary, any sort of Age. I know that whenever I change anything about my life, fear based thoughts come up, and it's my job to not attach to these thoughts. Right? It's my thought to just see that that's all they are. They're just thoughts.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:01]:
So a big part of beginning to heal these fear based thoughts is to begin to befriend your mind and to recognize So these thoughts are just that, thoughts. These situations you are feeling are not real. Your mind is afraid of change or it's afraid of something or a fear is arising, and those Fear based thoughts are a way to keep us stuck in the same. So when moving out of fear based thoughts, we wanna begin shifting our thoughts to more loving thoughts. So many thoughts fall into 2 categories, love versus fear. So, basically, we live most of our life in a state of love or a state of fear, and love is really the present moment. It's Trusting life. It's trusting yourself.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:34]:
It's knowing everything is going to be okay and trusting in a higher power, trusting in God, trusting in your own heart, trusting in your higher self. It's learning to dance with life rather than fear life. And fear is when we move out of the state of love. It's when we try to control life rather And trust life is when we want those reassurances. Right? I was just talking to somebody today about how so often our mind and fear based thinking wants Us to have a guarantee before we take a leap of faith, and the truth is life is about leaps of faith. It's about trusting. It's about learning to trust yourself and learning to lean into love rather than fear. You know? I think life really is about facing our fears.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:14]:
And so when we have fear based thinking come up, Instead of judging the thoughts, which creates more and more fear based thinking, we can really just try and remember, like, life is about facing fears, so these are some fears arising. You know? I love the quote, everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear. I think that is so true, and I found that true in my own life is that the things that bring me gratification are the things that force me to face my own fears. And it's a humbling journey to be human to face our fears because we have So many fears. It's so common to have fears. But as we face our fears, we see our own strength. We see our own love. We see Our own capability, and we see our own courage.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:55]:
And I think that's part of the beautiful journey of being human because our fearful thoughts often forget that life is a journey, not a destination. Fear is often also connected to the shoulds. Like, I should do that. I should do this. And love is really about being in a place of alignment and peace with life. Does this mean we never have feelings? Of course not. But we continue to be in love when we allow our feelings, our memories, and our fearful thoughts to arise and love them rather than attach and judge them. We remain in a loving and a peaceful state when hard things arise, but we don't attach a meaning or a belief or a story to them.
Amanda Durocher [00:09:31]:
We just allow it to come up. And so I just wanna give a few examples of fearful thoughts versus loving thoughts because when we are beginning to witness our fearful thinking, we wanna begin to shift into more loving thought. So fear based thought, I fear my loved one is going to die. Loving thought, I am so grateful that I get to spend the day with this person. The exact same situation you are in, but 2 different thoughts and two different perspectives on the situation. Same with I fear losing my job, verse a loving thought could be, I'm so grateful to be at work today. A fearful thought could be, I fear dying. A loving thought could be, wow.
Amanda Durocher [00:10:02]:
Life is such a gift. How can I show up more for myself today? Or a fear based thought is I never have time for myself that's living in lack. And when we live in lack, those are fear based thoughts. And a loving thought would be, I See that I have been really busy. What can I do for myself? I personally find that when having fear based thoughts, it could be really helpful to begin to ask ourselves questions such as, what do I need right now? Why is this fear here? Or what is my body trying to tell me. We wanna begin to practice moving back into loving thoughts because fearful thoughts often lead to more fearful thoughts. And I think that's why with this question, you're like, I feel like I fear everything, and I think it's because you keep getting caught in the cyclone. And with that cyclone of fearful thoughts, These fearful thoughts can begin to tell us stories, and we can create whole stories and worst case scenarios about just 1 thought that arose.
Amanda Durocher [00:10:49]:
Right? So it takes conscious effort to realign with our hearts in the present moment. I know for me, I've feared the loss of loved ones before. I actually really worked through this last year. I had this fear that my partner Evan would die. And anytime it arose, I, all of a sudden, was envisioning all these different ways he could die. Like, if he wasn't home, I'd be like, oh my god. He might have just been in a car crash. And my mind would go into these stories, but that's all they were.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:12]:
They were just stories. Right? They were not real, and they weren't based in reality. They were based on a fearful thought that took on a life of its own. But what's beautiful about life is when we begin to shift into those loving thoughts, those loving thoughts can also take on a life of their own. And they often lead to more of those enjoyable emotions such as joy, happiness, love, and peace. So now that we've talked about fearful thoughts, where they come from, fear versus love, I want to offer steps for over coming fear. So I've outlined a 5 step process to assist you in overcoming this fearful thinking and beginning to align more with love, your heart, and the present So these 5 steps are, 1, acknowledge the fear is there and any emotions that arise. 2 is slow down and give yourself space.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:01]:
3 is begin to notice patterns. 4 is to shift to loving and peaceful thoughts and away from the things you can't control. And 5 is to call on faith, your heart, and a higher power. So I'm going to dive deeper into each one of these steps. So So step number 1 is acknowledge the fear is there and any emotions that arise. So it's important for us to acknowledge the fearful thought. We want to catch the thought. We wanna see that we're even having a fearful thought.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:29]:
It takes conscious effort to even understand that our mind might be playing out a story of fearful thinking. K? And oftentimes when we're having fearful thoughts, emotions arise with them. So we wanna acknowledge if any emotions arise as well. These emotions could be anxiety, sadness, fear, Depression, anger, and we want to acknowledge both of them. We want to give space to the thought, and we wanna give space to the feelings. And when we do that, we create space within ourselves to begin to witness the fearful thoughts and the emotions. I I think so many people have fearful thoughts and stories on repeat all the time, and they never take the time to acknowledge them. And this leads me to step 2, because how we begin to acknowledge the fearful thoughts and these emotions is to begin to slow down.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:15]:
Right? We need to slow down and give ourselves space. Because oftentimes, these fearful thoughts can pick up, and they just create more and more thoughts. And to me, that's like we're beginning to pick up momentum, or we're moving faster Turn faster, but it's almost like running out a wall. Like, we're running in place, and we wanna slow down so we could step back from that wall, so we could step back from those fearful thoughts. And this is where self care becomes really important because it's important to have practices that assist you in slowing down in the moment. Many times, so many of us are running so fast throughout Today, we're jumping from thing to thing to thing that we can lose track of ourselves, and that's when we start to become unconscious and when these fearful thoughts can come in. So So we wanna learn to slow down, and so it's important to find practices that work for you to slow down. Right? So this could be breathing, Finding different breathing techniques.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:03]:
I love box breathing, which is breathing in for 4, holding for 4, Breathing out for 4, holding for 4, and repeating that until you feel yourself start to slow down. I also think grounding techniques are really helpful. So getting out in nature really helps us to slow down. Getting out in nature, go for a walk, walk around your neighborhood, Go to a park, put your feet on the grass, but getting out in nature, disconnecting from our phones is really helpful with slowing down. Our phones can be really addictive, and they can keep us in unconscious patterns. Right? There's so many times I open my phone, and all of a sudden, I'm on a random page on the Internet, and I'm like, how did I even get here? So a lot of times, our phones disconnect us from ourselves, so slowing down is a way to connect back to ourselves. Also, I think meditation's a really helpful way to slow down. I know that's what I use.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:56]:
Journaling can be really helpful to slow down. Right? A lot of times, our thoughts move faster than our pen on the page. So when we're writing them, it's like, oh my gosh. I can't keep up, but then we start to slow down. I also think that taking baths or long showers can help us to slow down if we find ourselves in a sea of negative thoughts or fearful thinking, Just really taking time to slow down depending on how long you've been in these fearful thoughts. If it's been days days, you may need a whole day To slow down, I often find that fearful thinking is when we're in that stress response, so when we're in fight or flight. And sometimes for me personally, it can take days for me to come out of fight or flight depending on how long I've been in fight or flight, how long I've been stressed. And sometimes I need a couple days to come out and to get back to the present moment.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:47]:
I find it really important for self to prioritize slowing down every day. So I meditate every morning. That's really helpful for me because that helps me to stay grounded throughout the day. And I noticed that when I lose that, My morning routine when I don't prioritize that, it's much easier for me to be stressed and to stay in fight or flight, and then I can get more caught in that negative thought cycle. So So I can get more caught in fearful based thinking because I haven't taken time to connect back with myself, and that's why it takes conscious effort. It takes active practice to come back to the present moment. We can do it in any moment, but I find that if I leave time for connecting back with myself, it Takes me less time if fearful thoughts come up. I'm less likely to attach to them, and I'm able to catch them quicker.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:32]:
And so this leads me into the 3rd step. So So once you've acknowledged you have fearful thoughts and any emotions arising and you've slowed down to give yourself space, I invite you to begin to notice any patterns. So this could be patterns about the fear, or it could be patterns about when you have this fear. So I wanted to give an example of noticing patterns because I think that sometimes the pattern isn't exactly the same as the situation. And I'm gonna give this example here. So last year, I developed a fear of driving, and I was always terrified to drive. And I would go to horse therapy, so I was forced to drive myself once a week. Every other time, I would make Evan drive, so I was avoiding my fear.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:14]:
But when I had to drive myself, my fears would arise, and I would spend the 35 minutes in the car terrified. I had so many fearful thoughts. And one day on my way to therapy, I was like, okay, Amanda. This is crazy. You've never feared driving before. What is going on? What are you so afraid of? And when I began to breathe, so I began to slow down, you know, my heart was racing, but I slowed myself down. I slowed my car down, and I just allowed myself to be with myself. I turned the music off, and I was like, what is going on here? And I began to notice the pattern.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:46]:
Ernie. So I wasn't actually afraid of driving. I was afraid of when a car would drive behind me. I was interpreting that as a fear of driving because very often when you're in the car, somebody is driving behind you. Right? So I just had said I have a fear of driving. But, really, when I connected to it, it was I had a fear of somebody driving behind me. And I was like, okay. That's interesting.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:05]:
Why do I fear somebody driving behind me? And the thought that just kept coming up is I fear being attacked from behind. I fear being attacked from behind. And that was really interesting because in a car, thinking I'd be attacked from behind was, like, not really the same. But, also, I could see how my body was fearing that, but I really looked at that word attacked because I was, like, attacked from behind. Even if I was rear ended, I don't think it would be purposely like, why do I feel like a car behind me could lead to me being attacked from behind? And in this moment, on the way to therapy, a very divine moment because I was able to go unpack this in therapy after, I was able to Connect back to in my youth, in my teen years, when I was literally attacked from behind, and I had never processed the fear that arose within me from being attacked from behind. And so this fear was manifesting anytime I was in the car, my fear of being rear ended and my fear of being attacked from behind anytime a car drove behind And for a long time, I didn't have this fear. But when this fear was ready to be looked at, witnessed, and processed, I began to fear driving. And I share this story because, one, the fear of driving And the fear of being attacked from behind connected to my teen years don't necessarily correlate.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:24]:
It took me slowing down and noticing the pattern and connecting with my heart to see that path for myself. But somebody else who has a fear of driving, they're gonna have a totally different reason for that fear of driving. And it could do something with, like, a car accident or it could do with something car based or maybe it doesn't like my story, But it required me taking the time to be with this experience, be with this fear. And as I mentioned earlier, life is really about facing our fears. Right? So I decided to slow down and be with this because I didn't wanna fear driving. Right? I actually really love to drive, But I stopped loving to drive when I had this fear up, and it took me a couple months to acknowledge this fear because fear isn't comfortable. And oftentimes, the things we're afraid of connect back to rooted wounds like the one I just shared. That wasn't a fun memory to come up for me.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:19]:
Being attacked from behind in my teen years, that was a very painful memory. But once I gave it space and I processed it, now I don't Fear being attacked from behind because I understand that I've lived 32 years of my life, and I've been attacked from behind one time. But my body still had that fear because I had a real experience that needed to be witnessed and looked at, and my mind kept fearing that happening again. But when I processed it, then I was able to say, that was a really horrible experience. I'm so sorry that happened, but it happened one time in 32 years. I don't need to fear that for the rest of my life. Instead, I choose to trust the other cars on the road. I choose to trust myself.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:00]:
And And that was something else that came up with my fear of driving was this trust in others. So sometimes when I'm working through trust issues, it can come out in the car. I can Find myself not trusting the other drivers on the road, but that's just pointing me towards my own mistrust. So I hope somebody finds that helpful, but I wanted to offer that as an example of how our fears are often pattern fears. Right? So I would have that fear anytime I got in the car. And then the fears would start to escalate, and I would just have fears in general. But, really, when I connected back to the rooted fear, the fear was the fear of being attacked from behind. But when I slowed down, I was able to identify the core fear.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:40]:
And I think that's true for most fears is that there's gonna be a core fear you can get to over and over again. So that's one example of a pattern. That's a pattern that goes back to a childhood wound. You know, another pattern you may notice is that there's a time of day or there's an experience that leads to fearful thinking. So I find if I haven't gotten enough sleep. Or if I'm really tired or if I'm burnt out, I can have more fear based thoughts. And oftentimes, it's not really about identifying, like, a root experience in childhood. Instead, it's about identifying the situation that leads to the fear based think thinking.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:14]:
So and that's another pattern, though. So for me, if It's the end of the day, and I'm starting to have negative or fear based thoughts. A lot of times, I'm like, oh, jeez. I have to stop working. Like, I've been going way too fast, way too hard, doing way too much. I gotta slow down because my mind is telling me that it doesn't feel safe. So a lot of times when I work too hard, a lot of negative thoughts can come up because I need to slow down. I need to fill my own cup up.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:39]:
When we over Expend ourselves. It can lead to fear based thoughts because we're overdoing it. So that's another type of pattern that can arise. And so a book I wanted to also offer here is The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. I think this book can be really helpful for identifying these patterns with the fear based thinking because He talks about in his book that sometimes when we hit our upper limit so sometimes when life is really good, then fears can arise in other areas of our lives. So say you just got a promotion at work, maybe then your relationship starts to fall apart. And it's oftentimes because we can't be Really good all the time. It's part of the human experience is that survival wise, we've actually kind of programmed joy out of ourselves, so it takes conscious effort to bring joy into our lives and to become conscious that fears will arise when we're feeling really good in life.
Amanda Durocher [00:23:29]:
So I thought the big leap could be helpful for anybody who's struggling with fear based thinking. So once you acknowledge the fear, you slow down, you possibly notice a pattern and don't get stuck on the pattern. If you can't figure out the pattern, don't overthink it. You know, we can just move to step 4, which is shift into more loving and peaceful thoughts because most of the fears that are arising are things we can't control. So we want to identify this. We wanna become aware of this. So when I feared someone rear ending me or attacking me from behind in the car, I identified the pattern that led me there, but then I was able to insert a more loving thought, which was one for myself. Like, being like, Oh, wow.
Amanda Durocher [00:24:10]:
This fear was valid. I'm so sorry you had that fear. So sorry you had that experience, Amanda. I love you. That was a really scary experience, But in this present moment, we're safe. In this present moment, everything is okay. In this present moment, I am protected. And by moving those thoughts into a more loving place, I was able to feel more peaceful in the car.
Amanda Durocher [00:24:34]:
Anytime that fear would arise, I was able to shift back into that loving place of, I am protected. I am safe. Everything is working out. Or with an example of a loved one dying. When I was fearing Evan dying, I saw that my fear was based in this idea of being left behind, but I can't control that. I can't control if people die. I can't control if people leave my life. So instead, I chose to shift into loving thoughts, which were gratitude thoughts.
Amanda Durocher [00:25:01]:
Right? If you're trying to think of a loving thought, shifting into gratitude is a great practice, you know, and instead telling myself, thank god I have this moment with Evan. Thank god we gotta spend today together. I am so thankful for right now. I'm so grateful for today because I don't know what tomorrow holds, but I'm so grateful I gotta spend today with him. I'm so grateful Evan's in my life, and I'm able to shift into gratitude. And when I shift into gratitude, those fears, they dissipate because gratitude helps us to know we're safe right now. So gratitude is a really helpful practice when shifting into love. And my 5th step for overcoming fear and moving into love is to call on your faith, call on a higher power to help you with this.
Amanda Durocher [00:25:39]:
You You know, I think as humans, we think we have to do everything alone. We think we have to go at life. You know? I'm seeing that visual again of running at a wall, and faith helps us to take a step back from the wall. Faith helps us to see that maybe we can jump over the wall. Faith helps us to see that maybe there's a door right next to the wall, but our faith helps us to see a bigger picture. And so if you're having trouble letting go of your fearful thinking, if you're having trouble noticing your patterns, if you're having trouble with all these steps, Then skip right to this step and call on a higher power. And maybe you identify with God. Maybe you identify with the universe.
Amanda Durocher [00:26:12]:
Maybe you identify with your higher self. Maybe you're more comfortable Well, just connecting with your own heart. Whatever that faith you have, whatever that higher power you believe in, whatever you connect with, Take time to connect with it when you are in fear. One of my daily prayers is like, thank you god for showing me this fear. Please show me the way out. Please show me how to realign with you. Please show me the best way forward. Please show me my highest path.
Amanda Durocher [00:26:36]:
God, I see that I got out of alignment. Please show me how to come back into alignment. Please show me how to trust you. And the more we reconnect with our faith, we reconnect with something bigger than ourselves. When we connect to the cosmic perspective, when we connect to the universe, We realize how small so many of these fears are. When I connect to a higher power, I, 1, see how short my life is. My life is short. In the span of things, mother Earth has been here for so freaking long.
Amanda Durocher [00:27:02]:
1000000 of years. My life is really, really short, And so it's my job to enjoy it while I'm here, but I'm only able to enjoy it when I free myself of my fears. And so many times, I'm able to free myself of those fears by surrendering to something bigger than myself. I think we can get stuck in fear when we think we're running out life alone, when we think that we're the only 1 watching our own back, when we think we gotta do it all by ourselves. And the truth is we don't. There is an all loving presence surrounding us. And when we can connect to that higher power, we can really surrender those fears and understand that they were just fears, and that we're actually a soul having a human experience. And I believe so many of us here, especially if you're listening to this podcast, because I know many of us have experienced really big hardships throughout life, a lot of pain and wounding.
Amanda Durocher [00:27:58]:
And that can create a lot of fear within us because it's terrifying. It's terrifying to experience really hard experiences, especially when we have good hearts and good intentions. You You wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't have a good heart. People without good hearts are not looking to grow and change themselves and to step into their soul's purpose and Connect back with their heart. But if you're here, you have a good heart and a good intention, and remembering that will help you to free yourself of your fear and also remembering that you are safe and that you are held by something larger and that you are held by higher power. You're held by your own heart and your own soul. Your soul is here having a human experience, and it loves every second of it, and it loves you so fully. And another thing I just wanna mention before I wrap up this question is that when we are facing our fears, I want you to think of yourself as the main character of your life.
Amanda Durocher [00:28:52]:
Think of any movie you've seen that had and impact on you. And very likely, the protagonist of that movie had to face fears to become who they are at the end of the movie, and that is what we are doing here through our human experience. We are facing our own fears every day in order to transform ourselves into who we came here to be. And a great book for helping you to call on a higher power And move out of fearful thinking into loving thinking is The Universe Has Your Back by Gabby Bernstein. I think this is a very simple book with a lot of helpful practices. She Gives a lot of intro practices to help you to slow down and to witness that fearful thinking and realign with love. So if you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend The Universe Has Your Back by Gabby Bernstein. And I just wanna end this episode with reminding you that our inner power comes from facing our fears.
Amanda Durocher [00:29:48]:
It's courageous and brave to face your fears. It isn't Always easy. I know that for sure. But every time we face our fears, we're given a gift. It could be an insight. It could be clarity. It could be more self love, more compassion, or learning. But it's so important for us all to continue to look at, honor, and heal our fears.
Amanda Durocher [00:30:06]:
I think that love really is the cure to fear based thinking, and that love starts within you, with you in your own heart and the love of self. I just wanted to wrap this question up with reminding you of the power within you and that there's nothing wrong with your fearful thoughts. It's just part of the human experience. It's just part of that journey you are on. So thank you so much for this question. I'm sending you so much love. Thank Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of New View Advice. Today, we talked about fearful thinking and steps for overcoming fear, and these steps were acknowledging the fear, and any emotions that arise.
Amanda Durocher [00:30:45]:
Step 2 was to slow down and give yourself space. Step 3 was to begin to notice patterns. Step 4 was to shift to loving and peaceful thoughts, and step 5 is to call on faith and a higher power. Thank you again for joining me for this episode. If you enjoyed this episode, I invite you to follow the podcast on your podcasting app and to leave a 5 star review. Ratings and followers really help to bring more people to the podcast. It helps the podcasting apps to prioritize my podcast when people are searching for new podcasts. So if you enjoyed today's episode, I'd really appreciate a follow and a 5 star review.
Amanda Durocher [00:31:17]:
Thank you again for tuning in to another episode of new view advice. As always, I am so Grateful to offer you a new view on whatever you may be going through. Sending you all my love. See you next time.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:01]:
Welcome to New View Advice. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I invite you to join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever problem or trauma is holding you back from living life to the fullest. Let's get started. Hey, beautiful soul. My name is Amanda Durocher, and this is new view advice. If you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast where I offer guidance for the healing journey. It's not my intention to give you all the answers. I believe you have all the answers.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:26]:
You just may need a new view and a little help along the way. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. Today, we are discussing what to do when we are living with fear, general anxiety, or anticipatory anxiety over things that we can't predict or control. Do you ever find yourself having fearful thoughts, or do you sometimes feel like you fear everything, or do you feel like you have trouble overcoming these fears of things you cannot control. Do you struggle with anxiety or always fear that bad things are going to happen and you have no control? In this episode, I'll be answering a question from a listener struggling with just that. This listener feels they are afraid of everything, and their mind is always coming up with worst case scenarios, such as constantly thinking about a loved one dying or thinking about losing their job, and they wanna know how to change their thought patterns. My intention for this episode is to help you to learn how to move out of fear based thinking and into loving thoughts that will help you to be more peaceful and grounded in your day to day life. I think living in fearful thoughts is all too common, And so many people can relate to this, so I'm excited to dive into this episode.
Amanda Durocher [00:01:25]:
I know that I can relate to fearful thoughts. And today, I'll be talking about fearful thoughts, first loving thoughts, as well as outlining steps that you can begin taking today to assist you with moving out of fear based thinking. Before we jump into the episode, I wanted to mention that if you haven't checked out my website, I invite you to check Get out after this episode for more free resources, including journal prompts, meditations, blog posts, and podcast episodes about the healing journey, and you You can check that out at newviewadvice.com, and today's episode show notes will be at newviewadvice.com/83. Let's jump on in. Hi, Amanda. I have a question. I'm struggling with so much fear, Fear of everything, fear of losing loved ones, fear of losing my apartment, losing my job, me dying, and the fear of driving, the fear of love, fear of judgment, and fear of really everything. My mind always keeps coming up with worst case scenarios, and I've been having a lot of nightmares.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:17]:
I don't really know what's causing this, and I don't know how or what I can do to help this situation. Any advice? Thank you. Thank you so much for this question. I want to acknowledge that this is a great question, and I think it's very common. I think many people have experienced this, and I know that I have experienced this as well and that it is definitely something our mind does go to worst case scenarios. So I just wanna honor this. And I also wanna honor that right now in the world we're living in, there is a lot of fear. It's definitely hard to go on the Internet or to turn on the TV or even meet up with people and not hear fearful thoughts, fearful situations.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:53]:
And so I just wanna honor that because I think that when we live through fearful times, more fear based thoughts can come up. And so this is a great question because we wanna learn how to move out of fearful thoughts and into loving thoughts, but that's a practice. Right? So many of us live with fearful thoughts every day. I know that I still have a lot of fearful thoughts, and we'll talk about some of those today. So I just wanna honor this because there's nothing wrong with you, And we talk about that a lot of here on the podcast. I believe there's absolutely nothing wrong with you. You are just learning to navigate your inner world and navigate your thoughts, and That's part of the human experience, so I just wanna honor that here. Because I think that sometimes when we have fearful thoughts, they can begin to pile on because we can Judge those fearful thoughts.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:33]:
So you find yourself having 1 fearful thought at least to another and another, and they can create, like, a negative thought spiral is how I view it, kinda like a tornado. And The more we judge ourselves, the more those fear based thoughts pick up and that tornado gets bigger and bigger. So I think that one of the first things we can do when we have fearful Full thought is to be compassionate with ourselves and to honor ourselves and to take a step back from those fearful thoughts and to remind ourselves that in this moment, we are safe. And I want to acknowledge that I'm answering this question from the place of, you are safe right now. I know that there's a lot of stuff going on the world and not everybody Always in a safe situation, but I think a lot of us have these fearful thoughts even when we are safe. Right? Like, we're safe at home in our bedrooms or something like that. So I just want to acknowledge that I'm taking this question from the perspective that you are safe in this moment even if it might not feel that way because it may feel like you're being by your thoughts or the media or social media, but really taking this question from the place that you are safe, and what can we do to move together that fearful thinking into loving thoughts. So I wanna start this question by addressing why do we have fearful thoughts? Why does our mind go to worst case scenarios? I think it's important to address that everyone has fearful thoughts.
Amanda Durocher [00:04:43]:
Fearful thoughts are really a part of life. I looked it up before this episode, and our mind has about 60,000 thoughts a day. That's a lot of thoughts, so be kind to yourself if you have some fearful thoughts arise. Out of 60,000 thoughts a day, I think it's common for some of them to be fearful. And the mind has fearful thoughts oftentimes as a survival mechanism. It's a form of control because the mind doesn't like change. So if we can prepare for worst case scenarios, we'll never be caught off guard, or we'll be prepared for the bad thing we're thinking about, or it's a way for our mind to think that we can somehow Change the future, and we can somehow stop that make believe thing from happening. But oftentimes, fearful thoughts are the mind trying to keep us safe.
Amanda Durocher [00:05:25]:
Oftentimes, something triggered the fearful thoughts, especially if you start fearing everything, and it's the way the mind is trying to survive. It's trying to to keep you alive. But this creates anxiety and fears of the future and can cause us to feel ungrounded. And so it's important for us to Come back to the present moment and to reassure ourselves that we are safe here and now. I think another example of fear based Thinking that often arises is when we're going to venture into something new. The mind hates change, and it will use fearful thoughts to keep us stuck in our regular day to day life. It wants us to be safe. So as I mentioned, oftentimes, these negative thoughts, there's a trigger, and we don't have to attach to the trigger or to the negative thought.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:08]:
But if we do end up going down a cycle, right, like a spiral of negative thoughts. It can be helpful to identify what the trigger was. And sometimes if we're trying to change something about our day to day, Say we're trying to go to the gym more often or say we're trying to switch jobs, the mind might begin creating a lot of negative stories and a lot Fearful based thinkings to keep us from going to the gym or to keep us from a new job or from some sort of change because the mind is just there to keep us safe, and it finds any sort of change to be scary, especially when we're not used to change. So the more we can step Out of our comfort zones, the more the mind can adjust. But if we live very patterned lives, the mind can find it very scary, any sort of Age. I know that whenever I change anything about my life, fear based thoughts come up, and it's my job to not attach to these thoughts. Right? It's my thought to just see that that's all they are. They're just thoughts.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:01]:
So a big part of beginning to heal these fear based thoughts is to begin to befriend your mind and to recognize So these thoughts are just that, thoughts. These situations you are feeling are not real. Your mind is afraid of change or it's afraid of something or a fear is arising, and those Fear based thoughts are a way to keep us stuck in the same. So when moving out of fear based thoughts, we wanna begin shifting our thoughts to more loving thoughts. So many thoughts fall into 2 categories, love versus fear. So, basically, we live most of our life in a state of love or a state of fear, and love is really the present moment. It's Trusting life. It's trusting yourself.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:34]:
It's knowing everything is going to be okay and trusting in a higher power, trusting in God, trusting in your own heart, trusting in your higher self. It's learning to dance with life rather than fear life. And fear is when we move out of the state of love. It's when we try to control life rather And trust life is when we want those reassurances. Right? I was just talking to somebody today about how so often our mind and fear based thinking wants Us to have a guarantee before we take a leap of faith, and the truth is life is about leaps of faith. It's about trusting. It's about learning to trust yourself and learning to lean into love rather than fear. You know? I think life really is about facing our fears.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:14]:
And so when we have fear based thinking come up, Instead of judging the thoughts, which creates more and more fear based thinking, we can really just try and remember, like, life is about facing fears, so these are some fears arising. You know? I love the quote, everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear. I think that is so true, and I found that true in my own life is that the things that bring me gratification are the things that force me to face my own fears. And it's a humbling journey to be human to face our fears because we have So many fears. It's so common to have fears. But as we face our fears, we see our own strength. We see our own love. We see Our own capability, and we see our own courage.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:55]:
And I think that's part of the beautiful journey of being human because our fearful thoughts often forget that life is a journey, not a destination. Fear is often also connected to the shoulds. Like, I should do that. I should do this. And love is really about being in a place of alignment and peace with life. Does this mean we never have feelings? Of course not. But we continue to be in love when we allow our feelings, our memories, and our fearful thoughts to arise and love them rather than attach and judge them. We remain in a loving and a peaceful state when hard things arise, but we don't attach a meaning or a belief or a story to them.
Amanda Durocher [00:09:31]:
We just allow it to come up. And so I just wanna give a few examples of fearful thoughts versus loving thoughts because when we are beginning to witness our fearful thinking, we wanna begin to shift into more loving thought. So fear based thought, I fear my loved one is going to die. Loving thought, I am so grateful that I get to spend the day with this person. The exact same situation you are in, but 2 different thoughts and two different perspectives on the situation. Same with I fear losing my job, verse a loving thought could be, I'm so grateful to be at work today. A fearful thought could be, I fear dying. A loving thought could be, wow.
Amanda Durocher [00:10:02]:
Life is such a gift. How can I show up more for myself today? Or a fear based thought is I never have time for myself that's living in lack. And when we live in lack, those are fear based thoughts. And a loving thought would be, I See that I have been really busy. What can I do for myself? I personally find that when having fear based thoughts, it could be really helpful to begin to ask ourselves questions such as, what do I need right now? Why is this fear here? Or what is my body trying to tell me. We wanna begin to practice moving back into loving thoughts because fearful thoughts often lead to more fearful thoughts. And I think that's why with this question, you're like, I feel like I fear everything, and I think it's because you keep getting caught in the cyclone. And with that cyclone of fearful thoughts, These fearful thoughts can begin to tell us stories, and we can create whole stories and worst case scenarios about just 1 thought that arose.
Amanda Durocher [00:10:49]:
Right? So it takes conscious effort to realign with our hearts in the present moment. I know for me, I've feared the loss of loved ones before. I actually really worked through this last year. I had this fear that my partner Evan would die. And anytime it arose, I, all of a sudden, was envisioning all these different ways he could die. Like, if he wasn't home, I'd be like, oh my god. He might have just been in a car crash. And my mind would go into these stories, but that's all they were.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:12]:
They were just stories. Right? They were not real, and they weren't based in reality. They were based on a fearful thought that took on a life of its own. But what's beautiful about life is when we begin to shift into those loving thoughts, those loving thoughts can also take on a life of their own. And they often lead to more of those enjoyable emotions such as joy, happiness, love, and peace. So now that we've talked about fearful thoughts, where they come from, fear versus love, I want to offer steps for over coming fear. So I've outlined a 5 step process to assist you in overcoming this fearful thinking and beginning to align more with love, your heart, and the present So these 5 steps are, 1, acknowledge the fear is there and any emotions that arise. 2 is slow down and give yourself space.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:01]:
3 is begin to notice patterns. 4 is to shift to loving and peaceful thoughts and away from the things you can't control. And 5 is to call on faith, your heart, and a higher power. So I'm going to dive deeper into each one of these steps. So So step number 1 is acknowledge the fear is there and any emotions that arise. So it's important for us to acknowledge the fearful thought. We want to catch the thought. We wanna see that we're even having a fearful thought.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:29]:
It takes conscious effort to even understand that our mind might be playing out a story of fearful thinking. K? And oftentimes when we're having fearful thoughts, emotions arise with them. So we wanna acknowledge if any emotions arise as well. These emotions could be anxiety, sadness, fear, Depression, anger, and we want to acknowledge both of them. We want to give space to the thought, and we wanna give space to the feelings. And when we do that, we create space within ourselves to begin to witness the fearful thoughts and the emotions. I I think so many people have fearful thoughts and stories on repeat all the time, and they never take the time to acknowledge them. And this leads me to step 2, because how we begin to acknowledge the fearful thoughts and these emotions is to begin to slow down.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:15]:
Right? We need to slow down and give ourselves space. Because oftentimes, these fearful thoughts can pick up, and they just create more and more thoughts. And to me, that's like we're beginning to pick up momentum, or we're moving faster Turn faster, but it's almost like running out a wall. Like, we're running in place, and we wanna slow down so we could step back from that wall, so we could step back from those fearful thoughts. And this is where self care becomes really important because it's important to have practices that assist you in slowing down in the moment. Many times, so many of us are running so fast throughout Today, we're jumping from thing to thing to thing that we can lose track of ourselves, and that's when we start to become unconscious and when these fearful thoughts can come in. So So we wanna learn to slow down, and so it's important to find practices that work for you to slow down. Right? So this could be breathing, Finding different breathing techniques.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:03]:
I love box breathing, which is breathing in for 4, holding for 4, Breathing out for 4, holding for 4, and repeating that until you feel yourself start to slow down. I also think grounding techniques are really helpful. So getting out in nature really helps us to slow down. Getting out in nature, go for a walk, walk around your neighborhood, Go to a park, put your feet on the grass, but getting out in nature, disconnecting from our phones is really helpful with slowing down. Our phones can be really addictive, and they can keep us in unconscious patterns. Right? There's so many times I open my phone, and all of a sudden, I'm on a random page on the Internet, and I'm like, how did I even get here? So a lot of times, our phones disconnect us from ourselves, so slowing down is a way to connect back to ourselves. Also, I think meditation's a really helpful way to slow down. I know that's what I use.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:56]:
Journaling can be really helpful to slow down. Right? A lot of times, our thoughts move faster than our pen on the page. So when we're writing them, it's like, oh my gosh. I can't keep up, but then we start to slow down. I also think that taking baths or long showers can help us to slow down if we find ourselves in a sea of negative thoughts or fearful thinking, Just really taking time to slow down depending on how long you've been in these fearful thoughts. If it's been days days, you may need a whole day To slow down, I often find that fearful thinking is when we're in that stress response, so when we're in fight or flight. And sometimes for me personally, it can take days for me to come out of fight or flight depending on how long I've been in fight or flight, how long I've been stressed. And sometimes I need a couple days to come out and to get back to the present moment.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:47]:
I find it really important for self to prioritize slowing down every day. So I meditate every morning. That's really helpful for me because that helps me to stay grounded throughout the day. And I noticed that when I lose that, My morning routine when I don't prioritize that, it's much easier for me to be stressed and to stay in fight or flight, and then I can get more caught in that negative thought cycle. So So I can get more caught in fearful based thinking because I haven't taken time to connect back with myself, and that's why it takes conscious effort. It takes active practice to come back to the present moment. We can do it in any moment, but I find that if I leave time for connecting back with myself, it Takes me less time if fearful thoughts come up. I'm less likely to attach to them, and I'm able to catch them quicker.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:32]:
And so this leads me into the 3rd step. So So once you've acknowledged you have fearful thoughts and any emotions arising and you've slowed down to give yourself space, I invite you to begin to notice any patterns. So this could be patterns about the fear, or it could be patterns about when you have this fear. So I wanted to give an example of noticing patterns because I think that sometimes the pattern isn't exactly the same as the situation. And I'm gonna give this example here. So last year, I developed a fear of driving, and I was always terrified to drive. And I would go to horse therapy, so I was forced to drive myself once a week. Every other time, I would make Evan drive, so I was avoiding my fear.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:14]:
But when I had to drive myself, my fears would arise, and I would spend the 35 minutes in the car terrified. I had so many fearful thoughts. And one day on my way to therapy, I was like, okay, Amanda. This is crazy. You've never feared driving before. What is going on? What are you so afraid of? And when I began to breathe, so I began to slow down, you know, my heart was racing, but I slowed myself down. I slowed my car down, and I just allowed myself to be with myself. I turned the music off, and I was like, what is going on here? And I began to notice the pattern.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:46]:
Ernie. So I wasn't actually afraid of driving. I was afraid of when a car would drive behind me. I was interpreting that as a fear of driving because very often when you're in the car, somebody is driving behind you. Right? So I just had said I have a fear of driving. But, really, when I connected to it, it was I had a fear of somebody driving behind me. And I was like, okay. That's interesting.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:05]:
Why do I fear somebody driving behind me? And the thought that just kept coming up is I fear being attacked from behind. I fear being attacked from behind. And that was really interesting because in a car, thinking I'd be attacked from behind was, like, not really the same. But, also, I could see how my body was fearing that, but I really looked at that word attacked because I was, like, attacked from behind. Even if I was rear ended, I don't think it would be purposely like, why do I feel like a car behind me could lead to me being attacked from behind? And in this moment, on the way to therapy, a very divine moment because I was able to go unpack this in therapy after, I was able to Connect back to in my youth, in my teen years, when I was literally attacked from behind, and I had never processed the fear that arose within me from being attacked from behind. And so this fear was manifesting anytime I was in the car, my fear of being rear ended and my fear of being attacked from behind anytime a car drove behind And for a long time, I didn't have this fear. But when this fear was ready to be looked at, witnessed, and processed, I began to fear driving. And I share this story because, one, the fear of driving And the fear of being attacked from behind connected to my teen years don't necessarily correlate.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:24]:
It took me slowing down and noticing the pattern and connecting with my heart to see that path for myself. But somebody else who has a fear of driving, they're gonna have a totally different reason for that fear of driving. And it could do something with, like, a car accident or it could do with something car based or maybe it doesn't like my story, But it required me taking the time to be with this experience, be with this fear. And as I mentioned earlier, life is really about facing our fears. Right? So I decided to slow down and be with this because I didn't wanna fear driving. Right? I actually really love to drive, But I stopped loving to drive when I had this fear up, and it took me a couple months to acknowledge this fear because fear isn't comfortable. And oftentimes, the things we're afraid of connect back to rooted wounds like the one I just shared. That wasn't a fun memory to come up for me.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:19]:
Being attacked from behind in my teen years, that was a very painful memory. But once I gave it space and I processed it, now I don't Fear being attacked from behind because I understand that I've lived 32 years of my life, and I've been attacked from behind one time. But my body still had that fear because I had a real experience that needed to be witnessed and looked at, and my mind kept fearing that happening again. But when I processed it, then I was able to say, that was a really horrible experience. I'm so sorry that happened, but it happened one time in 32 years. I don't need to fear that for the rest of my life. Instead, I choose to trust the other cars on the road. I choose to trust myself.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:00]:
And And that was something else that came up with my fear of driving was this trust in others. So sometimes when I'm working through trust issues, it can come out in the car. I can Find myself not trusting the other drivers on the road, but that's just pointing me towards my own mistrust. So I hope somebody finds that helpful, but I wanted to offer that as an example of how our fears are often pattern fears. Right? So I would have that fear anytime I got in the car. And then the fears would start to escalate, and I would just have fears in general. But, really, when I connected back to the rooted fear, the fear was the fear of being attacked from behind. But when I slowed down, I was able to identify the core fear.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:40]:
And I think that's true for most fears is that there's gonna be a core fear you can get to over and over again. So that's one example of a pattern. That's a pattern that goes back to a childhood wound. You know, another pattern you may notice is that there's a time of day or there's an experience that leads to fearful thinking. So I find if I haven't gotten enough sleep. Or if I'm really tired or if I'm burnt out, I can have more fear based thoughts. And oftentimes, it's not really about identifying, like, a root experience in childhood. Instead, it's about identifying the situation that leads to the fear based think thinking.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:14]:
So and that's another pattern, though. So for me, if It's the end of the day, and I'm starting to have negative or fear based thoughts. A lot of times, I'm like, oh, jeez. I have to stop working. Like, I've been going way too fast, way too hard, doing way too much. I gotta slow down because my mind is telling me that it doesn't feel safe. So a lot of times when I work too hard, a lot of negative thoughts can come up because I need to slow down. I need to fill my own cup up.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:39]:
When we over Expend ourselves. It can lead to fear based thoughts because we're overdoing it. So that's another type of pattern that can arise. And so a book I wanted to also offer here is The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. I think this book can be really helpful for identifying these patterns with the fear based thinking because He talks about in his book that sometimes when we hit our upper limit so sometimes when life is really good, then fears can arise in other areas of our lives. So say you just got a promotion at work, maybe then your relationship starts to fall apart. And it's oftentimes because we can't be Really good all the time. It's part of the human experience is that survival wise, we've actually kind of programmed joy out of ourselves, so it takes conscious effort to bring joy into our lives and to become conscious that fears will arise when we're feeling really good in life.
Amanda Durocher [00:23:29]:
So I thought the big leap could be helpful for anybody who's struggling with fear based thinking. So once you acknowledge the fear, you slow down, you possibly notice a pattern and don't get stuck on the pattern. If you can't figure out the pattern, don't overthink it. You know, we can just move to step 4, which is shift into more loving and peaceful thoughts because most of the fears that are arising are things we can't control. So we want to identify this. We wanna become aware of this. So when I feared someone rear ending me or attacking me from behind in the car, I identified the pattern that led me there, but then I was able to insert a more loving thought, which was one for myself. Like, being like, Oh, wow.
Amanda Durocher [00:24:10]:
This fear was valid. I'm so sorry you had that fear. So sorry you had that experience, Amanda. I love you. That was a really scary experience, But in this present moment, we're safe. In this present moment, everything is okay. In this present moment, I am protected. And by moving those thoughts into a more loving place, I was able to feel more peaceful in the car.
Amanda Durocher [00:24:34]:
Anytime that fear would arise, I was able to shift back into that loving place of, I am protected. I am safe. Everything is working out. Or with an example of a loved one dying. When I was fearing Evan dying, I saw that my fear was based in this idea of being left behind, but I can't control that. I can't control if people die. I can't control if people leave my life. So instead, I chose to shift into loving thoughts, which were gratitude thoughts.
Amanda Durocher [00:25:01]:
Right? If you're trying to think of a loving thought, shifting into gratitude is a great practice, you know, and instead telling myself, thank god I have this moment with Evan. Thank god we gotta spend today together. I am so thankful for right now. I'm so grateful for today because I don't know what tomorrow holds, but I'm so grateful I gotta spend today with him. I'm so grateful Evan's in my life, and I'm able to shift into gratitude. And when I shift into gratitude, those fears, they dissipate because gratitude helps us to know we're safe right now. So gratitude is a really helpful practice when shifting into love. And my 5th step for overcoming fear and moving into love is to call on your faith, call on a higher power to help you with this.
Amanda Durocher [00:25:39]:
You You know, I think as humans, we think we have to do everything alone. We think we have to go at life. You know? I'm seeing that visual again of running at a wall, and faith helps us to take a step back from the wall. Faith helps us to see that maybe we can jump over the wall. Faith helps us to see that maybe there's a door right next to the wall, but our faith helps us to see a bigger picture. And so if you're having trouble letting go of your fearful thinking, if you're having trouble noticing your patterns, if you're having trouble with all these steps, Then skip right to this step and call on a higher power. And maybe you identify with God. Maybe you identify with the universe.
Amanda Durocher [00:26:12]:
Maybe you identify with your higher self. Maybe you're more comfortable Well, just connecting with your own heart. Whatever that faith you have, whatever that higher power you believe in, whatever you connect with, Take time to connect with it when you are in fear. One of my daily prayers is like, thank you god for showing me this fear. Please show me the way out. Please show me how to realign with you. Please show me the best way forward. Please show me my highest path.
Amanda Durocher [00:26:36]:
God, I see that I got out of alignment. Please show me how to come back into alignment. Please show me how to trust you. And the more we reconnect with our faith, we reconnect with something bigger than ourselves. When we connect to the cosmic perspective, when we connect to the universe, We realize how small so many of these fears are. When I connect to a higher power, I, 1, see how short my life is. My life is short. In the span of things, mother Earth has been here for so freaking long.
Amanda Durocher [00:27:02]:
1000000 of years. My life is really, really short, And so it's my job to enjoy it while I'm here, but I'm only able to enjoy it when I free myself of my fears. And so many times, I'm able to free myself of those fears by surrendering to something bigger than myself. I think we can get stuck in fear when we think we're running out life alone, when we think that we're the only 1 watching our own back, when we think we gotta do it all by ourselves. And the truth is we don't. There is an all loving presence surrounding us. And when we can connect to that higher power, we can really surrender those fears and understand that they were just fears, and that we're actually a soul having a human experience. And I believe so many of us here, especially if you're listening to this podcast, because I know many of us have experienced really big hardships throughout life, a lot of pain and wounding.
Amanda Durocher [00:27:58]:
And that can create a lot of fear within us because it's terrifying. It's terrifying to experience really hard experiences, especially when we have good hearts and good intentions. You You wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't have a good heart. People without good hearts are not looking to grow and change themselves and to step into their soul's purpose and Connect back with their heart. But if you're here, you have a good heart and a good intention, and remembering that will help you to free yourself of your fear and also remembering that you are safe and that you are held by something larger and that you are held by higher power. You're held by your own heart and your own soul. Your soul is here having a human experience, and it loves every second of it, and it loves you so fully. And another thing I just wanna mention before I wrap up this question is that when we are facing our fears, I want you to think of yourself as the main character of your life.
Amanda Durocher [00:28:52]:
Think of any movie you've seen that had and impact on you. And very likely, the protagonist of that movie had to face fears to become who they are at the end of the movie, and that is what we are doing here through our human experience. We are facing our own fears every day in order to transform ourselves into who we came here to be. And a great book for helping you to call on a higher power And move out of fearful thinking into loving thinking is The Universe Has Your Back by Gabby Bernstein. I think this is a very simple book with a lot of helpful practices. She Gives a lot of intro practices to help you to slow down and to witness that fearful thinking and realign with love. So if you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend The Universe Has Your Back by Gabby Bernstein. And I just wanna end this episode with reminding you that our inner power comes from facing our fears.
Amanda Durocher [00:29:48]:
It's courageous and brave to face your fears. It isn't Always easy. I know that for sure. But every time we face our fears, we're given a gift. It could be an insight. It could be clarity. It could be more self love, more compassion, or learning. But it's so important for us all to continue to look at, honor, and heal our fears.
Amanda Durocher [00:30:06]:
I think that love really is the cure to fear based thinking, and that love starts within you, with you in your own heart and the love of self. I just wanted to wrap this question up with reminding you of the power within you and that there's nothing wrong with your fearful thoughts. It's just part of the human experience. It's just part of that journey you are on. So thank you so much for this question. I'm sending you so much love. Thank Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of New View Advice. Today, we talked about fearful thinking and steps for overcoming fear, and these steps were acknowledging the fear, and any emotions that arise.
Amanda Durocher [00:30:45]:
Step 2 was to slow down and give yourself space. Step 3 was to begin to notice patterns. Step 4 was to shift to loving and peaceful thoughts, and step 5 is to call on faith and a higher power. Thank you again for joining me for this episode. If you enjoyed this episode, I invite you to follow the podcast on your podcasting app and to leave a 5 star review. Ratings and followers really help to bring more people to the podcast. It helps the podcasting apps to prioritize my podcast when people are searching for new podcasts. So if you enjoyed today's episode, I'd really appreciate a follow and a 5 star review.
Amanda Durocher [00:31:17]:
Thank you again for tuning in to another episode of new view advice. As always, I am so Grateful to offer you a new view on whatever you may be going through. Sending you all my love. See you next time.
5 Steps to Overcome Fearful Thinking
So these 5 steps are:
1, acknowledge the fear is there and any emotions that arise.
2 is slow down and give yourself space.
3 is begin to notice patterns.
4 is to shift to loving and peaceful thoughts and away from the things you can't control. And
5 is to call on faith, your heart, and a higher power. So I'm going to dive deeper into each one of these steps.
So step number 1 is acknowledge the fear is there and any emotions that arise. So it's important for us to acknowledge the fearful thought. We want to catch the thought. We wanna see that we're even having a fearful thought.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:29]:
It takes conscious effort to even understand that our mind might be playing out a story of fearful thinking. K? And oftentimes when we're having fearful thoughts, emotions arise with them. So we wanna acknowledge if any emotions arise as well. These emotions could be anxiety, sadness, fear, Depression, anger, and we want to acknowledge both of them. We want to give space to the thought, and we wanna give space to the feelings. And when we do that, we create space within ourselves to begin to witness the fearful thoughts and the emotions. I I think so many people have fearful thoughts and stories on repeat all the time, and they never take the time to acknowledge them. And this leads me to step 2, because how we begin to acknowledge the fearful thoughts and these emotions is to begin to slow down.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:15]:
Right? We need to slow down and give ourselves space. Because oftentimes, these fearful thoughts can pick up, and they just create more and more thoughts. And to me, that's like we're beginning to pick up momentum, or we're moving faster Turn faster, but it's almost like running out a wall. Like, we're running in place, and we wanna slow down so we could step back from that wall, so we could step back from those fearful thoughts. And this is where self care becomes really important because it's important to have practices that assist you in slowing down in the moment. Many times, so many of us are running so fast throughout Today, we're jumping from thing to thing to thing that we can lose track of ourselves, and that's when we start to become unconscious and when these fearful thoughts can come in. So So we wanna learn to slow down, and so it's important to find practices that work for you to slow down. Right? So this could be breathing, Finding different breathing techniques.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:03]:
I love box breathing, which is breathing in for 4, holding for 4, Breathing out for 4, holding for 4, and repeating that until you feel yourself start to slow down. I also think grounding techniques are really helpful. So getting out in nature really helps us to slow down. Getting out in nature, go for a walk, walk around your neighborhood, Go to a park, put your feet on the grass, but getting out in nature, disconnecting from our phones is really helpful with slowing down. Our phones can be really addictive, and they can keep us in unconscious patterns. Right? There's so many times I open my phone, and all of a sudden, I'm on a random page on the Internet, and I'm like, how did I even get here? So a lot of times, our phones disconnect us from ourselves, so slowing down is a way to connect back to ourselves. Also, I think meditation's a really helpful way to slow down. I know that's what I use.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:56]:
Journaling can be really helpful to slow down. Right? A lot of times, our thoughts move faster than our pen on the page. So when we're writing them, it's like, oh my gosh. I can't keep up, but then we start to slow down. I also think that taking baths or long showers can help us to slow down if we find ourselves in a sea of negative thoughts or fearful thinking, Just really taking time to slow down depending on how long you've been in these fearful thoughts. If it's been days days, you may need a whole day To slow down, I often find that fearful thinking is when we're in that stress response, so when we're in fight or flight. And sometimes for me personally, it can take days for me to come out of fight or flight depending on how long I've been in fight or flight, how long I've been stressed. And sometimes I need a couple days to come out and to get back to the present moment.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:47]:
I find it really important for self to prioritize slowing down every day. So I meditate every morning. That's really helpful for me because that helps me to stay grounded throughout the day. And I noticed that when I lose that, My morning routine when I don't prioritize that, it's much easier for me to be stressed and to stay in fight or flight, and then I can get more caught in that negative thought cycle. So So I can get more caught in fearful based thinking because I haven't taken time to connect back with myself, and that's why it takes conscious effort. It takes active practice to come back to the present moment. We can do it in any moment, but I find that if I leave time for connecting back with myself, it Takes me less time if fearful thoughts come up. I'm less likely to attach to them, and I'm able to catch them quicker.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:32]:
And so this leads me into the 3rd step. So So once you've acknowledged you have fearful thoughts and any emotions arising and you've slowed down to give yourself space, I invite you to begin to notice any patterns. So this could be patterns about the fear, or it could be patterns about when you have this fear. So I wanted to give an example of noticing patterns because I think that sometimes the pattern isn't exactly the same as the situation. And I'm gonna give this example here. So last year, I developed a fear of driving, and I was always terrified to drive. And I would go to horse therapy, so I was forced to drive myself once a week. Every other time, I would make Evan drive, so I was avoiding my fear.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:14]:
But when I had to drive myself, my fears would arise, and I would spend the 35 minutes in the car terrified. I had so many fearful thoughts. And one day on my way to therapy, I was like, okay, Amanda. This is crazy. You've never feared driving before. What is going on? What are you so afraid of? And when I began to breathe, so I began to slow down, you know, my heart was racing, but I slowed myself down. I slowed my car down, and I just allowed myself to be with myself. I turned the music off, and I was like, what is going on here? And I began to notice the pattern.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:46]:
Ernie. So I wasn't actually afraid of driving. I was afraid of when a car would drive behind me. I was interpreting that as a fear of driving because very often when you're in the car, somebody is driving behind you. Right? So I just had said I have a fear of driving. But, really, when I connected to it, it was I had a fear of somebody driving behind me. And I was like, okay. That's interesting.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:05]:
Why do I fear somebody driving behind me? And the thought that just kept coming up is I fear being attacked from behind. I fear being attacked from behind. And that was really interesting because in a car, thinking I'd be attacked from behind was, like, not really the same. But, also, I could see how my body was fearing that, but I really looked at that word attacked because I was, like, attacked from behind. Even if I was rear ended, I don't think it would be purposely like, why do I feel like a car behind me could lead to me being attacked from behind? And in this moment, on the way to therapy, a very divine moment because I was able to go unpack this in therapy after, I was able to Connect back to in my youth, in my teen years, when I was literally attacked from behind, and I had never processed the fear that arose within me from being attacked from behind. And so this fear was manifesting anytime I was in the car, my fear of being rear ended and my fear of being attacked from behind anytime a car drove behind And for a long time, I didn't have this fear. But when this fear was ready to be looked at, witnessed, and processed, I began to fear driving. And I share this story because, one, the fear of driving And the fear of being attacked from behind connected to my teen years don't necessarily correlate.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:24]:
It took me slowing down and noticing the pattern and connecting with my heart to see that path for myself. But somebody else who has a fear of driving, they're gonna have a totally different reason for that fear of driving. And it could do something with, like, a car accident or it could do with something car based or maybe it doesn't like my story, But it required me taking the time to be with this experience, be with this fear. And as I mentioned earlier, life is really about facing our fears. Right? So I decided to slow down and be with this because I didn't wanna fear driving. Right? I actually really love to drive, But I stopped loving to drive when I had this fear up, and it took me a couple months to acknowledge this fear because fear isn't comfortable. And oftentimes, the things we're afraid of connect back to rooted wounds like the one I just shared. That wasn't a fun memory to come up for me.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:19]:
Being attacked from behind in my teen years, that was a very painful memory. But once I gave it space and I processed it, now I don't Fear being attacked from behind because I understand that I've lived 32 years of my life, and I've been attacked from behind one time. But my body still had that fear because I had a real experience that needed to be witnessed and looked at, and my mind kept fearing that happening again. But when I processed it, then I was able to say, that was a really horrible experience. I'm so sorry that happened, but it happened one time in 32 years. I don't need to fear that for the rest of my life. Instead, I choose to trust the other cars on the road. I choose to trust myself.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:00]:
And And that was something else that came up with my fear of driving was this trust in others. So sometimes when I'm working through trust issues, it can come out in the car. I can Find myself not trusting the other drivers on the road, but that's just pointing me towards my own mistrust. So I hope somebody finds that helpful, but I wanted to offer that as an example of how our fears are often pattern fears. Right? So I would have that fear anytime I got in the car. And then the fears would start to escalate, and I would just have fears in general. But, really, when I connected back to the rooted fear, the fear was the fear of being attacked from behind. But when I slowed down, I was able to identify the core fear.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:40]:
And I think that's true for most fears is that there's gonna be a core fear you can get to over and over again. So that's one example of a pattern. That's a pattern that goes back to a childhood wound. You know, another pattern you may notice is that there's a time of day or there's an experience that leads to fearful thinking. So I find if I haven't gotten enough sleep. Or if I'm really tired or if I'm burnt out, I can have more fear based thoughts. And oftentimes, it's not really about identifying, like, a root experience in childhood. Instead, it's about identifying the situation that leads to the fear based think thinking.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:14]:
So and that's another pattern, though. So for me, if It's the end of the day, and I'm starting to have negative or fear based thoughts. A lot of times, I'm like, oh, jeez. I have to stop working. Like, I've been going way too fast, way too hard, doing way too much. I gotta slow down because my mind is telling me that it doesn't feel safe. So a lot of times when I work too hard, a lot of negative thoughts can come up because I need to slow down. I need to fill my own cup up.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:39]:
When we over Expend ourselves. It can lead to fear based thoughts because we're overdoing it. So that's another type of pattern that can arise. And so a book I wanted to also offer here is The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. I think this book can be really helpful for identifying these patterns with the fear based thinking because He talks about in his book that sometimes when we hit our upper limit so sometimes when life is really good, then fears can arise in other areas of our lives. So say you just got a promotion at work, maybe then your relationship starts to fall apart. And it's oftentimes because we can't be Really good all the time. It's part of the human experience is that survival wise, we've actually kind of programmed joy out of ourselves, so it takes conscious effort to bring joy into our lives and to become conscious that fears will arise when we're feeling really good in life.
Amanda Durocher [00:23:29]:
So I thought the big leap could be helpful for anybody who's struggling with fear based thinking. So once you acknowledge the fear, you slow down, you possibly notice a pattern and don't get stuck on the pattern. If you can't figure out the pattern, don't overthink it. You know, we can just move to step 4, which is shift into more loving and peaceful thoughts because most of the fears that are arising are things we can't control. So we want to identify this. We wanna become aware of this. So when I feared someone rear ending me or attacking me from behind in the car, I identified the pattern that led me there, but then I was able to insert a more loving thought, which was one for myself. Like, being like, Oh, wow.
Amanda Durocher [00:24:10]:
This fear was valid. I'm so sorry you had that fear. So sorry you had that experience, Amanda. I love you. That was a really scary experience, But in this present moment, we're safe. In this present moment, everything is okay. In this present moment, I am protected. And by moving those thoughts into a more loving place, I was able to feel more peaceful in the car.
Amanda Durocher [00:24:34]:
Anytime that fear would arise, I was able to shift back into that loving place of, I am protected. I am safe. Everything is working out. Or with an example of a loved one dying. When I was fearing Evan dying, I saw that my fear was based in this idea of being left behind, but I can't control that. I can't control if people die. I can't control if people leave my life. So instead, I chose to shift into loving thoughts, which were gratitude thoughts.
Amanda Durocher [00:25:01]:
Right? If you're trying to think of a loving thought, shifting into gratitude is a great practice, you know, and instead telling myself, thank god I have this moment with Evan. Thank god we gotta spend today together. I am so thankful for right now. I'm so grateful for today because I don't know what tomorrow holds, but I'm so grateful I gotta spend today with him. I'm so grateful Evan's in my life, and I'm able to shift into gratitude. And when I shift into gratitude, those fears, they dissipate because gratitude helps us to know we're safe right now. So gratitude is a really helpful practice when shifting into love. And my 5th step for overcoming fear and moving into love is to call on your faith, call on a higher power to help you with this.
Amanda Durocher [00:25:39]:
You You know, I think as humans, we think we have to do everything alone. We think we have to go at life. You know? I'm seeing that visual again of running at a wall, and faith helps us to take a step back from the wall. Faith helps us to see that maybe we can jump over the wall. Faith helps us to see that maybe there's a door right next to the wall, but our faith helps us to see a bigger picture. And so if you're having trouble letting go of your fearful thinking, if you're having trouble noticing your patterns, if you're having trouble with all these steps, Then skip right to this step and call on a higher power. And maybe you identify with God. Maybe you identify with the universe.
Amanda Durocher [00:26:12]:
Maybe you identify with your higher self. Maybe you're more comfortable Well, just connecting with your own heart. Whatever that faith you have, whatever that higher power you believe in, whatever you connect with, Take time to connect with it when you are in fear. One of my daily prayers is like, thank you god for showing me this fear. Please show me the way out. Please show me how to realign with you. Please show me the best way forward. Please show me my highest path.
Amanda Durocher [00:26:36]:
God, I see that I got out of alignment. Please show me how to come back into alignment. Please show me how to trust you. And the more we reconnect with our faith, we reconnect with something bigger than ourselves. When we connect to the cosmic perspective, when we connect to the universe, We realize how small so many of these fears are. When I connect to a higher power, I, 1, see how short my life is. My life is short. In the span of things, mother Earth has been here for so freaking long.
Amanda Durocher [00:27:02]:
1000000 of years. My life is really, really short, And so it's my job to enjoy it while I'm here, but I'm only able to enjoy it when I free myself of my fears. And so many times, I'm able to free myself of those fears by surrendering to something bigger than myself. I think we can get stuck in fear when we think we're running out life alone, when we think that we're the only 1 watching our own back, when we think we gotta do it all by ourselves. And the truth is we don't. There is an all loving presence surrounding us. And when we can connect to that higher power, we can really surrender those fears and understand that they were just fears, and that we're actually a soul having a human experience. And I believe so many of us here, especially if you're listening to this podcast, because I know many of us have experienced really big hardships throughout life, a lot of pain and wounding.
Amanda Durocher [00:27:58]:
And that can create a lot of fear within us because it's terrifying. It's terrifying to experience really hard experiences, especially when we have good hearts and good intentions. You You wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't have a good heart. People without good hearts are not looking to grow and change themselves and to step into their soul's purpose and Connect back with their heart. But if you're here, you have a good heart and a good intention, and remembering that will help you to free yourself of your fear and also remembering that you are safe and that you are held by something larger and that you are held by higher power. You're held by your own heart and your own soul. Your soul is here having a human experience, and it loves every second of it, and it loves you so fully. And another thing I just wanna mention before I wrap up this question is that when we are facing our fears, I want you to think of yourself as the main character of your life.
Amanda Durocher [00:28:52]:
Think of any movie you've seen that had and impact on you. And very likely, the protagonist of that movie had to face fears to become who they are at the end of the movie, and that is what we are doing here through our human experience. We are facing our own fears every day in order to transform ourselves into who we came here to be. And a great book for helping you to call on a higher power And move out of fearful thinking into loving thinking is The Universe Has Your Back by Gabby Bernstein. I think this is a very simple book with a lot of helpful practices. She Gives a lot of intro practices to help you to slow down and to witness that fearful thinking and realign with love. So if you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend The Universe Has Your Back by Gabby Bernstein. And I just wanna end this episode with reminding you that our inner power comes from facing our fears.
Amanda Durocher [00:29:48]:
It's courageous and brave to face your fears. It isn't Always easy. I know that for sure. But every time we face our fears, we're given a gift. It could be an insight. It could be clarity. It could be more self love, more compassion, or learning. But it's so important for us all to continue to look at, honor, and heal our fears.
Amanda Durocher [00:30:06]:
I think that love really is the cure to fear based thinking, and that love starts within you, with you in your own heart and the love of self. I just wanted to wrap this question up with reminding you of the power within you and that there's nothing wrong with your fearful thoughts. It's just part of the human experience. It's just part of that journey you are on. So thank you so much for this question. I'm sending you so much love. Thank Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of New View Advice. Today, we talked about fearful thinking and steps for overcoming fear, and these steps were acknowledging the fear, and any emotions that arise.
Amanda Durocher [00:30:45]:
Step 2 was to slow down and give yourself space. Step 3 was to begin to notice patterns. Step 4 was to shift to loving and peaceful thoughts, and step 5 is to call on faith and a higher power. Thank you again for joining me for this episode. If you enjoyed this episode, I invite you to follow the podcast on your podcasting app and to leave a 5 star review. Ratings and followers really help to bring more people to the podcast. It helps the podcasting apps to prioritize my podcast when people are searching for new podcasts. So if you enjoyed today's episode, I'd really appreciate a follow and a 5 star review.
Amanda Durocher [00:31:17]:
Thank you again for tuning in to another episode of New View Advice. As always, I am so Grateful to offer you a new view on whatever you may be going through. Sending you all my love. See you next time.