Fear is one of the hardest emotions to become conscious about. It goes deep and touches almost everything in most of us, yet it is very hard to consciously grasp what exactly we are afraid of. This article is for those who want to know the root cause of their fear. And I picked the one “root cause” that I see coming up everywhere.
In my life it took years to state why I feel fear many times. And this is what I distilled it down to: “I am afraid of losing my safety.”
How Does it Form?
Did you ever think about this: What comes first in your opinion, thought or emotion? In other words: Do your thoughts and beliefs form your emotions or your emotions form your thoughts (beliefs)? I asked this question a lot of times and way more people said that emotion comes first and they form the thoughts.
People dealing with this say that what may be closer to reality is this: First we have a sensory perception of the situation. Then our mind processes this perception, tries to understand it, make sense of it. The result of this “process” is what I call a thought. Then this thought (a way of looking at the situation) may trigger an emotion.
So my point is: Fear is a reaction to how we perceive a situation. In other words our logic on how we understand the given situation.
There are so many things that we can be afraid of. Why the fear of losing our safety is one of the main themes?
Why Does it Form?
Just this one article would be way too long to go into deep details and my intent is to come with some food for thought. Also, I am not implying at all that any of the below are in direct cause-and-effect relationship to the fear of losing safety.
- Passed on as a mindset from the family of origin or the “world around us”.
- We are social beings, we learn from each other, we require unity. And it can happen all too easy that we unconsciously take mindsets and behaviors from people around us. Note: The fear carried on with the mindset may not have much or any connection to reality.
- Abandonment in early childhood.
- Developmental psychologist recognize that abandonment – especially if prolonged – will lead to severe problems. I find that one of the layers deep down will probably be the fear of losing our safety.
- Emotional or physical abuse.
- A father (or father figure) unable to help the child to become more independent.
Hiding Places
Again, I am not implying at all that any of the below are in direct cause-and-effect relationship. I am only trying to come with some food for thought again so that you can connect more dots in your life. (And I guess the below list could grow into the hundreds until we said, ok, now we covered some…)
- I am a people pleaser.
- I was taught (verbally or non-verbally) that I need to always look to please people well beyond what is in balance so that they “don’t leave me and tolerate my presence”. I need to be the inferior one.
- I am pulling back my belly so it doesn’t look that big. Belly shame in other words.
- I get to the conclusion from the world around me that I need to look good to fit in. Otherwise I run the risk of getting excluded.
- I cannot say no.
- Maybe I was not allowed to get to that place where I could understand that there is nothing wrong with saying no.
- I have a hard time to know what I want.
- The idea of letting myself think freely and experiment mentally makes me think that I would lose control. Not to mention the shame that may also kick in.
- I want to become very rich.
- It isn’t hard to inherit this twisted belief in our society that money will buy you safety…
- I do not dare to leave a bad job, a toxic relationship.
- One of the main things why we want to belong somewhere is to feel safe. Sometimes at any cost. I am probably not saying a lot of new thoughts here.
- My back is hunched.
- My belief that I have to be inferior to other people so that I “receive some safety” shows up in my body posture.
Fear of Losing my Safety as My Main Belief System in My Life
It can go so deep, it can start to form so early in life, and it can bind us so much that it can become the main theme. It can be so much in front of us that we can have a problem to consciously realize that it is one of our main themes.
