I have been thinking about many of the clients who are drawn to our door and there is one commonality I see over and over again among our clients. Generally speaking people come with a variety of goals but when everything is broken down many of our clients are struggling with some sort of fear. Some clients are afraid to be alone, afraid to take  chance, afraid to change, afraid of their broken hearts, afraid of feelings, afraid of flying, afraid of sleeping. The list goes on and on. Basically it takes a brave soul to say I am not afraid to make changes. They come to our office when they are so miserable they are ready to make a change.

      Fear is such an important component in our lives because it is the fuel that the addictive thought system runs on. Personally I think the Devil loves it when your in fear. He takes one fear thought and inserts it in your brain and then builds on it with others so that your original fear is then blown all out of proportion.  Or do we do that to ourselves? I can't imagine why anyone would be so self-punishing.

     My experience with fears in the office is often curious. Many of us spend an extraordinary amount of time in fear of things held from our past . Ironically we keep perpetuating our fears through our negative self-talk. We hear negative things our families told us over and over again even though the family no longer is here to tell us negative things. Personally we pick up the torch and continue the fear cycle. Some of our beliefs and thoughts are irrational yet our past is our stockpile of ammunition to condem oursleves and others. Anger and resentment eats at us because we hold onto past grievances with other people and fear prevents us from letting go of our tenacious grip. The problem with this kind of fear is it keeps ourselves from entering and sustaining loving relationships. In these relationships the interpretation is:

"I am afraid to trust anyone."

"I am afraid to trust my self."

"I am afraid to accept love."
"I am afraid to give love."

     "I am afraid of anyone different than me,"

The Bible is written on just those issues, yet as a society we continue to minimize their importance.

     Another arena we spend a large amount of time in fear is in worrying about the future. What a dark black hole we let ourselves get sucked into! Every moment we spend worrying about the future robs ourselves of our genuine authenticity. Note that the key word here is worry, not necessarily making plans, setting goals. Worry is when negative thoughts go round and round in your head with no positive outcome. Planning and goal setting is laying down your ideas and then moving froward in a positive way, secure in the now.  There is a big difference. You know your are locked into worry if no positive outcome is produced and it is obsessive in nature. Some examples of future fears are as follows:

"I am afraid that we won't have enough money."

"I am afraid someone will have to take care of me."

"I am afraid I will have Alzheimer's."

"I am afraid I will have a panic attack."

"I am afraid to be in physical pain."

"I am afraid I have to live alone."

"I'm afraid I can't get off the drugs."

     Being locked into fear of the future first of all brings that future forward to you because that is where your thoughts are. Also every time we become preoccupied with the future we are creating an obstacle for love. If you consciously made the decision to not live in fear just think of how much available energy your would be freeing up for present living. Here is the final question about fear. How do you step our of it? In part that's what we do at Golden Heart Hypnosis Center. We help people take out their fears and look at them so they don't have the power to drive their lives. It isn't so easy to just say I am no longer going to fear and it just happen. You have to make it happen.

     David Mumm at Power Lear Technologies (www.PowerLearn.us) has a Creating Courage: Dissolving Fear workshop which is a good model for dealing with fear. To give a general overview there are three key components in dealing with dissolving fear.

1. Generate awareness and intention by acknowledging and naming the fear and then questioning how realistic is this fear? How does it help? Bring that fear into doubt. You then develop a courage statement in connection to the fear statement.
2. David's model has specific body movements to activate neurotransmitters in releasing embodied fear patterns.
3. The final part of the releasing of fear is acting newly and resourcefully by declaring your new way of being and action.

     A final note about fear is that sometimes work in my office takes me to different places. I have had people come into the office with a fear that is connected with a past life. The only way I know of to disconnect to that fear is a past life regression. These are rarer cases than fears of this lifetime but it is a possibility is there is no explanation for the fear from this lifetime. Is this provable? No. However I'm into doing everything I can to provide relief to my client so I don't focus on the question "Is it provable

If you don't think fears are an issues with our society take a look at the following fears we have encountered in our office:

Being alive, being yourself, intimacy, not being in control, losing control, going crazy, hurting, killing someone else, being wrong, epiloguing,fear of aging, commitment, responsibility, love, death, pain , starvation, abandonment, being alone, not being able to be oneself, ignorance, stupidity, God, failure, "other" sexual intimacy, sexual feelings, attractions, power, strength, lack, poverty, hunger, starvation, being cold, being alone, judgment, criticism, punishment, disfigurement.