In our culture, it seems to me that fear is becoming a currency. Doctors and lawyers use it, so do politicians, banks, advertisers, weather channels, corporations, insurance companies and media. Fear is sometimes woven into our psyches when we are young. It is in the air we breathe, the things we listen to, the devices we check compulsively all day, the news we feel we can’t afford to miss, the awful arguments on cable TV and the angry blogs and e-mails. Fear and warnings are embedded in our e-mails and social media messages.There is not a day when people do not warn me about life on Facebook or Twitter or in well-meaning e-mail messages. Fear is drama’s best friend, and how easy it is to be addicted to both.

But if the instruments of fear surround us,  there are tools to combat fear as well, and I have been exploring them in recent years – therapy, medication, massage, meditation, spiritual counseling, shamanic soul retrieval. I was medicated against fear for 30 years and believed it was all right to become addicted to drugs if a doctor prescribed them – and no doctor of mine every failed to prescribe them –  and it wasn’t until a friend of mine in AA told me I had become an addict that I was jolted into realizing this was not how I wished to deal with my fear.

There is, in my experience, no magic pill, no moment of revelation for coming to terms with fear. The most powerful tools for me in dealing with fear are motivation – the will to be less fearful; peace and relaxation – the calming of the mind through meditation and counseling, the opening to the meaning of  real safety and security; and concentration – a need to concentrate completely on strength, affirmation, a meaningful life and on changing the habits and stories of my mind.

For me, those are the grounding elements in dealing with fear, in understanding it and seeing other ways to think and live. Fear is as crippling as any lethal or chronic disease, it kills life, love, smothers promise and snuffs out hope and potential. I am highly motivated to live in a different way.

In recent weeks, my spiritual counselor, Pam White has guided me to a powerful new tool – self-hypnosis. I’ve downloaded several audio apps by a hypnotherapist who walks me through calming exercises, affirmations, breathing techniques and suggestions that are meant to support calm, sleep, confidence. These tapes – I listen to them on my Ipad and Iphone – have had a dramatic and immediate impact on me. They have helped my mind to calm, helped me sleep a deeper sleep, to awaken with feelings of confidence of strength, and to help me strengthen the thoughts and feelings that feed fear. I feel that my mind, which has provided me with a living but which has also worked against me, is now working for me.

This is the road to authenticity, I believe. To know oneself in the most penetrating and intimate of ways.

The therapist’s suggestions about my promise and potential seem to be embedding themselves into my mind, and self-hypnosis has gone into the deepest levels of my subconscious – the tapes are 30 to 40 minutes long – and expanded the work that I began in meditation. That is, to get below the level of clutter – the anger, fear and judgment that infect our world and my mind – and began in subtle ways to change the ways in which I have always thought. Fear is, after all, a habit, and habits can be changed.

I feel that this is one of the most powerful tools that I have encountered. I don’t think it would have helped me even a few months ago. I was motivated, but not focused or calm enough to use self-hypnosis. I am surprised at the impact it has had already – on my confidence. Fear has always rise up out of my sub-conscious to spin my mind and trigger panic in me at this business of living life. Now, it seems as if my sub-conscious is offering up a different habit, different thoughts. I am thinking more of the things I do well, getting in touch with the strength in, learning what a powerful and affirming tool love is. All sounds strange to me, still, something I would never have considered for most of my life. I think it follows all of the other work, especially the spiritual work, which paved the way for it. It is important to say that I do not believe that downloading an app will suddenly transform anyone’s consciousness. It is part of a process, part of determination and will. I am not comfortable sharing the name of the hypnotherapist now because I believe individuals need to find their own process  – their own counselors, their own reasons – for seeking help with fear, not simply following someone else’s. It’s easy to rush and download apps, not so easy to be prepared for controlling fear and changing the mind.
I will not permit other people to push me into a life of fear, and I won’t do it myself either. Motivation is so important. Every day I have told myself I will not live a fearful life, and I believe I will get there. I am getting there. I’ll write more about self-hypnosis, this profound journey into my mind. How wonderful to be doing the things I would never do, trying the things I would never try.  The opening of the mind. How strange that they so often work.