Saturday, September 1, 2012

Day 75- The Fear of Falling in the Face of Confrontation


            This is a continuation of my last blogs, Days 71, 72, 73 & 74- “Falling in the Face of Confrontation”. I should have called them “The Fear of Falling in the Face of Confrontation, because it is that ‘fear’ which I am focusing on. It’s really the fear of people, which has many dimensions, and the one I’m focusing on is the fear of potential confrontation wherein, I participate in the thoughts that at any moment, if I step out of line within an interaction, I can/will upset the person, and they will react, and that will ‘make’ me ‘feel bad’ which I describe as ‘taking my power away.’ It feels as though I’m having my power taken away because, in that moment of ‘feeling bad’ I shut down, suppress, restrict/restrain/control myself. I even start to do this before a confrontation occurs, just to be safe in order to avoid a potential confrontation. This pattern, over time, leads me to express only a glimmer of Who I Really Am, and the enjoyment and fun and quality of the interaction is completely diminished, as I am diminished when I accept/allow myself to be/become a slave to my mind like this.

            In my last few blogs I took apart an event (Day 71) through self-forgiveness (Day 72), and I wrote it out through to self-commitments and self-corrective application (Days 73 & 74). In this blog, I will walk through another event in which I experienced the fear of confrontation as the fear of ‘having my power taken away’: The situation is a simple one, it involved me revealing a decision I had made to some people who very likely would not approve. I experienced several waves of fear before telling them. It was this not wanting to share my decision, keep it a secret, suppress it, hide it and don’t let anybody know about it, instead of standing as it. And this is very much how I experience myself within myself- as this hiding, keeping secret, suppressing, or restricting/restraining/controlling. I see that the decision was in fact a part of me that I was exposing, and then the part of me that wanted to keep it hidden/secret, is the part that I’ve abdicated- that’s the part that lays itself down and lets the fear walk all over it. I ended up speaking my decision, because I had to, and it was a bit of a rocky road for me within the conversation that took place afterwards. I felt like I had to defend myself and convince the others that the decision was a ‘good’ one- again seeking validation/approval.

            It is my responsibility to stop accepting/allowing myself to do this to myself, and to instead honour myself- all of me- and stand as that decision in every moment, because I cannot honour all of Life, if I do not even honour myself.

 

In my next blog I will walk through this situation with self-forgiveness.

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