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.

Day 71- Falling in the Face of Confrontation

 Falling in the Face of Confrontation - Why does it happen?

Within this blog I am going to be looking at three events that occurred within which I experienced myself as fearful in relation to people.

Ever since I can remember I was very shy within and as the experience of ‘fear’ towards people. This fear has many dimensions, which I will look at one by one, beginning with the ‘fear of confrontation.’ This fear exists even before a confrontation occurs, due to the ‘potential’ for a confrontation to occur. The fear is that, when in a confrontation, I fear the other person will ‘take my power away’, and restrain/restrict/control me through their reactions towards me.

I have already realized that this is self-created, because when I looked at it I see that I ‘fear’ the reaction of others, thus I take my own power away by restraining/restricting/controlling myself, in an attempt to avoid getting a ‘negative’ reaction from people, which I express in a realization I made here:

“I see some relationships here… between my accepting/allowing myself to 'feel bad' when others are angry/irritated/annoyed, and also to me restraining/controlling/restricting myself but making 'them' responsible within thinking it's 'them' that has the power to take my power away, but really I'm trying to avoid 'feeling bad' by never upsetting anyone- thus restraining/controlling/restricting myself.”

I realize now that this is self-created, and it is I who is giving my power away (“power” meaning- the ability to do/be myself/express myself/speak up/feel comfortable, etc…), however, throughout my life, within not taking responsibility for this within the belief that it is ‘people’ ‘out there’ ‘doing this’ ‘to me,’ I effectively lived within the fear of upsetting anyone within the belief that ‘they’ had this power. This manifested as me being very quiet, suppressing myself (restraining/controlling/restricting myself) so as not to upset anyone, thus- ‘shyness,’ and also, being very aware of what I am doing and how I am being and how others are reacting. Another outflow of this is keeping to myself, not sharing myself, my values/principles etc… not drawing attention to what is important to me. Also, I would participate as aprojected version of myself, as the characters I have designed that do not upset the waters, that are ‘agreeable’, ‘nice’, ‘always flexible’ and other personalities along these lines.

I understand that it is not to now become ‘mean’, ‘rigid’ and ‘dis-agreeable’, or unnecessarily confrontational, but rather to change my starting point to minimizing conflict for practical purposes, and not because of avoidance, suppression and/or fear. And to be a decent human being who works well with others because that is how I would like others to be with me, not because I’m trying not to upset anyone.

So I will begin by looking at three events that occurred recently in order to open the point up and then look at how I created this entire experience for myself.

Event 1)

I recently experienced the ‘fear of confrontation’ when I was going camping. I haven’t seen many of the people I was going camping with for a while and have not had much communication with them. I am, however, connected to them online through several social network sites, which I post a lot of material/personal writing/videos which I am aware can get a reaction. My fear was that any number of these people could have seen something I posted or wrote, and become angry and/or defensive about it. Or someone could be following me online without my knowing, and secretly be developing a hatred towards me because of what I’m doing, what I support or what I post publicly. I notice I had the desire to be extra ‘normal’, at times I was very aware of how people were interacting with me, as I was wondering if a negative reaction to me was the result of what I stand for or if it was really about the issue at hand. On the way there I also felt a little apprehensive about walking into and living so closely with such a big group all day and night, although it all turned out to be one of the most fun times I had in a while, and I would like to do it again.

So the main points are the fear/apprehension before the event, the heightened sensitivity during the event, and the lingering fear after the event, like “I can’t believe it went so well- did I miss something?”

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear people.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear people because I fear potential confrontation with them.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear confrontation.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear confrontation because I think/believe it can/will take my power away, meaning- cause me to hide/suppress myself, to restrict/restrain/control myself instead of expressing myself as who I am.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think/believe that others outside of me have the ability to take my power away, and to stop me from doing/being who I am because they may get angry/frustrated, irritated or annoyed.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think/believe/perceive that when others react in anger/frustration/annoyance/irritation, that it is because I’m bad/wrong/out of line, or that it’s my fault/responsibility in any way shape or form.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think/believe that I ‘cause’ others to react as they do.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear the reaction of others.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think/believe the reactions of others dictates who I am.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be/become a slave to the potential/possible reactions of others.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to enslave myself to the whim of others due to fear of how they might react to me, within this, I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to change who/how I am in order to avoid ‘causing’ others to react negatively towards me.

To be continued…