Footsteps To Freedom

According to Psych Central “The amygdala, as a part of the brain that processes fear, triggers anger, and motivates us to act.” But we after to ask the question, act on what or how? Fear can stifle any growth process if we allow it. Fear can keep you from moving forward and making hard decisions. But anger! Ahh, now that’s another story. Anger can motivate us to act irrationally or irresponsibly. “Fear promotes anger and sadness counteracts anger”. And it all connected. Ok, where am I going with this?

Start with fear. Fear has kept many entrepreneurs without a business, and many millionaires destitute because they only realized that business or making money in their minds. The fear of not knowing the outcome stops the process to realize our dreams. And realizing that we are the only ones stopping our progress can make us angry. Angry at us for not believing in ourselves. If we are mad enough, that anger should motivate and push us to our purpose.

Being in an unhealthy relationship can cause fear and anger. Fear because we don’t want to leave. And anger because deep down we realize leaving can free us if we’re not so afraid to do so. We stay in our relationships for several reasons, but it comes down to fear. The trick is to let the anger triggered by fear motivate us to change!

Change because it is necessary to do. Life is shorter than we think, and we should not live our lives waiting for people to change or make us happy. We are responsible for our happiness. People say make your marriages work, make your relationships work but if there is only one person working on the relationship you are fighting a losing battle.

Fear does three things. It causes you to fight, flight, or freeze. Fight because you can’t allow yourself to stay stuck. Flight because moving away from dysfunction is better than staying miserable. And freeze because we don’t know what to do, yet.

I’ve experienced all three. I fought for years in a marriage that I knew was over because I thought things would change. If I continue to accept his disrespect, he would eventually love me for staying. Wrong!

Flight. I ran from my abuser in the middle of the night while he walked to the bar to get a drink. I ran and didn’t stop running until I was free of the beatings and abuse.

And I froze. Loving him because I saw in him that he didn’t see in himself. And for nine years loving him allowed me to lose myself. Fear is a powerful emotion, and it can stop your entire life if you allow it.

The one saving grace about fear is it does trigger anger that motivates us to move. I got mad! I got tired and I decided that no one will ever make me as happy as I can make myself. All those years of being with men that didn’t know me and couldn’t love me all for fear. But anger served me better. Because I don’t accept the things I cannot change, I changed the things I won’t accept. I tried to love and support and be the person they wanted me to be, but it’s not me, and it does not make me happy. I will not, I cannot lose myself again, waiting for others to catch up to me, get to know me, and understand me. I would rather give up and move on without this life before I stay in this life and be unhappy. Being in love is not high on my need list. Having someone isn’t either. I’ve learned over the years that “to my own self I must be true. I cannot make people see me for who I am. I cannot allow folks to make me feel less than because they don’t know who they are. I am simply not the person to teach anyone how to treat me. If they don’t know, then they don’t deserve me. I’ve done a lot of work and most of that work was done out of fear of repeating the same patterns and anger because of the time I wasted on people who didn’t even deserve me.

If you want to get free. Push past every obstacle in your way. Don’t let anything stop you, not even your own fear.