Building a Healthy Relationship with Fear

The emotion of fear gets a bad rap. As a teacher, writer and coach I have seen, read and heard countless blogs, posts, articles, books and conversations about how fear must be eradicated and removed from life. Let’s take a quick step back and access this from a psychological and biological position.

 

  • All emotions are responses that are wired into our makeup and are part of the full spectrum of human emotions and experiences.

 

  • Fear is one of the largest tools for feedback to ensure safety and survival.

 

  • It is impossible to remove our ‘fight or flight’ responses.

 

When we have a healthy relationship with fear it can be a guide versus a roadblock!

 

So why can fear be so awful and crippling at times? How can we learn to harness this normal emotion to better serve us? How can we work with fear versus against it? How can we better understand ourselves and our life through fear? How can we move beyond the negative impacts of fear? How can we experience and create a healthier and more balanced relationship with fear?

 

When we have an unbalanced or unhealthy relationship with fear it can block us from moving forward, having clarity, making good choices, effectively solving problems and overcoming life’s challenges, stressors and obstacles.

 

First, let’s understand health fear…

 

Fear is a response that is meant to warn us and keep us safe. Unfortunately, many people have become ‘triggered’ into a fight or flight or fear based state 24/7 and thus respond to non-threatening issues as if they were life threatening on a physiological level. This means that the things that may not normally cause fear or stress do.

 

Let’s try a shift in our perspective about fear…

 

What if, just what if FEAR was actually there to help you?

What if FEAR was trying to work for your highest good?

 

Here are some simple steps to begin shifting your relationship with FEAR:

 

  1. Reset

Pause and reset versus reacting to fear.

Things like meditation, yoga and even simple breathing exercises can help us get back to a neutral place which will better enable us to evaluate our fear more effectively.

 

  1. Ask Yourself Powerful Questions

Engage your brain in order to get clarity.

Instead of allowing your mind to run away with the fear, as yourself powerful questions that will lead to self-discovery, effective problem solving and solutions. Questions like, ‘why am I feeling fear’, ‘what feedback or alert message is fear trying to share with me’?

 

  1. Assess

Analyze the situation.

Look at the situation that is causing the fear objectively and try to see the bigger picture, the broader meaning or the direction it is leading you towards and ask yourself WHY & HOW.

 

  1. Breath Through It

Process and release the negative aspects of the emotion while keeping the lesson or alert.

Feeling our feelings, then processing them and letting it go or releasing it is an important way to not only move forward more effectively but also to bring more balance to you mentally, emotionally, physically and even spiritually.

 

  1. Make a Plan

Based on your self-discovery and analysis make a plan of actionable steps.

Write out very specific action steps to take to begin moving towards solutions or achieving goals.

 

  1. Get Support

Gain the tools, techniques, mentors, friends or coaches to help you!

Don’t go it alone! Everyone can relate to feelings of fear and also sometimes getting stuck because of them. Talk about it with friends and loved ones, research tools and techniques or even see a life coach (preferably an Integrative Life Coach iwacoaching.com) who can help you become more equipped to handle fear and stressors as well as to overcome their negative effects and successfully move forward.

 

Living A Holistic Life

Living A Holistic Life

By Rachel Eva, C.HT, M.NLP, MTILC

Founder of IWA (Integrative Wellness Academy), Integrative Life Coach & Health Practitioner

 

We hear the word holistic and holism tossed around a lot in integrative wellness and natural medicine. These terms have already flooded the health and wellness markets and made their way into popular culture.

 

But what exactly does this mean?

What is ‘holism’ and how can it be ‘lived’ in everyday life?

 

As the founder of IWA (Integrative Wellness Academy), myself and the IWA team trains and certifies thousands of integrative life coaches each year. As part of how we teach our students to coach their clients we educate them on holism as a core element to help their clients achieve health, success and balance through applying ‘holism’ through the Holistic Life Model, which I will share with you!

 

First, let’s define holistic and holism so you can get some simple clarity. According to dictionary.com, here are the definitions:

 

Holistic –

 

Philosophy – characterized by comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.

Medicine – characterized by the treatment of the whole person, taking into account mental and social factors, rather than just the physical symptoms of a disease.

 

Holism –

 

The theory that parts of a whole are in intimate interconnection, such that they cannot exist independently of the whole, or cannot be understood without reference to the whole, which is thus regarded as greater than the sum of its parts. Holism is often applied to mental states, language, and ecology.

 

 

What does this mean in more simplistic and applicable terms?

 

Every part of us, our minds (mental), bodies (physical), emotions (emotional) and spirits (spiritual) are interconnected and have an effect on each other, as well as an effect on each of the major areas of life; health, career & finances, family & relationships, spirituality & self-development. Furthermore, each of the major areas of our life have an effect on all aspects or parts of self (the 4 systems); mental, emotional, physical and spiritual. We need to VIEW and CARE care for the whole picture collectively, versus just a few parts in order to live the best life possible.

 

Before I dive in and introduce you to the Holistic Life Model, I need to further share my definitions with you for the four systems or parts of self:

 

Mental –


The Mental System is your thought life, including your self-perception and thought patterns as well as our beliefs and conscious perceptions. This is also the way we view other things out in the world.

 

Emotional –

 

The Emotional System are your feelings and your emotions. It’s also your relationships with other people and also the relationship you have with yourself.

 

Physical =

 

The Physical System is your physical health, as well as the tangible physical things you have in our life.

 

Spiritual –

 

The Spiritual System is our true-self, our personal development, connection to community, world and our connection to a higher power, whatever that definition is or is not for you.

 

The Holistic Life Model

 

The holistic Life Model is living your life, caring for, balancing and bringing health to all aspects of self and all major areas of life, in other words, caring for the whole self with a ‘big picture’ approach.

 

So how exactly can you begin to care for and bring balance to all of these aspects of self? Here are a few steps to begin moving your life towards aligning with and practicing the Holistic Life Model:

 

  1. Set an intention to pay attention to and care for ALL of the systems/aspects of self and all of the major areas of life
  2. Put this intention into daily practice through actions!
  3. Make a ‘to do’ list of actions you can take to bring more wellness, health and balance to each system and to each major area of your life
  4. Schedule it! Put these actions steps into your schedule and stick to them

 

Remember it’s a process, not an event and the goal is to MOVE towards what you want to have, do, be, experience and achieve!