Fear (cf. Dufear)

Fear is commonly mistaken for its cousin dufear. What we normally call fear is actually dufear, resisted (dammed-up) fear.

Unresisted fear, fear in its "natural" state is simple energy we can use. It can even provide us with a feeling of confidence.

When my cat Princess is frightened, she is powerful and confident in her actions. This is because her fear is not contaminated by resistance. 

In contrast, when we humans are "fearful," worry, anxiety, stress, and overwhelm, we typically feel less energy and less confidence. It's because we're not feeling fear; we are feeling dufear (resisted fear).

Just as fear is felt automatically, the resistance to fear is automatic. We adult, or semi-adult, humans rarely feel fear in an unresisted state.

Consider the two-year-old child. When they get frightened, they express it immediately and fully. In most cases, in a few minutes, it's over and they're relaxed again, just like my cat.

But we adults have automatized the resistance to fear. We've made fear the bad guy, not our friend to be used whenever needed. 
 
We've become so accustomed to our resistance to fear that we walk through life with our energy drained, never suspecting how much energy we are wasting just to keep our fear dammed up. Look at how much energy that two-year-old has. It's largely because they don't have to constantly use up their reserves of energy to hold back the fear with the dam.

Imagine a flowing river. The river expresses energy, sometimes flowing more calmly, sometimes with more force. See the flowing river as your fear. Then imagine that you decided you didn't like that flowing energy, maybe it made you feel out of control. And other people gave you the impression that the flowing water was not beautiful and it made them uncomfortable.

So you built a dam to stop the flowing river. Oh, so peaceful the placid water; other people liked the placid water. To try to keep the unmoving water in place you had to use energy to keep holding the water back...but then it sometimes tries to flow over the top of the dam and that requires you resist the water even more. 

This is your life. Resisting fear. Creating and maintaining dufear. All the following are created by or contributed to by dufear: worry, anxiety, irritability, feeling pressured, feeling exhausted, feeling stress, impatient with yourself or others, defensive, blaming or anger, lack of confidence, feeling that something is difficult, problems in making requests or saying “no," issues with maintaining good boundaries with others, unwilling to share yourself more openly and with vulnerability, feeling guilty or regretful, trying to control others, feeling shy, feeling lonely, feeling embarrassed, jealousy or envy.

To resolve any of these issues, use undoing fear (exactly speaking, it should be called undoing dufear). This will begin to break down that dam, brick by brick.