Your Fear Is Hiding Your Desire

If you feel stuck in your fear, ask yourself, WHY you want this thing you are so afraid so much!

On my sessions I hear clients say, I am afraid of being left alone, to be abandoned, never find love. Or I'm afraid of poverty, financial ruin, lose all my money. Or get sick and die, or get fat, or crazy.

A great question to ask is WHY. What's the ultimate payoff of being abandoned, poor or sick?

We are ready to explore an interesting psychoanalytical concept: your fear is hiding your desire.

My own relationship with my fears opened up to me as I started seeing interesting feeling patterns in other people: my family members, my parents, in particular, my spouses, my clients.

I could easily recognize, that people have ambivalent feelings about things they say they don't want to happen.

I remember, once I even said to my dad, who was trying to avoid this one thing in his relationships, guess what, you are already living your biggest fear!

Then I noticed, that so do I... and many other people.

We feel secretly satisfied to get what we secretly 'want', without taking responsibility for making it happen.

But, if what you want and had created isn't good for you, here comes the next question, how do you create something else?

How do you get out of arriving to this 'self fulfilling prophecy'?

So step number one is to accept the fact that you have a very strong Psyche.

Psyche is a subconscious part of your mind, that drives your actions, or prevents you from doing the right thing, or sabotaging your good efforts to make the 'official dream' a reality.

Now, everybody has a strong Psyche. This is not good or bad. It just something to work with.

I propose a great exercise from Gestalt Therapy method, that is based on the concepts of psychoanalysis.

Sit your Psyche on the chair in front of you and ask her: why do you want this (fear) so much?

What is the ultimate payoff of 'ending up' this way? What is your hidden agenda?

Listen and write down your answers.

The simple solution then is to openly examine the costs of your fear-come-true.

There's nothing wrong with understanding the real consequences of your hidden agenda...

...and...

changing your direction.

Here's how:

Ask yourself:

How else can I satisfy and achieve my ultimate wish?

For example: fear of being abandoned.

Hidden desire: be alone with yourself, feel entitled to pity. Get sympathy, help, being taken care of.

Solution: spend time alone. Experience 'aloneness' and see that it's generally safe.

Openly, without manipulation, ask people for company, friendship and support.

Be prepared to hear 'No'.

Do something in return to be a good friend/spouse/parent.

Now, how can you achieve your ultimate goal/your secret desire in a good healthy way?

Second, look for the process of HOW you see yourself coming to realizing your fear.

How specifically, do you think, it is going to happen (get sick, ending up alone, lose all your money)?

Have you seen somebody else to do that?

What happened just before they 'ended up there'? What were their options? How did they choose to act despite having other options? Why did they do that?

How are you going to do that? How are you going to ignore other options you have? What would drive you to choose this path? What else could you do?

Right now, explore and write a detailed 'manual' for accomplishing your 'hidden agenda'.

Let's do a 4 step process. Take your time, don't rush it! Stop running away from your Psyche - she wants to talk and actually be helpful.

You can see where I'm heading with this, right? Whenever you are about to do something from your list of steps, you'll become aware of driving yourself to realizing your biggest fear... and you can chose to redirect yourself.

According to Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung, grandfathers of psychoanalysis, what you become aware of will stop having such an effect on you.

Read a full article here.