{"id":47801,"date":"2022-09-05T10:54:16","date_gmt":"2022-09-05T10:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/?p=47801"},"modified":"2022-09-05T10:54:24","modified_gmt":"2022-09-05T10:54:24","slug":"breaking-the-cycle-of-fear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/2022\/09\/05\/breaking-the-cycle-of-fear\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking the cycle of fear."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The problem is almost never the problem.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real problem is the anticipation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The worrying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And analyzing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And expecting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The constant vigilance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem is the tension, the dis-ease, the restlessness that is caused by the non-stop feedback, the planning, and the constant looking around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What fucks us up is not what we\u2019re afraid of, but our endless reflecting on it, preparing for it, and dealing with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While it\u2019s not even there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s not a single event or situation we can\u2019t handle, something that we\u2019ve seen countless times in the history of mankind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet there\u2019s this constant managing and manipulating, where we’re incessantly taking our emotional and physical temperature and trying to change how we feel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life doesn\u2019t need us to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s not your job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The irony, even, is that this kind of spontaneous (very human) fear-mongering, this non-stop sensitivity, often causes what we were so deeply afraid of to begin with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I meet people all the time who are afraid of a single big event, like losing their minds or suffering a brutal panic attack that will paralyze them forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes they\u2019ve been living in fearful anticipation of that thing for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a cycle that is fed by the cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A self-containing system of anxiety release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vigilance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sensory confusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discomfort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suppressing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fearing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hating it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drip, drip, drip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Managing it, running away from it, or, eventually, obeying it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that might be the saddest of all consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How we fully empower a specific future event, a mere mental image, and lose our autonomy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How that misunderstanding makes our world smaller and smaller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How the thing we fear the most gets stronger because we make it so very important, and because we feel so much tension around it, which is caused by our thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem is hardly ever the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the frantic fantasizing about the possible outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The steering away from the feared event (even if it\u2019s not there and hasn\u2019t been there for years and probably will never be there, ever).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the changing of our routines so we might be able to outsmart it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the cure is not found in new habits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cure is found in understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s found in an insight that can happen just like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I\u2019m trapped in my self-created maze, the one I innocently made up to avoid a specific future I fear, the one I keep on enforcing because my anxiety tells me I should.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s like being afraid of nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that is very sad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What if nothing is actually the coolest thing ever?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Photo by @justusmenke, for Unsplash)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The problem is almost never the problem. The real problem is the anticipation. The worrying. And analyzing. And expecting. The constant vigilance. The problem is the tension, the dis-ease, the restlessness that is caused by the non-stop feedback, the planning, and the constant looking around. What fucks us up is not what we\u2019re afraid of, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47802,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[99,102,97,117,100,113,103,112],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47801"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47801"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47803,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47801\/revisions\/47803"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}