Understanding and using fear properly is a milestone achievement in learning to take control of your life. Fear is often justified, but just as often not. It is justified fear that helps you learn how to make safe decisions and act in a manner that is consistent with your personal safety. It is unjustified fear that can spin you out of control.



Whether justified or not, fear can cause you to make wrong decisions and hold you back from advancement in your psychic and personal life. While it is hard, you will need to identify that which you fear. When you find that you are on auto-pilot and your reactions "just seem to happen," you will want to look deeper and identify what it is you may be afraid to confront. In other words, judge your response to things. If it appears you seem to be responding from fear, identify the fear.

Everyone is familiar with the term "fight or flight," but there is a third possibility related to flight which is avoiding the issue or ignoring it. These responses to fear are habit forming, one may begin to avoid, ignore or flee from anything which might cause or resemble fear. Rather than fleeing, fighting, or avoiding the fearful, try and learn from your responses and develop better coping habits.

Change, either external or internal, can lead to fear responses. Don't let fear dictate your response, but instead intensify and examine the fear which change is eliciting. Your subconscious mind has been trained by habit to respond your body and mind to certain fear stimuli. Your subconscious places you in a state of fear before you yourself have control over it. This subconscious conditioning, and the fearful memories of your past

overwhelm and bewilder you. This is why you must begin to reprogram your subconscious on a deliberately conscious level. Use your conscious mind to take charge and re-habituate the subconscious responses.

Fears can damage your true self. It can overwhelm and destroy self image. Determine whether the fear is appropriate. If it is it is life and limb saving. If it is not, then the response of fight, flee, or avoid, is inappropriate, and in need of change. Learn what it is about your conditions or yourself, which you are afraid to change. This is where unreasonable fears usually come from. Fear can dampen and destroy good intentions and desires. Fear can glue you to inaction. Internally, you may be afraid of some aspect of your life not being what it should be, or you may be afraid to find out that it is not

what you want it to be.

Fear can be based on a lot of different aspects of loss, the fear of losing respect, marriage, money life. We have come down out of the trees fearing predators, but now have learned to fear things within our own being. This is particularly hurtful, since fear is a primary survival technique.

Fear is not evil in itself, it is a major source of power physically when strength is needed physically to survive a physical disaster. Self-preservation and fear are important allies. But, when fear keeps you imprisoned in responses that normally you would not want to have, then it becomes necessary to face your own fears, understand them, and gain new

response habits While fear is a powerful and very basic emotion, it can like any other emotion, become not a ravaging beast, but a servant to reason.

Copyright 2007 by Ian RoeBuck Permission is granted to reprint this article provided the entire article is reprinted without any changes, and the author's information box and links are included.