“If you stay present, and continue to listen for, and surrender to, the deepest knowing you can access, there's no way you can do this life wrong . - Cory Muscara

It's seems a bit fucked up. That what you fear most is what God/the universe uses to lead you to your divine path. Cruel, yet, now I see... absolutely brilliant. What if the way to experience real freedom isn't to avoid your fears, but to completely sit with the sensations of your fear to move through them to a deeper freedom of being more fully yourself?

I've been practicing this gnarly work more, over the last 3 years. Here are 3 ways sitting with my fears led to a growing baseline of freedom

1. Fear of doing something wrong

*Picture: "Regulated me"

"Don't do it that way, you're doing it wrong" "You must follow God's way or you will be punished" "Don't tell mom and dad, or we will get in big trouble." There was a "right way of doing things" and if I didn't do it that way, I would be in big trouble and damned for life. Ha, no pressure right?

Well the fear put the pressure on, and it make me damn good at doing things right. Learning the metrics and delivering on results. Good for life? Damn straight. Especially in my 17 year corporate career and in a family with a military dad and struggling life with not a lot of money and thus not a lot of room to make a lot of mistakes.

It also left me feeling super trapped.

So I shifted gears and chose to do the things I labelled as "wrong." I cooked things not how my mom would have done it, made messes and actually discovered some perfect recipes by doing things "wrong." I played with tarot cards when in deep pain and it led me to tapping into my own wise intuition that now gives me peace while I deeply trust in my decisions no matter what others say. I finally told my parents that we jaywalked 20 years ago and I got hit by a car. And guess what? I didn't get in trouble haha. I opened my parents to compassion they felt for us and all that we went through.

And while I did all of that, I sat in the terrifying fear in my body. It's hard at first, but I promise, it gets better.

2. Fear of being seen

"Think of others before yourself" "Do what's most important for everyone" Religious principles and Asian collective thinking taught me that the collective good was most important, even at the expense of - perhaps even most honourably, at the expense of my individual needs. Made sense to me. So off I went, focusing on what was good for others. And that worked well for a long time. It's amazing how many people feel just fine taking from you.

Fast forward years later, the dark side of this was that it got so comfortable not having my own needs, that it was uncomfortable to have needs and wants. It bred this fear of being seen. I had intense shame and fear of being found out for all the stuff that was hidden.

My antidote: I went live on Facebook for 21 days to be seen expressing my impeccable truth, share my secrets that were trapped from shame, and started to let the facade of me, without needs, crumble away. It was ABSOLUTELY LIBERATING. First I felt massive fear. My body shook and throat tightened but my nervous system very slowly started to relax. I found people I was meant to share life with. I felt a sense of belonging that I had never felt while I was "in hiding from myself," and I could feel the starting point of that path to "inner peace," connection and real intimacy that felt so elusive for so long.

3. Fear of feeling

As I spoke in front of the boardroom, my body tensed, the sweats began, and I could feel the eyes on me. It was as if I could sense their emotions. My mouth stalled. I couldn't think about what I needed to say. This is just a tiny glimpse into hundreds of other similar moments that led to me fearing my feelings. Feeling so intensely, as a part of your normal nervous system is my reality as a highly sensitive person. No, it is not a disorder and yes, you are born with it.

How I sat with this fear? I gathered up the people that felt safe to my nervous system. No surprise, most of them were gentle loving highly sensitive people themselves. Week after week, I practiced speaking my truth and feeling all the feels in shared space with them. I learned about how my feelings are actually my soul guiding me. How I am a laser sharp bullshit detector when I trust my feelings. How I can actually predict when something bad is going to happen with my feelings.

Sitting with my fears have led me to freedom. Freedom that I believe will continue to expand as I:

• Nurture my intuition

• Deeply trust in my decisions

• Grow compassion for myself

• Release shame from secrets

• Find gentle loving souls to share life with

• Feel into my sensations as I speak my truth

• Beleive in my feelings to guide me

Avoiding fears can be really helpful for a while, until it's not. Real freedom comes with being with who you are, at the hardest of times, and normalize and regulate your nervous system to the reality of that. In my opinion, the freedom to be yourself and to live a life true to yourself is the ultimate success in life. The problem is, you have to find the people that believe this too, in order to make this sustainable.

How to make this gnarly work easier:

Here are a few quick tips that make my fear to freedom journey easier:

• Be impeccably true with yourself, notice exactly what is going on with your thoughts, feelings, and sensations in your body

• Be impeccably true with others, but not everyone. Only those that you feel extremely safe with to start. As you get stronger, you will be able to speak up to those that feel more 'stretchy'

• Practice sitting with your truth as often as you can, it gets easier with practice

• Carefully draw your boundaries to keep yourself feeling "safe" or in "safe stretch" and not in stress (fight, flight, freeze). Stress takes a long time to recover from and also creates more trauma which can get you stuck in loops.

• Stay in curiosity rather than judgement. Say, "Isn't it interesting that..." with an open heart rather than berate yourself when you do something you don't like.

More resources:

We practice much of this in our weekly gatherings. Join us as we safely practice sitting in our feelings, expressing our truth, and holding loving space for ourselves as we create a regulated nervous system together.