Overcoming Fear v.3 - 5.75.7G - Ampers&d's Journal

[Shannon]

Letting go requires a conscious awareness of the act of "holding on". It becomes easy once you have that awareness, and the understanding that letting go is better. The difficult part is that most of the "holding on" happens below the conscious level of awareness, so it requires contemplation and introspection, sometimes meditation, to find and understand that issue that is being held onto and understand why and then work to let go.

I have done this, and I know it works. It's basically a process of becoming more self aware. For me the first time I ever did it was when I began looking around me and realizing that nobody else was as emotionally sensitive as I was. It was a realization that I was the outlier, that others did not get hurt at and cry over all the things that hurt me and made me cry. So I started observing them and comparing them to myself, and after a while I came to realize that the difference was that I was taking everything too personally. I was holding onto a belief that everything was a personal interaction, when it was not. Those people who didn't get hurt, didn't take things personally. So I had to learn how to stop taking things personally by changing my belief that everything was personal, and change my point of view. I had to learn how to stop caring, stop connecting my emotions to everything.

I imagine it was a hold-over from when I was very young, and I just presumed that everything was personal all the time at the age of 2-3-4. But when I figured this out (around 10-11, I think) it didn't work anymore. There were a lot more people than that 2-3-4 year old had to deal with, and the world had changed. I had to change with it, because I realized that taking everything personally was a misunderstanding. I started off assuming that everyone was as close as my family, and I could be as open and vulnerable with everyone. Then I got hurt a lot as a kid doing that. Eventually I realized the discrepancy between me and everyone around me and figured this out.

But letting go was difficult because I had to understand that I was holding on to something, and what I was holding on to. I had to understand that it didn't work for me, and choose something else.