Day 4: How Fear Keeps Us from Experiencing Love

“Love is what we were born with fear is what we learned here.”

-Marianne Williamson

Whether we are talking about romantic relationships, family, friends, or strangers fear keeps us from experiencing love. We like to pretend that by fearing for others and/or their actions we are showing love. We’ve been groomed to fear which leads to expectations of others. Those expectations create more fear—not love. Does this mean we need to accept unacceptable behavior…HELL NO! This means that we understand through awareness what we can control. We are only in control of our own perceptions. We can’t expect others to act according to our expectations. We don’t use their adherence to our expectations as a tool to measure whether we love them or hate them.

Fear breaks down all forms of communication in relationships. Once all parties enlist fear into conversation— a war breaks out. Now all parties are acting like their wounded pre-teen selves. Our reasoning goes out the door. We view us as right and them as wrong. We can’t see that ALL our and their beliefs are just perceptions of what is true based on each person’s experiences in life. We are no longer open. We have an armor layer that is constructed of 100% fear.

Some of us go through our whole lives and never consider the definitions of love and fear. We wing it and because of that we intertwine the two and then start believing things like: Love hurts! Love is painful! Love blinds us. The opposite is actually true. Fear hurts. Fear is painful. Fear blinds us.

Fear is what drives the overbearing parent. Fear is what leads to jealousy, separation, abuse, betrayal, and cheating. Fear is what builds walls and shuts doors to strangers who are just as capable of love as we are. Fear closes us off and makes us want to numb our pain. Fear breaks down any and all relationships without discrimination.

We are human. None of us are going to be perfect people. We are going to make mistakes. The people we love will make mistakes. Strangers will make mistakes. We take away the opportunity to learn from our mistakes when we are in so much fear that we attack and criticize without any understanding of how the mistake could have happened. Then we come up with defenses, and those defenses create more fear. If a person chooses to learn from their mistakes, they will grow. If they don’t, they will wallow in self-defeat. They will make the mistakes reasons for being unlovable and unworthy. Once we see ourselves as unlovable and unworthy—Fear-based living takes over.

We project that fear to the world, and it becomes a belief. We will try to prove our belief right. This makes us attract people who will use us and call it love. We will allow our parents to demean and try to control us and call it love. We will attract friends who attack us and call it love. Something deep inside us knows these actions aren’t demonstrating love, so it feeds our belief that we are unlovable and unworthy of love.  If you are nodding your head because you see this in yourself, remember it is true for others too.

If we truly want to experience the fullness of love we have to show love to ourselves. We have to know love from the inside before we can see it in the world around us. We can only do this if we become aware of all the fears that are holding us back.

It is self-love that keeps us from being abused, bullied, controlled, and used by others. When we love ourselves we have healthy boundaries. We don’t DEMAND people respect us. We respect ourselves, so people who don’t respect us change or move away from us.  If our house isn’t built on a foundation of fear, we won’t engage in what perpetuates more fear, which is fear itself.

Do we fear repeating patterns from the past?

Do we fear others will hurt us more than we hurt ourselves?

Do we fear the unknown future?

These keep us from seeing the people standing in front of us. We can’t be present if our heads are lost in fear. Therefore we miss expressions of love and red flags we need to face. Love is experienced right here and right now. Self-love helps us spot red flags in ourselves and others. Fear is based on past beliefs, which creates fears of the future. Fear actually keeps you from being present.

Just for today see how fear and/or love is expressing itself in your relationships. Really ask yourself if your thoughts, feelings, and actions towards yourself and others are projecting love or fear.

If you want to learn about how to get out of fearful patterns—Keep READING!

This is a process. Part I is about making us AWARE of the problems. We can’t fix what we don’t want to face. Part II is about ACCEPTING where we are right now and opening ourselves up to changing from a place of love and not fear. Then in Part III we take ACTION. You will learn action plans to break unhealthy patterns. There is a reason for the order so it is best not to skip any part of it.

With Love and Gratitude,

Rachael Wolff ©2019

Companion letter: 90-Day A Better Me Letters Series: Day 4 -To the Fear Keeping Me from Experiencing Love Don’t miss a day!