One of the challenges many of us face is that we often don’t know why we are struggling with the mental and emotional issues we have. We suffer without knowing the deeper reasons for why we are suffering. We experience so much fear, often without realizing it, without knowing what our fears are and what they mean. To go deeper and gain more understanding, we have to go beyond what we are conscious of. We have to access the subconscious mind, where everything pertaining to our emotions is stored.
The subconscious mind governs 95% of our daily lives, including our behaviors, habits, thought processes, and patterns. It stores our fears, insecurities, memories, worries, traumas and pain. That means that if we allow the fears and pain of our subconscious mind to go unchecked, it will be our fears and pain running the show. Imagine your fear running 95% of your life. This is how most of us live- subconsciously driven by fear.
A major function of the subconscious mind is to keep us safe, and one of the ways it does this is by sending us warning signals to avoid things that might endanger us. Once our minds have been impacted by trauma, our subconscious mind will sometimes fire off these warning signals about things that don’t pose an actual threat to us, but that we feel afraid of and threatened by. Our deeply rooted fears stay lodged in our subconscious, which will send warning signs any time those fears are triggered. These fears become so deeply ingrained in our psyches that they play a huge role in our mental and emotional health. Our natural responses to these fears are often intense anxiety, nervousness, panic, sadness and anger. We usually carry out these responses in unconscious ways, unaware of what is driving us.
The first step to healing our fears is to be conscious of what they are. We can start by asking ourselves questions: What am I triggered by? What patterns do I keep repeating? What default thoughts and feelings am I experiencing? What do I have strong emotional reactions to? What problems do I keep manifesting?
When we look at the patterns in our emotions, thoughts, relationships and life cycles, we can start to analyze what fears have been driving us. Are we afraid of being abandoned by the people we love? Are we afraid we aren’t good enough? Are we afraid of failing? Are we afraid of taking risks because we fear people might judge us?
Healing on a deep level requires us to be conscious of the patterns of our thoughts, emotions and behaviors in order to start figuring out what our actual fears are. Our mental and emotional health depend on it.
On our healing journey, we sometimes need support. It can be scary stuff. Reach out. Contact Enlightened Recovery today.