Fear
Welcome to the Infinitely Precious Podcast produced by Infinitely Precious LLC. Your host is James Henry. Remember, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.
James:Hello, beloved. It's me, James, and it's time for another opportunity for us to share some thoughts together. As always, I invite you to, respond if you wish. You can always email me, share what you're thinking as you wish, infinitelypreciousllcgmail dot com. I'm delighted to have you as a part of the podcast.
James:It's good to be able to share some thoughts with you. Hopefully those thoughts are helpful for you. And if you find them helpful, I encourage you please feel free to share the podcast with others. We stream on, of course, Apple, Spotify, and you can also just listen to us straight away from, the website, several different ones in fact. So, it s good to have you with us.
James:It s good to have you with us. Today I wanted to talk about fear and the reason I wanted to talk about fear is because I think there s a lot of it going around. Now, fear is not a bad thing. Some people think being afraid is bad. It is not bad.
James:I do not want to attach any value to it if I want to be honest with you. Fear arises in us. It is part of our evolutionary makeup. Fear is a means of protecting ourselves. It's the body's way.
James:It's the most basic bodily way that we protect ourselves. The mind, particularly a very tiny walnut sized piece of our mind called the amygdala in our brain is actually sort of an on and off switch for fear. It's not really an on and off switch, but when we detect things that our body says we need to fear, our eyes see a saber tooth tiger, or a lion or something else coming towards us, a car is barreling down on us in modern sense, fear takes hold of us. And that fear means we don't have time to think about it. One of the things the amygdala does is it cuts off the frontal cortex where all of our thinking happens, cuts that off, and it says we have to do something now.
James:We don't have time to think, is the saber tooth tiger friendly? Maybe it's not really going to eat me for lunch, or is that car gonna really hurt if they hit me? Maybe they're gonna stop. We don't have time to think about those things. The body says we've got to do something now to protect ourselves.
James:And so there are a variety of responses that the amygdala, sort of puts into play in our body. And you have heard these probably before. If you've heard one of my podcasts over the years, you have probably heard me talk about it. But, you know, there is fight, flight, or even an earlier response more deeply rooted in us is freeze. Because, you know, if there is no way to get away, maybe if we don t move, no one will see us.
James:So our initial response might be to freeze or to run or to fight. There s no way to fight an oncoming vehicle. For most of us human beings, who are not superhuman in strength and capabilities, fighting a lion or a saber tooth tiger or anything like that is probably not in our capabilities. So fight is not a possibility, but it is one of the possible responses to fear. We are trained to protect ourselves.
James:It is ingrained in us. It s instinctual. At the most basic level, we protect ourselves. It s wired into us. And that s a wonderful thing that is part of the human development.
James:It is meant to protect us. If you share with me a view about the universe, that it's an unfolding presence, always constantly unfolding, and that God is present in that unfolding, then somehow God wanted us to have a sense and the need to protect ourselves. And there are a lot of things that can come our way that for a variety of reasons, maybe because of trauma in our childhood or other kinds of things, elicit a fear response in us, cause us to be unable to move, cause us to want to fight. And it might not be physically fighting, it might be with our words. It might be the things that we say or to run away.
James:And sometimes running away is not even physically running away. It is withdrawing into ourselves and not engaging, not really being present anymore. So, any of those things can happen because fear, that natural protective instinct, that then turns into things like anger and frustration and comes out as in reactive way, is part of protecting us, of keeping us safe in the world in which we live. Now, we live in a society right now in a world where everything is about fear. Political parties use it as a motivator.
James:Leaders use it as a motivator. They even tell lies to convince you to be afraid of things that there's nothing to be afraid of. Sometimes, you know, sometimes it is just a way to convince you if you're afraid enough of that other thing, that other person, that other party, that other way of seeing, if you're afraid enough of it, then you will fight it. And the best way to fight it, if it's in the political arena, is to vote for the person who tells you they're going to keep you safe, protect you. So they like to stir up the fear, and I am the one who will look out for you, I will protect you.
James:It becomes a negative motivator. Instead of voting out of the positivity of our lives, instead of acting out of positivity in our lives, what we act out of is the fear in our lives. Now there are moments when that s really important. Dark alley, somebody s coming at you, you need to make a decision. Is this dangerous?
James:Is it, you know, and if it is, do I run? Do I fight? Where, that's a split second decision and the front of your brain is cut off, so you don't really think about it, your amygdala tells you this is the response. Your breathing speeds up and all that kind of thing. So what do we do in a world where everything is designed, we try to use to, our people use against us, to generate fear in us, so that we're constantly living at a heightened sense.
James:It's exhausting to live in that heightened sense of fear all the time. It makes it hard for us to make wise, clear decisions for ourselves, because we are in a state of fear that has at least temporarily shut down the reasoning part of our brain. It's no longer about reason. It's about self protection. It s about protecting my group, my tribe.
James:It s about protecting myself, my family. And these are the things I have to do to do that because this person or that issue has arisen, and they told me that s the only way to protect my family. It may not even make sense to me, but fear doesn t get me to make s it s not about making sense. Fear is about self protection. So I want to suggest to you that there are ways to deal with our fear.
James:When you get caught in traffic, when you're being chased by a lion, I think it's very important for you to let fear help you escape and self protect. But there are some ways that we can protect ourselves against fear of the other by othering people. Fear of violence coming our way because of these others that have been defined for us. There are ways to deal with those kinds of fears, but it requires that we develop a kind of practice, a way of slowing down. Now what s interesting about that lovely brain of ours, one of the things that happens in the amygdala when we become afraid, is that we, you know, our breathing starts going more rapidly, we release, you know, we release adrenaline, so that we are ready to do the things we have to do, the breath is going faster.
James:There are a number of little neurons right here in the back of your brain. I read it somewhere around 500, a little tiny group that is in charge of your breathing that makes you breathe. And when the amygdala sends a signal breathe faster, you do. That little thing makes you breathe faster, but you can reverse engineer that. If you can catch yourself when you start to become afraid, you see a news story that frightens you.
James:You hear a story, something about something going on in the community and it frightens you. Before you react in the moment by freezing, fighting, or running away, if you can catch yourself and slow down your breathing, it will send a reverse signal to the little breathing section of about 500 neurons And in turn, your intentional breathing slower will send that notification to that little tiny walnut size amygdala in the sort of at the base of your brain stem, base of your brain to slow down, to calm down. Amygdala, it s not as bad as you think, calm down and frees you to use your mind again. There are things that you need to be afraid of and respond to right away. No question about it.
James:And there are things you don t need to be afraid of and respond right away. React by doing whatever is one of those three natural responses. But it requires an intentionality and perhaps a practice that begins every day in the morning. When you sit quietly in a space for as much time as you can afford, I would say you really can t afford much less than twenty minutes or so. It takes me that long to let go of my thoughts.
James:But sit for as long as you can afford. Maybe you need to afford more time too if you re living in a place of fear, but, and meditate. Meditate by paying attention to your breath to begin with. You can use a mantra if you want to, or you can use centering prayer, which is not built on a mantra, but an intention with an intentional word that you let go. But whatever you choose to do, it can be good to get into a practice of slowing yourself down.
James:So that when you start to feel the fear response in your body and you recognize it. You'll recognize it because things begin to tighten up, your breath changes, other kinds of things. You can begin to sense fear is rising in you and when you do, you can take a step back. Slow down your breathing. Think about the best response you can give and respond in that way.
James:Fear is not bad. Fear isn't good necessarily. It is a natural response, a self protective response that is designed to keep you alive and we want you to be alive. But to be fully alive is not to be afraid all the time of everything. At least I think so, and not living on adrenaline and exhausting ourselves constantly by all of our fear.
James:It s taking a step back. It s making some careful choices about our grounded breathing. It s maybe consuming less of the things that make us afraid. If that s media, if that s television, if that s the news, whatever it is, Maybe it s consuming less of those things. It s making intentional choices about how we live.
James:Fear is a gift from God. It s a gift to us to help protect us, but it can also be quite the opposite of a gift when it becomes the ruler of our lives. And I do think in today's environment, we're told to fear everything, anything that's different than us. And God is a lover of diversity. God is a lover of all the variety and invites us to love it too, to love the things that God loves.
James:So those are my thoughts today about fear. Remember, no matter where you are on this journey of faith, where are you on the spiritual journey, wherever you are on the journey of fear, paralyzed or not, anxious constantly or not. This piece I am going to say to you is absolutely true. No matter where you are on any of that spectrum, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are. That is an absolute truth.
James:No matter the fear or the journey you are on, you are a precious gift. I hope that maybe you can move away from the things that keep you from living the full giftedness of yourself and maybe one of those things is fear. Until the next time, I wish you all the best. Oh precious ones who have joined me, Feel free to share the podcast. I hope it's been helpful to you and if it's especially helpful to you, share it as far and wide as you want.
James:Until the next time.
