What Is Beyond Your Fear?

For many people in the United States, this day in September recalls a time of trauma that reverberated for years around the globe. Many of us have healed from individual and collective traumatic histories in our lives.


What lies beyond your own fear?



Take 20 minutes with your journal to find out.

 

What used to scare you as a child? Write about this in your journal; you may want to do this exercise in the presence of a trusted friend or therapist or coach.

 

First, spend ten minutes writing about what happened. Who? What? When? Where? Think of yourself as a journalist. Get down the facts. Tell the story.

 

Time yourself so you feel safe and have boundaries around what you are doing.

 

When ten minutes are up, switch to a new page and write about how you felt. Pour out all the feelings. The anger, the fear, the sadness, the numbness, the anxiety.

 

Again, time yourself so you can safely go into these feelings and come back out again. In opening yourself to writing in this balanced way, you are using your hands and your heart and your mind and your memory to create the key that will heal your fear and unlock your own cage.

 

At the end of 20 minutes, answer this question in one sentence:

 

What is beyond my fear?

 

(The answer may surprise you—in a good way!)