Two-step guide for dealing with fear

1. Turn your back on the feeling of fear and face your fear. The feeling of fear is evidence that you are in avoidance and not looking directly at the idea you fear. This could also involve admitting you were wrong in assigning the idea the value of fear-worthy. This step is mostly to eliminate the possibility that you are chasing the feeling of fear in the misguided belief that you are being brave, when truly the only brave thing you will eventually do is give up and turn away from the pursuance of fear.

2. If step one doesn’t work, throw it out and try this instead. Do not be in a panic to get rid of your panic. Instead, allow your panic to bring in as much panic as it wants to. If you take your hands off and give the fear permission to be, it will have nothing to threaten you with. It could take up to half an hour for panic to go away, but once you feel acceptance correctly the relief settles in quickly. I recommend lying on a bed for this exercise, while thinking that it’s not pulling you away from anything important you would have been doing during this time if you had instead chosen to feed the panic. During this time, the panic may wish to share something timeless with you, and you will have to accept it as though it really is timeless in order to move through it. For example, you may fear that you will never be happy ever again, and you will have to accept this for a little while, because true acceptance takes the suffering out of this truth and ultimately leaves you feeling much better. There is no point in trying to escape this, because the ultimate destination to escape to is acceptance anyway.

I should mention that you do not have to “deal” with your fear at all, but most of what these two steps are aiming for is not dealing with it. You don’t have to accept any truth that you think is scary, thus we come full circle.