Psychology of Fear

Session 6

Abandonment Anxiety

Welcome

Stephen Russell Barefoot Doctor

Psychology of Fear – Abandonment Anxiety

• Begins in the first trimester in the womb – when the embryo’s tenure is by no means guarantee

• Primal fear - clan abandoning you because of deformity, disability, disease, weakness, old age, falling out – slim chances of survival on your own

• As a child you fear your parents abandoning you; as a teenager – you feel pain of separation at the end of your first romance

Psychology of Fear – No One Is Exempt

• We learn to mask, compensate, divert ourselves from it – ‘I’m alright’ – few people admit to abandonment issues but it runs deep in all of us, no one is exempt

• Feeling abandonment anxiety does not mean you are weak or a freak

• Left unaddressed it festers and the toxicity results in manipulative behaviour intended to trap the other into not abandoning you – it’s subtle, insidious, all embracing – tends to push the other away

s

Psychology of Fear – Fear Of Being Alone

• It’s unpleasant and constrictive to experience or perpetrate – manifests as inordinate fear of being alone/lonely

• People remain in highly disfunctional, unhealthy, unproductive, unhappy, untrusting relationships for years or decades, just to avaoid facing being along

• Manifests as an irrational fear of dying alone, being alone and having no one to look after you when you are old

Psychology of Fear – Fear Of Being Alone

• Causes possessiveness, jealousy, craving finding a partner rather than allowing the flow of events to bring you a partner

• Causes self-depleting disengenious communication with yourself and others to avoid seeing yourself as inauthentic – you perpetrate dishonest ploys just to fit in (sub text - fashion statements, car you drive – include me, include me, include me)

Psychology of Fear – Healthy Fear

• The actual fear is healthy – it can and will keep you alive

• Reminds you to be loving, generous, reciprocal and fair in your transations, to retain the support network of friends, loved ones, colleagues

• Reminds you to be hygienic in yourself and your house, to make yourself presentable – superficial but makes the world smoother and easier to negotiate – a sign of self respect

e

Psychology of Fear – The Global Clan

• The clan is now no longer in one cave – but worldwide and because we have made sure the connection networks are manifold – radio, TV, online, city streets – chances of the entirety of humanity abandoning you are slim, but the fear is programmed in over millions of years

• Globalization is recent, we haven’t evolved to it – our fear quota still has to be processed, but has no where to go most of the time

Psychology of Fear – Processing Fear

• Kidneys process fear – when there’s no actual reason to be feeling fear but they have to process it anyway they become strained

• Anxious thoughts arise spontaneously – the mind feels it is impelled to make sense of this, so imagines a reason for you to be feeling the anxiety – an instant horror movie for you to be afraid of - you’re confecting anxiety

• The horror movie feels real yet is an imaginary scenario you’ve created and made yourself afraid of

Psychology of Fear – Yin Yang

• Yin – ‘structive’ tendancy - holds you steady, gives form to everything. Yang – force or motion. There has to be a healthy fluid mixture of the two for life to proceed successfully.

• The part of you that needs the structure of people remaining is the yin. When abandonment anxiety is left unaddressed, it indicates a need to strengthen the yin. When you are riven by abandonment anxiety you act out manipulatively, possessively, jealously. Fear of loneliness on the edge of your mind but being denied.

Psychology of Fear – Yin Yang

• When structive energy is weak it feels the urge to shore itself up with other people, with the outside, with situations externally perceived which it feels will nurture it. Yin can only be rebuilt from within.

• When Yin is strong you feel secure within the underlying structure of existence in total – you need far less to rely on others or anything external

Psychology of Fear – Abandonment Anxiety

• Originates in being abandoned in utero, is wired into us since cave days where if you were abandoned by the tribe you would probably die – so beneath the anxiety of abandonment lies the fear of death

• Beneath the fear of death is the fear of oblivion, the void. Beneath the fear of the void is the fear of all fears – fear of whatever it is that makes the void be there – God/Tao – fear of your own self, as a manifestation of that same god in the void

Psychology of Fear – Fear Of Yourself

• The entire issue of being afraid of being abandoned - which if left unaddressed causes twisted transactions on every level, which have a twisted effect throughout your life, therefore limiting your possibilities of receiving and enjoying the fullest that’s on offer – arises from being afraid of your own self.

• Psychophobia – fear of your own psyche, fear of your soul, fear of your mind – the mind is primordial, the consciousness that informs it is universal, synonymous with God/Tao the primordial being

Psychology of Fear – Feel The Fear

• Don’t be afraid of it – this is the primal life force in all its raw, honest, terrible glory. Being afraid of it is what’s made you erroneously transmute it into anxiety, and to be in denial of that anxiety.

• Instead, breathe the fear in & out. Let it subsume you for a moment. Be completely engulfed in fear. Visualise your eventual demise, leaving your body, passing into oblivion & coming face to face with yourself as the creator – Tao. Now drop into your back & hold steady there – breathe fully & purposefully & feel the fear.

Psychology of Fear – Feel The Fear

• Drift backwards and occupy everywhere rear of the side seams of your clothes. Breathe fully and purposefully in the front of you, feeling your belly rise on the in breath and fall on the out breath

• As you do, feel yourself channelling the fear, feel the fear in your solar plexus, breath it in and out – the fear of dying, passing into the void, coming face to face with God in the void, of being abandoned by everyone, by life, popping through the veil into the void and finding God there – having to face it.

Psychology of Fear – Abandonment Horror

• You project horror movies into the front of your brain to use up your quota of abandonment fear – the person you love abandoning you, the life you love abandoning you, the society you admire abandoning you, the goals you aspire to abandoning you, the talents/skills you have abandoning you, your social status abandoning you, your wealth abandoning you, friends abandoning you and eventually your body abandoning you – the fear you have to go through that all alone, in pain

Psychology of Fear – Abandonment Horror

• See that horror movie – & thank it for flagging up that you need to be alert

• Make a note of anything practical that you could do to avoid any form of possible abandonment by anyone or anything in the immediate future

• Then let the anxiety go – or it will increase toxicity in the body & return to the real fear – the god in the void.

Psychology of Fear – Return To The Primal Fear

• Feel it in the belly/solar plexus – it’s not to be denied, distracted from, obfuscated or masked – it’s to be breathed, felt, lived and loved, valued, appreciated, honoured

• Being unduly settled by this relationship between you and the ultimate entity indicates a deficit of heart chi – which grants you a secure and steadfast sense of self at all levels from the personality to the sense of being the supreme being at the core of existence

Psychology of Fear – Authenticity

• Sense of self from an ego level (Freud’s term – the ‘I’) – is not something to vanquish, let go of (without it you couldn’t exist) – the aspect of ourselves that needs healing (making whole) is the ‘ego defences’– the lies we tell ourselves to kid ourselves we’re doing fine when we’re not.

• Our conscious mind necessarily limits the information coming through – selective awareness – become more aware of the lies we’re telling ourselves, so we get more real rather than less authentic - acknowledge what’s really happening including fear

Psychology of Fear – Low Heart Chi

• Heart chi is weakened by armouring the connective tissue in the chest – becomes rigidified in an attempt to protect you from the pain of betrayal, being let down, disappointment, separation, loss, abandonment

• Heart chi is also weakened by low kidney chi – kidneys are water, heart is fire – the fire of the heart warms the water of the kidneys in the belly – causes energy to reproduce. When the water is insufficient, the heart fire has nothing useful to do and so dissipates – the sense of self dissipates with it

Psychology of Fear – Sense Of Self

• When the sense of self dissipates the need to compensate by effecting various acts and disguises, masks, subterfuges and ruses increases – the tendency to be disingenuous increases, robbing your life of any true value and leaving your soul bereft – exacerbates the anxiety – causes behaviour to further mask the feeling

• Be at least 51% authentic – heart chi needs to be strong for a healthy sense of self

Psychology of Fear – The Inner Wild One

• Kidneys also support the liver – help keep it cool (the liver – the thing that makes you live ). Liver energy is that thrust to play the game, partake of the worldly dance. The liver is the home of the wild, uncultured, primal self.

• Because society is so structured the opportunity to give vent to the inner wild one is often only facilitated by partying, substances or alcohol – which make the liver feel tired, overheated, less efficient – so you’re less able to express your true self with others

Psychology of Fear – Weak Liver Chi

• When the kidneys are weakened through anxiety, they fail to cool the liver. The liver overheats and the levels of toxicity in the body in the energy and consciousness increase.

• This leads to jealousy, possessiveness, manipulative behaviour, people pleasing, inauthenticity, lying, obsequiesness, talking behind people’s backs, two facedness

Psychology of Fear – The Witness Bearer

• Drop into your back – be the witness bearer – notice that the anxiety is occuring in the front – bear witness to it and the fear underlying it and you will see you are no longer the anxiety, it is no longer all pervasive, it just happens to be occuring in the front of you, there is just anxiety, so what?

• Pay attention to your chest – imagine the breast plate opening like a pair of sliding doors – opening the heart centre. Visualise a cluster of precious rubies bedecked in lotus flowers and exuding a radience and a rose gold light radiating from you in all directions

Psychology of Fear – Practice

• Visualise tendrils of love spreading in all directions from your heart connecting you to all sentient beings – connections up and down which your love flows and the love of others flows back to you

• In the back, be aware you are connected at source to every sentient being in the entire multiverse – it’s impossible to be alone – what you can be is ‘all one’ – grasping this you will never experience loneliness again, or be prone to succumb to unhealthy manipulative behaviour for fear of abandonment – this is a practice to be evolved

Psychology of Fear – Recap

• Drop into the back of you - keep your heart open, breathe slowly and fully, sink your mind into the rear brain

• Notice & acknowledge the primal fear in the belly – feel it, breathe it, honour it, love it – it’s okay to be afraid

• Fear then transmutes itself into raw pure chi - fuels the journey right through into the void to meet the God in the void

Psychology of Fear – Recap

• Ask yourself - could I let go of wanting to change this feeling? Would I let go of wanting to change this feeling?

• Remind yourself that the sensation you’re feeling in your solar plexus/ belly is there because you’re generating it, this level of sensation is what it takes to make you feel alive

• Breathe in as if breathing in directly through the kidneys. Visualise the breath entering & warming the kidneys. Breathe out, breathing up and out through the heart, to cool and relax it.

Psychology of Fear – Recap

• Let the feeling of relaxation in your heart spread down to the right to your liver, so it relaxes

• Still aware of the God in the void, acknowledge and honour your role as a vital nexus of local light consciousness chi in the vast continuum of eternity, connected to all other nexuses throughout infinity – past, present & future – visualise that

Psychology of Fear – Recap

• Switch the focus to your heart & breathe as if you’re breathing in & out through your chest – you’ll start to feel a tingle (stimulation of heart energy)

• From this sensation - visualise and feel tendrils of love spreading out to connect you with other nexuses in time and space in every direction

• Still breathing the primal honest fear in the mix – chi – yet radiating love with everybody, including yourself in the human family at soul level – it is you who includes yourself

Psychology of Fear – Recap

• Trust you’ll always be sent those that you need when you need them & that life will never abandon you, it cannot, you are life

• Focus on your intention - to always feel the warmth of connectedness, inclusion and belonging in the human family, who will always support and companion you and that providence will always bring you whoever and whatever you need

Psychology of Fear – Recap

• Remind yourself it’s ok to feel afraid – there’s no need to mask it or transmute it into anxiety any more – it doesn’t work

• Instead you’re free to ride it as raw, pure chi, fuel for the adventure

Psychology of Fear – homework

• Look at the strain you felt over the years - trying to be perfect – the vanity and self- consciousness as a result

• How did you distract yourself from it or drive yourself mad by it?

Psychology of Fear

Thanks for being here…

See you next week

Stephen Russell