Discovering Your Root Fear

None of us meditate enough (me included). It’s one of those things that I dread doing but need desperately. When the pandemic first hit, I needed to find hobbies to fill all the new time on my hands, so I finally sat my ass down and tried to meditate every day. I remember the first time I did it. I laid a towel in the backyard and set a timer for 20 minutes, preparing myself for the worst. I was ready to battle demons in my head to get through it. But It flew by.

I found that my mind was like a television set, switching through my thoughts like channels. The hardest part was trying not to follow each thought down a rabbit hole, which I didn’t accomplish whatsoever my first time. It wasn’t until I followed a few guided exercises that I started to get the hang of letting thoughts drift by instead of engaging them.

Once I started practicing, I discovered meditation could be used for a lot of things. You can relieve anxiety by focusing on your breath, or you can do powerful visualization exercises to access deep emotions, like hidden fears.

Fears can hide?

Yeah, and they can do it quite well. If your day-to-day fears are like fishing lines, your hidden fears are the fish at the end, wiggling you around in all kinds of crazy directions. You can recognize these deeper fears by reeling your line in. To say it non-poetically, a deep fear, or “root fear,” is, well, the root of the many things that scare you. It is an overarching theme describing your innermost anxieties. It is an explanation for misunderstood emotions and sudden fears.

The fishing photo is cute, but it implies a level of simplicity that unfortunately doesn't come with finding your root fear. It takes trial and error, and some quality time spent with yourself. I’ve put together a diagram to help you visualize how to trace the fishing line of fear down to its root below.

The diagram represents our thoughts, which often start within the green circles, and spiral down through the orange circles until they eventually reach our root fear, circled in red.

Acknowledging our root fear is instrumental to changing our thought patterns, and not buying into them. It doesn’t mean our root fear will go away, but once we understand why certain things are triggers, we can do damage control to prohibit falling prey to believing that our root fear is true (because 99% of the time, it’s not).

How can I uncover my root fear?

Now that we understand what a root fear is, we can work on finding it. You’ll need to be patient and caring when attempting to make contact with these deep emotions. Things that are hidden like to stay hidden, and pulling in the fishing line may bring a lot of other, unexpected feelings or memories as well.

Meditation is our friend here (Jay Shetty also talks about using meditation to find root fears in his book “Think Like a Monk”). I highly recommend using meditation, but you can also use a pen and paper to help you map it out like I did in the diagram above.

Find a comfortable place, put on some calming music, and close your eyes. Think of a recurring negative emotion you have. Maybe you are afraid you upset your mom the other day with something you said. Or perhaps you are angry because you have acne, and it makes you feel ugly. Something that you can’t seem to get out of your head is a good place to start. Now ask yourself what you are really afraid of? When you come to a conclusion about that, take your “new” fear and ask yourself again, what are you really afraid of? Keep doing this until you have an ~aha~ moment.

Pro-Tip: Anger is just fear wearing a fancy costume. It is a defense mechanism, and very often shields us from confronting vulnerable emotions deep inside.

My own root fear meditation went something like this:

Surface Fear: My ADHD prevents me from doing anything productive or worthwhile.

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Fear Level 2: I will never find a good job, or get a good salary.

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Fear Level 3: I am always going to feel unfulfilled.

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Root Fear: There is something wrong with me.

Remember, doing this can bring up many emotions, so please be gentle with yourself as you navigate them. Whatever you choose as your surface fear, make sure to focus and ask yourself the question “But what am I really afraid of?” And see how many levels down you can get.

Keep asking yourself the same question with each layer of fear you tap into, until you feel you have uncovered the root. Root fears are usually very simple in comparison to the long-winded stories we weave them into.

Okay, so now what?

You may be wondering what the point is to all this. Knowing my root fear has changed the way I think about my day-to-day anxieties, and how I approach certain situations. Because I know my root fear, I know going into critique situations or reviews to wear a thicker skin, and have a support network nearby to talk to afterwards. Knowing my root fear also makes it easier for me to take a step back when my inner critic gets a little too demanding, and remember fear isn’t something I want to be motivated by.

Our root fears are not true. They are usually things that were ingrained in us as children, things we internalized and now blindly lead us around. Our root fear is like someone from out of town giving us local directions – it is usually completely unaware of what the hell it’s talking about. But also like someone from out of town, we should show it kindness and not hatred.

I have a close relationship with my root fear, and I soothe it every so often when I feel it acting up. Because I know it so well, when someone or something triggers my root fear, I know to be wary of it, because it may not have the best intentions in mind for me. Remember that our fears exist for good reasons, so we shouldn’t try to get rid of them. They are more than welcome to sit in the car, just don’t let them drive.

I would love to hear about your own root fear. Please comment below and let’s strike up a conversation :)

Don’t let your fears stop you ;P

Xx,

Renee