Ok so it has been about a month since all of my years of education, training and passion led me to leaving my full time job to follow my dreams. I am using this as a platform to show that yes I am a professional counsellor, but I am just like you, I carry fears and worries that have crippled me at times.
Fear is a natural response to a perceived threat, the key word here being natural. Fear can lead to a few responses being fight, flight or freeze. These reactions are dependent on the situations you are placed in and the consequences of what may have happened if previously placed in the situation. For example, if you were to have a bad experience with public speaking and you were placed in the situation again your body may choose to resist it, fighting the assumed importance of it and choosing to overcome it or stand against it. Flight from the situation would be to directly avoid the situation, either by not making yourself available or simply not allowing yourself open to being asked to speak. To freeze may take the form of stage fright, in which your body can't deal with the emotional and physiological responses and will simply cease up. So fear as demonstrated can be dealt with in those ways, but is entirely dependent on you and how you control the reactions.
Saying that sounds simple, mind over matter....but it is not as many of us will know. It takes courage to overcome something that is governed by your fear, as often with fear comes a whole bunch of emotions. My own personal journey when it came to leaving the security of a full time job, my friends and well everything I had known so far (working wise) was incredibly difficult. My main fear when I took away the practical excuse of money, was actually my self and whether I was able to have the confidence to do it alone! But then when I looked and realised I have an incredible support network, I wasn't alone, the fear was there but it now didn't leave me frozen and miserable. Being unfulfilled was a difficult thing to carry every day, being uninspired by the monotony of something my heart just wasn't ok with anymore, it is exhausting. That is something I don't want other people to feel alone with and have to carry. I want to be the hand that guides you to finding a way to cope through whatever it is you are struggling with. Learning to sit with the feelings and survive them is uncomfortable,but worth it when you can be free of what is holding you back.
