Witnessing The Fear...But Choosing to Not Live There

This one is really real and in the moment. The past week or so hasn’t been easy, and fear has been showing up in a big way for me. I’m not coming on here from the other side of it… I’m in it, moving through it, processing it as I go. And maybe you are too. In this episode, I share what it’s been feeling like in my body, in my thoughts, in my energy—and how I’m choosing to not live there. I’m learning to witness the fear when it comes up, bring awareness to it, and then let it move through me instead of taking me over. This isn’t about having it all figured out… it’s about staying in my heart while it’s happening. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to Brian and Body Podcast with Andrea Stamp. I believe in the power of our voices. And when we speak from the heart and embody love for ourselves and others, something shifts within us and all around us. This space is for real and honest conversations around spirituality, energy work, motherhood, womanhood, and what it truly means to live in alignment with who you truly are. No fluff. I'm not here to be perfect. I'm here to be authentically me. And to remind you that you get to be too fully and unapologetically. Hello and welcome back. On today, um, this podcast is going to be all about fear. How can we process fear that comes through our body and how we can choose to really process that fear and choose to be brave and do things anyway, even when we're scared to death. Um it came through pretty loud this morning that this is something that I'm processing. So I want to be able to share my process and how I've been really moving through the motions or not. I'm like, because um I think that as we grow and evolve as humans, fear is going to be one of those things that can be very crippling for us. And I know throughout my lifetime I had fear come up so much, and God, did it stop me from living? And, you know, again, as you work on yourself and you begin to grow and you start to do these things, you can really realize where fear is coming in. But in this last month, fear has really started to um kind of take over my being and my anxiety started coming back, which I haven't had anxiety attacks or feelings in a really, really long time. And so I felt it was really necessary to just hop on immediately and start recording kind of my process of what has been going on, because I think a lot of us feel fear when we are really being asked on a soul level to evolve and to grow and to start stepping into another thing that we are meant to do on this planet why we are in this human form. And so, you know, like I said, when I was younger, I missed out on so much of my life because I chose the fear over really just believing in myself and stepping forward. And I think, you know, like I said in the past episodes in 2017, I think my soul was like, and we're done with this bullshit. We need to start evolving. We have things to do, we have stuff that we need to accomplish while we're on this planet in this life. And so I started finding all of these different things that I had to be super brave and step out of my fear to get there to. So to take it back, I was actually talking to a friend, I think about a month ago, and she had asked me, you know, how do you just, how are you so brave? And I think I remember laughing and being like, am I brave? I don't know if I'm really brave. And then I had to take a step back and be like, okay, well, you know, when did my bravery like start? And, you know, I mean, if I look back, like, I remember being so shy when I was younger. And because I had struggled with like, you know, patterns of thinking that I wasn't smart, that I wasn't, that I was stupid, that, you know, I didn't really want to be seen. I was the girl that hid in the back of the room. I never wanted to raise my hand. I didn't, you know, there were so many things that were going on inside of me that um I never wanted to try new things. I didn't want to put myself out there or be seen or do anything. And then, you know, I look back and I'm like, yeah, but I tried out for musicals in high school and I loved it. I loved it. I thought it was so amazing and so much fun. And, you know, you would have those little mishaps where you like you would forget your lines or whatever. But there was like some grace behind there that I loved, you know. Um, when I was really little, I loved ballet. Um, I loved performing in front of people and um didn't really love gymnastics. Uh it was a little too hard for me, but like I loved dancing. I think when we move up a little bit higher to like, I want to say like 15-ish, I think that I started allowing fear to really rule me and be like, no, thank you. I'm not gonna put myself out there and do that. Like, I know that there was a piece of my heart that drastically wanted to go out for the dance team because I love to dance and I loved performing. And I have pictured myself being like that since I was little. But it the fear of what other people would think of me, even like the fear of the group that of kids that I was hanging out with then were not in that group. And so I was afraid that they would not love me or they would disown me because of the fact that I really, really wanted to be on the dance team instead of like going and smoking pot or, you know, getting a bad grade because the group that I fell into at that time was like that. Um and so this trickles on through my life, and then um I keep allowing fear and being comfortable kind of guide me for the next what, you know, 10 years, 15 years. And then I think that my soul just started realizing like, I really want to do this thing and not this thing anymore. Like, I really want to go and try that yoga class with Sambals, or I really want to go and do these things. And the amount of fear that I would feel in my body of what like people were gonna think of me because I didn't fit the quote unquote like woman that would go to that was sometimes unbearable. And I know it sounds so silly, but like I'm just speaking on my experience of fear and like how it shows up in my body and how I'm like, okay, like why do I feel so uncomfortable just showing up as me at this venue for like yoga ensembles? You know what I mean? It's fear can be crazy. And I think that we can like really if we let it like run the show, wow, it is crazy how much we will not do in our life because we are afraid. Um, so again, like, you know, in 2017, I uh actually started buying decks a lot before I even did Reiki. I started buying decks a lot. I think even in 2016. And I started working with my intuition that way, still not really understanding what I was doing, just kind of reading the messages and being like, oh, cool, this is so fun. Um, not really realizing what I'm tapping into, how everything is showing up, like whatever. And I bought a deck um at this beautiful um apothecary in Boulder, and it was a mothering deck or something like that. Uh, mothering wisdom is what it's called. And I see the ladies that created it together. I walk into I think a coffee shop, maybe like three weeks later, and one of the ladies that created the deck created a writer's retreat. I have no idea why I wanted to go, but I felt this deep, like, my gosh, you have to go to this. And I was like, I do not even like to write at all. Like, not even a little bit. I literally do not love it at all. I'm not even a journal journaler, by the way. I use my voice memo and talk. It's just the way that I am. So um, I signed up for this writer's retreat the whole time, by the way. I'm literally sitting there going, why the fuck am I doing this? I don't even like writing. I have always thought I was like, you know, quote unquote stupid when it came to like school stuff, writing stuff, like all the things, which by the way, I wrote so much poetry when I was a little or girl. So I have no idea why I felt this way. Again, I'm allowing fear to drive every piece of me instead of just understanding like maybe I'd actually really like it if I went, you know. So I go and it's this little um, it's up at this woman's house, and she's got a yurt in her backyard. It was so beautiful. I know none of these women. The only thing that's running through my head the whole way up there is Andrea just turned the car around. Andrea just turned the car around. Go home, literally just run away, like go back home. And but my soul was like, we're going to this damn fucking writer's thing. Okay. We're going to this little retreat and you're going to like it. And it is what it is. There is a lesson in here. But I didn't even know what that meant back then. So I was just like, okay, I'm going to go. But I, you know, when you get that like trembling feeling underneath your skin, that is what's happening to me. It's like my body's convulsing and my nervous system is on overdrive, and I don't know, I have a clue why I'm doing this afraid, and I don't know why I'm doing it at all. So I get up there. I do not know any of the women. You are allowed to go into her house to like use the restroom before we walk into like her backyard, which is in the mountains. So her backyard is gorgeous. It's just mountains. And we go in and we sit in this yurt. She has this beautiful water outside of the yurt where you have to like cleanse yourself with the water before you come in. And it was filled with rose petals and rose water, and just like oh, just so beautiful.

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So we get in there. We begin to do the assignments that she asks us to do.

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And I write like a whole page, it just flows out of me. And then she sends us on an assignment to leave the yurt, go walk out in nature, and write about and talk to a tree or a butterfly or a rock or whatever it is. And I'm like, what are we doing? Um, because again, I don't hang out with people like this usually yet. Um, now it's like they're all my best friends, but um I'm feeling like I don't know why I'm doing this, but okay. And so I go out and I I write some things, and then you know, we go back to the year, we all share our stuff, and then I leave that day. There was like this immense um feeling of just being proud of myself when I left. And I was like, okay. I read that that writing when I got home, and I hated it. I was really judgmental on myself. I was really hard on myself, and I just kind of ran through all these stories. Like people must have just like thought of me in a certain way. By the way, none of that was true. I found that writing, I don't know, in the last 10 years, and it was so beautiful. Kind of like writing about how where my path was gonna go for the next like 20 years. It was very interesting how um my soul works. But um so then, you know, like I have stated in the previous podcasts, like in 2017, that's when everything started unraveling. That's when I found Reiki without knowing what the hell I was doing and I showed up anyway. And I think that when you just step into a little bit of that courage and that bravery, and you can show your soul and yourself like you're not gonna die if you go and try this thing. It actually is gonna be helpful for you. You can just start to really step into that bravery and the fear does subside. Do you know what I mean? It just starts to like lessen itself. I mean, when I walked in to teach my first yoga class, I was like, why am I doing this? But my soul felt solid. She was like, We're good, you're gonna be okay. We've probably done this before, so let's come on, snap out of this fear thing that we've got going on that's holding a grip on you like death, and realize just teach the damn class. Like, teach the class, you're gonna be okay. Um, and it gets easier and easier each time that you show up. You know what I mean? So fast forward to right now, my anxiety has been a lot, and it's been crippling me again, where I feel this massive amount of fear. And so I did a meditation today where we walk it through the chakras, and I just kind of process through my root, through my sacral, my solar plexus, my heart, my throat, my third eye, my crap. And I just felt like I was going to throw up. I had such a bad panic attack. And I just felt like this energy of the, you know what I mean? And I'm sure we've all felt it. And I was like, what the fuck am I afraid of? Why do I feel so much fear? And I wanted to share it today on the podcast because I feel like this could be super helpful for other people. Because I think when we allow ourselves to feel this fear, it can stop us from going on to the path that we are meant to do. And I don't want that for me, and I do not want that for you. I want us to be able to realize, like, okay, this sensation is coming up maybe because of something that happened to us in our childhood. Maybe it's coming up from a past life. Maybe it's just coming up because this is your MO, this is your patterning that happens to you when you want to try something new. It's easier to run away than it is to like understand to sit with that feeling and do it anyway. So this morning I did that chakra healing on myself. And it's was a really short one. I know that I need to go back in and really sit in the depths of what's going on with all of the things that were coming up in each chakra. But I do know that more than anything, it's it's gonna be something easier than me like kind of dwelling in there and being like, oh, where can I find the problem? Where how can I handle this? Do you know what I mean? Because we can do that too. We can start to fixate and make it so much bigger than it really needed to be. And it doesn't need to always be something big. It doesn't need to be something dramatic. It doesn't mean that I need to do like a month healing on myself where I really needed to see where it's sitting in my shadow, where is it sitting in my child? Is it in the past life? I can just like try to bring it to the center and find that space where I can really start to figure out where it comes from and alchemize it and fucking move it. Help it like shift it so I can stand more in my courage and not get stuck there. What's been happening, I think, with this new fear that's coming up, is that I am trying to process it in the sense of a time where I feel like I'm in this. Um, how can I explain it? Maybe like uh, I kind of feel like I'm in a rock bottom right now. I don't know how else to explain that. Uh, and it I heard it on my friend's podcast the other day, then I heard it on a different podcast, and then I read it in something and I was like, okay, that's what I'm going through right now. Obviously, there is a piece of me that's going through a rock bottom right now. So everything can be kind of like transmuted, everything can be felt, and then I can move the fuck on. I'm not pushing it away, I'm not bypassing it. What I'm telling you is that once we get to those spaces where we don't sit and dwell and live there, we can start to process these things so much faster instead of like living there and living in that fear and telling myself that I'm too afraid to do everything, or why is this feeling like it's giving me anxiety every day? So I feel like I'm in this like rock bottom phase. Why am I having so much fear come up? And you know, I had this heaviness and this denseness coming around in my like a huge energy coming in through my heart center. And it the first thing that came through, the loudest piece that came through was being hurt. I was like, okay, I've got a lot going on right now. My father passed away. I've got grief going through the heart center. How is that affecting the fear that I am experiencing? Is it because I am beginning to step forward into this new piece of myself? Yes, I hear that very loudly. Yes, it's because I'm stepping into that very clearly. Um why do I feel like I always have this pattern of wanting to run away? And the loudest thing that I hear is because being authentically myself feels uncomfortable. People pleasing. That's the second thing that comes through. Really loud. Like, I am so afraid to hurt other people. I'm afraid to be myself. That was pretty clear and loud. Okay. The other things that came through was that, you know, there may be a little bit of aspects of things that have happened in past lives, maybe a little bit in my childhood, where it was easier to just run away. It was easier to just run away to hide myself. But how I wanted to hop on today because I was like, well, how would I just process this by not being afraid and showing up for myself and for others so they can understand that it may be not as hard to process if you actually just sit down and give yourself the space to do it. And so when I did that today, I felt really called to talk about fear and talk about how we can move it. I think the first step is to be able to bring this to awareness without judging yourself. Don't judge yourself, don't be hard on yourself. I think that those are the things that have softened as I've done this work. Because Andrea, 10, 15, whatever years ago, I would have let it just kind of bring me to a spate of destroying me. I would have judged myself kind of like the way I did at that writer's retreat, that my my writing was shit. Those people probably thought that I was not, that I didn't belong there. When by the way, none of them even thought that. And none of them probably like I wasn't even on their mind because we're all in our own head all the time. Do you know what I mean?

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So bring awareness to the fear without judgment. Just bring awareness to it.

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Notice how it feels in your body. And then for me, my second step was to start asking it questions. Why do I feel this way? And again, it came up with being hurt. It came up with a masses amount of people pleasing because I really am afraid to maybe step on this platform or step onto whatever platform. Anything that comes up in my future because I'm walking my truth and speaking my truth, how is that going to hurt me? Why am I afraid to step into that and be able to really anchor who I am, anchor the light that I am meant to serve on this planet, and be able to speak from my truth and my heart and from that deep space of integrity? Why do I feel afraid? And again, it was just, I don't want others to feel ever hurt. I don't want people to think that I'm coming from my ego. I don't want it to do this. Like I ran it through my chakra systems, and each one gave me the reason. Like it was just fully being able to stand in my truth, in my light, and be able to then share that out into this world. It's fucking scary. That's what came up. It's scary. It's scary. So I could have like, and I'm sure there is again, I'm gonna sit with this a little bit deeper, but I felt so called to immediately just hop on and like share my thoughts because I know that there's so many of us on this planet that allow fear. Of change, fear of standing up for ourselves, fear of speaking our truth, fear of taking that audition to do that play, fear of changing jobs, fear of doing all of these things, and it it just oh it puts such a damper on in a and a in a pause on our life instead of it moving more with grace and moving forward because we get to choose to do it anyway. We get to choose, and then that just helps our soul like elevate just a little bit higher and be able to express ourselves a little bit more freer and understand that yes, is there going to be things that are gonna happen in the future just because we put ourselves out there? Probably. But also understand that a lot of the things that you think are gonna happen are not gonna happen. And a lot of us are living in our own space and our own time and are in our own heads that we're not really like wait, none of that really matters.

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None of it really matters.

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And so I just really wanted to share what was on my heart right now in this moment in time after I did that meditation, because fear can be crippling if we allow it.

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And I think we can choose differently.

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I can choose differently, you can choose differently, and we can choose, like I said in episode two, the frequency of love, of joy. You know, that frequency that just feels so beautiful because you know that you're doing what you're here to do, you know that shifting that job is going to be so good for you, you know that trying out for that play is gonna open up something so much for yourself. Going to that training, trying these new things is what opens the door to all the different possibilities in this world. By choosing to stand in your heart, choosing to stand in your bravery, choosing to see and witness that fear, but do it anyway is uh it's so amazing.

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And so I know that I'm brave.

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I don't always feel brave. I do not always feel brave. And in the last week and a half, I've had more panic attacks than I've had in so long. But I think it's because a piece of my my um patterns are holy shit, I'm about to do something really big and I'm about to put myself out there in a way that I have seen that I am meant to, and I'm fucking scared. So that's where a lot of that was coming from. It's just fear. And I get to acknowledge and witness like why the fear is coming in, and I get to still do it anyway.

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Knowing I'm safe, knowing I'm good, I'm okay, and do it anyway.

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You get to do it anyway, and just be a witness of all of the fear that is coming up, acknowledge it, thank it, even though it's annoying, for bringing in this lesson and pattern that is coming up for you to be, you know, witnessed, not lived there, just witness, just witness that feeling because that's all it is. Um someone brought up something in one of my trainings a long time ago, and I feel like it's really important for this message right now. I was taking a Yoga Nidra training, and I cannot, for the life of me, remember her name right now. So I can't share who it is, but she explained that our emotions and our feelings, she said, imagine this scene with the ocean, and you see this boat, this big boat, coming in on the right hand side of your vision, and it comes in through the right hand side, and then it comes through the center, and then it moves its way out the left. She said, that is what those feelings and emotions are. And so if we choose to just hold the boat really still instead of allowing it to just flow in when it's coming in, that's when the anxiety starts. That's when you start dwelling on everything. That's when you start spiraling, that's when you start feeling all of these things happening because you are not allowing it to just come in and then come back out. You are just being the observer and the witness of it coming through and allowing it to be witnessed and experienced and then leave. Because those emotions and feelings, they're gonna come up all the time about many different things besides not just fear. But you get to witness it and then you get to notice it, and then you get to be like, but that's not gonna live here and it's gonna move on. Again, there is a fine line between stiffening, hardening, and not witnessing it all and bypassing the whole thing. And that's where I think that a piece of my pattern was bringing up like when these things happened to you, maybe when you were younger, maybe even in a past life, you ran because the sensation of running is what came up in my heart space. It was like I run and then I hide. And I know that I've been guarding my heart a lot lately to not get hurt in the fear of already thinking that that's what's gonna happen, that I'm going to be witnessed and like stoned to death. Like that was the fear that was coming up massively in my heart. And so again, I get to allow that boat to come in from the right, that emotion, that feeling. I get to let it just flow with the water and then flow back out. Knowing that it exists, knowledgeing it exists, maybe sit a little bit deeper if there's something that really needs to be witnessed, maybe like a child's self of an instance that happened to you. So she's feeling really afraid, he or she's feeling really afraid. Sit with that peace, just don't live there. Acknowledge her, witness it, and not and that feeling of fear, and then allow it to transmute and move and shift, knowing that that is not your reality. That is just an emotion and a feeling that is coming into your body. Allow yourself so much grace without judgment. Because with that, judgment is where it will stay. If we judge how it is and we judge ourselves and we put it in there, oh my God, that pattern's only gonna get worse. That that cycle is only gonna get worse. And I will tell you, I think that in the last week and a half, even though I've done this work a lot, and even though I'm telling you exactly how I've been processing it, there were pieces of me that wanted to hide and hold on to it so tight and be like, why is this happening? Why is this happening? instead of really sitting there and being like, oh, that is why it's happening. I don't really need to understand every aspect of it, and I don't need to live there. I get to understand and acknowledge it and realize why it's coming through me. And then I get to let it go. And then do this anyway. Because that's how we build that muscle. It's how we build that trust, it's how we build that love for ourselves because we did it anyway. And it's so amazing when we do it, and you get to be so proud of yourself, and you you can feel and amplify that joy and that love and all of the things because you did it. And it feels so freaking good when you believe in yourself and you do it. And I know that there is going to be times in your life where this is gonna feel so hard, and then there's gonna be times in your life that it feels so easy. And I know with the fact that I'm grieving my father that passed and all of these other things at the exact same time that I'm doing a huge like live transition, uh, life transition, it did make it harder. It made it feel like this rock bottom. What the hell? Why do I have to go through all of this at the same time? A little bit of victimhood, a little bit of pity. You know, there was a lot going on in here. But I can tell you that even talking right now and processing a little bit more, even explaining this with you, I realize I know I'm okay. I know that that fear is not gonna stay here and that I get to choose differently and do it anyway, and believe in myself fully and just know like I'm okay. I am okay. So, oh man, thank you for processing that with me. But I hope that it was helpful for you. I hope that you can actually look at fear in such a different way and just realize like we don't need to live there. Our anxiety, our pain, our grief, our fear, any of those feelings. They are just an emotion and a feeling that we can really be able to anchor into that different space and then figure out maybe where it's coming from. Not maybe, figure out where it's coming from. Talk to yourself, ask yourself questions, be curious, but don't fall into that victim state and spiral. You know, try to stay in that neutral energy. And remember the one thing that one of my other teachers just reminded me today. If you do energy work all the time or you are super energetically sensitive, please do your energetic hygiene. I teach my clients and my students so much about that. And I will tell you, as a teacher, just like anything else, whether it's yoga, Pilates, or spiritual teachings, your practice of hygiene is so important. You know, it's just like if you're a yoga teacher, make sure that you have your own practice. If you're a Pilates teacher, make sure you have your own practice so you know how it feels like in your body. If you are doing energy work or you are holding space in that energetic level all the time, or you are energetically sensitive, do your energetic hygiene, cleansing yourself off, releasing energy that's not yours, moving all the things because I will tell you, I literally thought I was doing it really well. And then today, to feel that centeredness and that peace just reminded me to come back to myself. So remember who you are. Know that the fear does not need to rule your life. Understand that if you have so many things that you're trying to do in this beautiful life and you know that your soul is calling you to go do something, go do it. And if you feel like there is some financial burden or some fear of those kind of things holding you back, take babier steps. Take a baby step. Babier steps. I don't even know if that's a word. Um, take baby steps to get to where you really want to be, to get to where you want to be. Follow your soul, trust your heart, and know that fear does not need to write, like be driving the show. Fear is just an emotion and a feeling that's coming through because your soul is ready to evolve. It's ready to grow. So trust the process, even if it's scary, trust the process and understand like you don't have to live there. And it's not, it's not like it's not oh, I don't know how to explain what I'm trying to say. Just trust, trust the process, trust your soul, trust your heart. Come back to that place of joy and love and know that there is a reason why your soul is calling you to do that. So until next time, thank you for listening.