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Overcoming our Fears
I grew up having some internal struggles related to fear and have learned the necessity of learning how to overcome fear. Due to some events and circumstances surrounding my life at the young age of six, my life has been riddled with insecurities related to being rejected and abandoned. You can read more about this in the Live Heart-Fully Journal. I also share briefly in this conversation below.
At times, I look back on my life and see that throughout my childhood, into my twenties, and even still to this day, my life has been littered with the same narrative- people canceling, people not showing up, going on vacations only to return to friends who don’t like me anymore, etc. I have a fear of rejection. Because of this, I have struggled with friendships. I have felt invisible, forgotten, neglected, insignificant, and ultimately, rejected. These feelings of fear have often consumed my thoughts when planning for a party or gathering. I have learned that pressing through and discovering how to overcome my fear is the only way to move beyond those fears.
I have invited Katy Malkin to this Live Heart-Fully Conversation because she has struggled with similar mental/emotional fears that have plagued both her childhood and adult life. Katy is full of wisdom and provides plenty of practical tips and tricks in learning to recognize, face, and overcome, and manage fear.
About the Live Heart-Fully Conversations
Welcome to the Live Heart-Fully Conversations! The Live Heart-Fully Conversations are a series of interviews and conversations created to inspire, provoke, and challenge you to go deeper in feeding your own soul and pursuing stronger, authentic relationships with others. Over the next year, I am talking with some amazing powerhouse people who have had some true challenges, lived through them, and are now sharing their own personal power stories.
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Welcome Katy Malkin
Katy Malkin is a Nutritionist and Health Coach. She helps busy women with weight loss without having the dread of dieting! Katy teaches that being healthy is all about positive body image and breaking habits that are no longer serving us.
Katy has a blog, Learner Vegan, where she provides nutritional recipes, and tips and tricks to maximize weight loss. She also created the Lighter, Leaner, and Loving Yourself weight loss program that allows women to shed pounds while still enjoying delicious meals.
Katy received her Bachelor of Science degree in Animal Biology and Conservation. She also has extensively studied nutrition. Katy has been married to her husband for eleven years. Together they have two girls, ages six and nearly two.
The Conversation: How to Overcome Fear
Have you struggled with fear?
Katy: Definitely, and I think we all have. Fear crops up throughout our lives in different forms. What about you?
Sarah: Yes! I agree that we all have struggled with fear, including myself. I do believe that some people struggle with fear more than others though.
Recognizing the Source of the Fear
Name some of your childhood fears? Where do you think they began? What is the source of your fear(s)?
Katy: I developed such a fear of people not liking me as a child. Similarly, to yourself, my parents divorced when I was five, and although I saw my dad every week, we never really spent time together. It felt like more of a necessity to him. As I grew up, I also noticed that my thoughts were different to others. I became vegetarian at age twelve, questioned social norms from a young age and found it difficult to make friends. I became quite shy and introverted, but still worried that people wouldn’t like me. I’ve suffered from depression since I was around seventeen.
Sarah: Wow! There is a lot packed into that brief answer. Being a vegetarian at such a young age, I’m sure if you didn’t already feel different from others prior, you probably did at that time, and for that reason. Back in those days, vegetarianism was not a common or trendy thing at all. I felt different too, but not because I was making lifestyle choices at a young age. Honestly, I didn’t realize my unique perspectives until my mid-twenties, and even then, it took a while to begin to appreciate them.
I also grew up feeling the challenge of ‘fitting in’ and making solid friendships. In fact, I felt like I was lost amongst my so-called friends, and that I never truly had a place in any particular group. As an older teenager, I started realizing the struggle more. It was a fear of rejection, and also abandonment, and it began way back when my dad left and my parents divorced. I don’t want to put a label on your fear, but it sounds similar. What are your thoughts?
How Circumstances and Events Ignite Fear
Katy: Yes! And especially with divorce, even when it happens at a younger age, it can have a greater effect than we realize. As a teenager, I had three really close friends and always had that fear that they would leave, join another social group, or just not like me anymore. I didn’t have a great number of friends because it was almost like I wanted to zone in all my efforts on the few friends, to keep them sticking around. I suppose in some way, my dad just leaving suddenly one day gave me the fear that it could happen again without warning. So strange to realize all that now!
Sarah: It’s truly amazing how things we experience in our lives, including when we are very young, can ignite feelings of fear, or other mental/emotional struggles. As children, we don’t realize it, and of course, we’re resilient. But the effects often stay with us for our entire lives. In fact, they most often shape us into the people we are, whether for good, bad, or somewhere in between. We can see those effects in the way we interact and respond to others.
From Childhood to Adultdhood
Have any of those childhood fears followed you into your adult life? Explain?
Katy: Because I didn’t really realize I had these fears growing up, they definitely followed me into adulthood.
Sarah: In what ways? Can you expand and give some real examples of moments where that fear has crept up on you?
Katy: In my late teens, I definitely stayed in unhealthy romantic relationships longer than I should have. I wasn’t scared to be alone, but I was scared of people judging me if I ended a relationship. Like I’d failed at something. So odd to think about now!
Sarah: It’s not odd. There’re lots of people who stay in toxic, unhealthy relationships longer than they should.
Katy: It also led me to overanalyze most social interactions and potential friendships. I had social anxiety and that really stopped me from just being in the present moment and enjoying any social gathering. This went on until my mid-20s when I sought help for my anxiety.
I think now, that fear can crop up in these situations but it’s much more mild and brief because I’ve exercised my brain on how to deal with it.
Sarah: So how do you overcome your fear, or deal with it?
Overcome your Fear Strategy #1
Katy: I like to use breathwork, the ‘5-Senses Technique’ which is quite a common one for anxiety, and reframing fears into ‘what positive thing could happen?’
As Fear Grows and Expands, Anxieties Increase
Have there been any new fears you have had to navigate as an adult? If so, explain.
Katy: My experiences growing up have definitely expanded into fears of being a failure, lazy, or not a good mother. I’ve also been very aware of how people perceive me and don’t want to give a negative image. So much so that I made decisions that made me unhappy.
A Quiet, Insecure Me
Sarah: About other people’s perceptions of us, I mentioned that I didn’t become aware of my unique perspectives until my mid-twenties. I’ll share this story because it directly relates to my own fear of rejection, and how I have had to overcome it.
I was living in Russia at the time, studying abroad, and I was having a very difficult time connecting with the group of students I traveled with to study while there. Let me just say it was a very dark and very lonely time in my life. I remember overhearing a conversation another student was having with a professor about me! (I will say that this particular student had his own issues and was a very angry young man, just angry at the world for various reasons). But nevertheless, I was in the other room and the walls echoed just enough so that I could hear. The student did not say kind things about me. After that evening I became very aware of how he, and others perceived me.
Several months later, in the airport on our way home, just as we were all splitting off from one another to travel our own ways home, that same student yelled hurtful things at me and made a scene in front of a few of the others with us. It was his way of saying goodbye, I suppose.
And what I remember even more than the hurtful things he said, is looking at two others who, at the time, I thought I had bonded with at least enough to warrant their support. As I looked over at both of them, they looked at me with their jaws open wide in surprise. However, they remained quiet and eventually looked down at their feet. Both of them did that! They did not back me up or support me in any way. So I walked away and made every effort to hold back tears.
I share this story because it was these two moments in Russia where I became very aware of how others perceive me and very insecure about how I come across to others. After that trip, I became much more cautious about sharing my opinions and thoughts. I would often sit in conversations and listen to others share ideas while I remained silent in fear of sharing an idea that would be ridiculed or criticized in any way.
Recently, I have been making efforts to overcome my fear, and allowing myself to share openly once again. It has been difficult.
If you are comfortable, can you expand on your comment about making decisions that made you unhappy?
Katy: I’m so sorry you had that experience. We really see it as a reflection of us, don’t we? When in reality, it’s a reflection of the people behind those actions.
Sarah: Yes!
Stacking up Over Time
Katy: I think many of the fear-based decisions I’ve made that made me unhappy are small but tend to stack up on top of each other over time. I’ve only recently learned that it’s ok to say no to people. That no is a complete sentence and you don’t need an elaborate excuse.
Sarah: Yes! I absolutely agree with that. It’s hard because it seems rude. But it is so necessary because we need to prioritize our lives around the things we love and the things that matter. I have a whole other topic on that, but yes! I agree.
Katy: I still have some fear around confrontation. Disagreements with anyone but my husband give me such anxiety. In the past that has led to me allowing people into our (me and my girls) lives that don’t have our best interests at heart. Now I tend to deal with it by avoiding the person/situation, but it’s something I still need to work on in a healthier way.
Overcome your Fear Strategy #2
Sarah: Good for you! I’m so glad to hear you are growing in that way, and that your girls, and husband too, can experience the benefits of that as well. Let’s just brainstorm a minute to find a possible healthier way to deal with that, other than just avoiding the person/situation, if you don’t mind. What are your thoughts?
Katy: Yes. I’m definitely working on self-confidence so that I can confront people in a calm way when it’s necessary. Journaling regularly and being aware of my own personality and tendencies helps. Also just being around those people and being mindful that any reaction of theirs is not mine to control, I can only control my own actions.
How Fear Affects Our Relationships
How do you think your fear(s) have affected your relationships with others?
Katy: My fear coupled with being an introvert, has definitely made it hard for me to make friends. I tend to overanalyze social interactions and if people like me.
Sarah: I totally get that! I find myself constantly feeling like I need to apologize to people for saying the wrong thing. And it’s not that I am saying the wrong thing. It’s more that I feel like what I say to others comes out in the wrong way. The connection from my heart to my brain is there, but when it comes out of my mouth, it doesn’t come out right, if that makes sense. So I have become overly cautious to say exactly the right thing in exactly the right way to not offend others.
I also tend to question whether other people want me around. I often feel, again, the way I felt growing up, that is that I am not that important in other people’s lives.
Katy: I can definitely relate. I’ll question if I’m a nuisance by being in someone’s presence. Really, we are entitled to take up space in the world and be our true selves!
Sarah: Oh my gosh, yes! Very well said!
Overcome Your Fear Strategy #3
Katy: I will say though, that [fears and anxieties pertaining to social situations] is not something that affected my marriage. I was able to connect with someone who completely understood me and I can be open about these fears. Having a sounding board or even saying these things out loud, has helped me to move past them and overcome the fear. Some of them are part of me and I can accept that because our entire life is a learning journey. Others I’ve been able to defeat with support.
Sarah: I’m so glad you found someone who understands and supports you in that way. That is such a beautiful thing, and I am happy to hear that you have been about to move past and overcome some of that fear.
Overcome Your Fear Strategy #4
What are some ways you have learned to move beyond and overcome your fear(s)?
Katy: Just self-analysis and asking ourselves about our own reactions to things can be useful. I had to start asking myself if I was doing things for myself or for other people. I had to ask if this was the trajectory I wanted for my entire life. Having children definitely helped because I had to face those fears in order to be a good parent to them and to not carry on the generational cycle.
Sarah: I think I know what you mean by ‘generational cycle,’ but can you explain that?
Also, I just love the self-analysis tip. It is so important to our growth and our ability to overcome emotional/social fear. Can you provide an example of this?
Katy: Yes, of course. So the emotional absence of my father that affected me… I don’t want my own fears to now affect my children. I’m very open with them actually, about mental health, and anxiety. It’s important that they know, but also not feel the burden of it. I will also put myself in some uncomfortable social situations, like kids’ groups, so that they can socialize and thrive.
Katy: Yes, of course. So the emotional absence of my father that affected me… I don’t want my own fears to now affect my children. I’m very open with them actually, about mental health, and anxiety. It’s important that they know, but also not feel the burden of it. I will also put myself in some uncomfortable social situations, like kids’ groups, so that they can socialize and thrive.
Sarah: Yes, I totally understand that. As a parent, we have to often force ourselves into things that we would never have done had we not had children. And a lot of those things are uncomfortable.
I became very aware of my tendency to withdraw from society and from social situations after having my son. In fact, I write about this in the Live Heart-Fully Journal. I was totally content just hanging out with my son and my husband and not seeing anyone else. A lot of that attitude towards relationships was rooted in my own fear of rejection. And I really believed I could just live my life that way.
But then I realized after a few months just how incredibly unhealthy that is. And even though I am naturally introverted, it began to take a toll on my mental and emotional health. So I had to make some changes for my sake, and for the sake of my son too, I forced myself to start making phone calls to others (friends) and to get involved in some groups and such. It was, and still can be difficult, but it is so necessary. Also, it is just another step I have learned to take to overcome that fear of rejection.
Overcome Your Fear Strategy #5
Katy: One thing that helped [me] was a Limiting Belief Exercise. It helps you to understand what’s holding you [any person] back from doing or being what you [that person] want, and reframe it.
I also worked through deeper issues with a therapist, and I meditate and journal on a daily basis. Life is so fast-paced and full of tasks that we often don’t give ourselves that time to process the day and look inwards.
Sarah: Journaling has been very helpful for me too, and I’ve been doing it for a very long time now. But I have not practiced the Limiting Belief Exercise?
Just a quick interlude, if you would like to learn more about the Limiting Belief Exercise, Katy has created a free download that will guide you through the process of learning how to manage and overcome fear.
Dealing with Common Fears
What are some common fears people have as adults?
Katy: I think we can have fears around anything, and many of these do stem from a childhood event or experience. I’ve had a fear of spiders since one fell from the ceiling down the back of my dress when I was a child!
Sarah: Eeww! I would be so afraid of spiders too if that happened.
Katy: I check every single piece of clothing before I put it on, even to this day! However, it is not something I feel anxiety about on a day-to-day basis. If I do see a spider, I’m calm but won’t touch it. It’s a fear I’ve accepted and that’s ok. Many people have fears of physical things like this. But we all have more emotional fears too, and many of us don’t realize it. Things like fear of commitment, intimacy, failure.
Sarah: Yes! Those emotional, and I’ll say mental fears too- those are the hard ones. We can learn to ignore the spiders. But the fear of commitment, or failure, intimacy, rejection, or abandonment as we have been talking about, and other fears like these can really debilitate us and prevent us from moving forward in our lives.
Overcome Your Fear Strategy #6
Can you provide some practical steps people can take to begin moving beyond these types of fear?
Katy: Not judging ourselves, but asking what internal work can I do to at least feel at peace with these fears? It’s completely normal to have fears, and I think if we strive to eradicate these from our lives we only punish ourselves. If we can live with them, even come to a place where we’re open about them to those that we love, and learn to laugh at them a little, they begin to lose their power.
Sarah: Wow! That is powerful input Katy. We may struggle with our fears for our whole lives. But being able to grow strong enough, or smart enough, or capable enough to recognize them and not be moved by them- that is powerful. It’s like, recognize that they’re there, but don’t allow them to handicap you. Don’t let them rule over your life. Don’t allow your fears to call the shots and make the decisions.
Yes! I think knowing that the fear isn’t YOU, it’s not your whole identity, and it’s not your fault, is so so important.
Overcome Your Fear Strategy #7
Katy: Therapy can also help as a safe space to explore fears if you feel like they are taking over your life. If they are affecting your relationships, happiness, causing stress and anxiety, I would definitely recommend finding a therapist that you resonate with. We can often realize things about ourselves and find a way forward.
Sarah: That is so true! Therapy has helped me in the past, and I know it is highly beneficial to so many others too.
Is there anything else you would like to add to our conversation about overcoming fear? Any other thoughts?
Katy: I think if you can start anywhere, just be kind to yourself. Fear isn’t conquered in a day. We can’t just wake up and decide it’s gone. Some issues can be defeated, others just managed. And we can still thrive and be happy regardless. There’s always hope.
Sarah: Thank you so much Katy for sharing from your heart and being vulnerable here. Learning to overcome fear is such a powerful topic and your input is forever valuable.
Key Highlights on Overcoming our Fears
- Our fears may reach back to our childhood. Evaluating your childhood and pinpointing a possible starting point for a particular fear can be highly beneficial.
- We are all entitled to take up space in this world. Don’t allow your fears to beat you down and hold you back.
- Sharing our fear(s) with someone out loud can help us understand and even move past those fears.
- Self-Evaluation can facilitate growth. We can learn about our triggers from past responses to our fears, and develop a plan moving forward when we encounter our fears.
- Fear is fear, and it has no power unless we give it power. If we cannot overcome and eradicate them, the next best option is to learn to be at peace with it, knowing how to manage it. When we can learn how to manage our fears, their power decreases.
- Don’t be too harsh on yourself. Everyone has at least one mental/emotional fear they battle. Your fears don’t define you and it is NOT your fault.
Take Action to Overcome your Fears
- It can benefit us to pinpoint a possible starting point to each or your fears. Think back to moments (even in your childhood) where your fear could have first begun.
- Find someone in your life who you trust. Let them stand as a sounding board for you to share openly about your fears. Take their feedback to heart.
- Self-Evaluate. Ask yourself some hard questions and give yourself honest and transparent answers.
- Is this the trajectory I want my life to take?
- What are my children learning from my response to my own personal fears?
- What internal work can I do to at least establish some lifestyle habits that help overcome and deal with my fears?
- More on Self-Evaluation: Establish daily, weekly, monthly habits such as 5-Senses Technique, Limiting Belief Exercises, Meditation, Journaling.
Recaping the Seven Strategies to Overcome Your Fear
- Practicing the 5-Senses Technique
- Journaling as part of a self-evaluation habit
- Talking it out with a friend or loved one
- Asking yourself the hard questions (See Take Action Step 3)
- Limiting Belief Excercise
- Discover an attitude of peace and contentment with your fear.
- Seek therapy is necessary
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