{"id":1797,"date":"2018-09-07T15:45:34","date_gmt":"2018-09-07T15:45:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/2020\/02\/19\/between-fear-and-fearlessness\/"},"modified":"2018-09-07T15:45:34","modified_gmt":"2018-09-07T15:45:34","slug":"between-fear-and-fearlessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/?p=1797","title":{"rendered":"Between Fear and Fearlessness"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\u200bSo\u2026I opened a private practice\u2026WHAT?!\u00a0 It is exciting.\u00a0 It is challenging.\u00a0 It is meaningful.\u00a0 It is scary.\u00a0 It is overwhelming.\u00a0 It is a myriad of emotions that swirl and change daily culminating to the thought, \u201cWell, what now?\u201d\u00a0 To explain, let me start at the beginning.<\/p>\n

All goals and well thought out plans start with an intention.\u00a0 A tiny seed of thought planted and waiting for the right conditions and opportunity to grow.\u00a0 I had always intended to land in private practice one day.\u00a0 I have owned my own business before.\u00a0 I saw how the teachings of yoga and meditation helped increase the well-being of the yoga practitioner mentally in this business.\u00a0 This triggered my desire to return to graduate school for my master\u2019s in social work with the intention to become a licensed clinical social worker who could one day use the evidenced based skills of psychotherapy with the ancient teachings of yoga in a collaborative process.<\/p>\n

When you plant seeds, you are not always certain the environment is right.\u00a0 Is the soil fertile enough?\u00a0 Have I watered the seed enough?\u00a0 Does it have the right food source to continue to nourish it?\u00a0 Is the light sufficient to grow?\u00a0 I think these are the questions we ask ourselves, consciously or unconsciously, when we decide to make a change.\u00a0 It can be the fertilizer that helps our intention grow or it can the weeds of self-doubt blocking us from seeing our opportunity.<\/p>\n

It is those weeds I want to talk about for a moment.\u00a0\u00a0If our proverbial weeds are our thoughts, how do our thoughts block us from reaching our goals.\u00a0 It goes a little something like this\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I should go into private practice [insert your own personal goal here].\u00a0 I am excited for this opportunity, but what if I don\u2019t know how to get things organized and off the ground?\u00a0 I might fail?\u00a0 What would people think? \u00a0I really should be doing more to be prepared.\u00a0 What if I never get it together?\u00a0 Is this right for my family? I might as well just quit now while I am ahead.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The coulda, woulda, and should\u2019s start flooding our mind.\u00a0 Those thoughts, when given attention, grow and take root in our minds making it even harder for our seeds of intention to grow.\u00a0 The spinning thoughts stir up feelings of insecurity, self-doubt, and FEAR that, when allowed to root in our minds, can resemble worry, anxiety, depression, or poor self-esteem.<\/p>\n

Fear is a tricky emotion.\u00a0 Fear is helpful in that, at its best, it keeps us safe, manages expectations, and prepares us for challenges.\u00a0 However, fear often lives in extremes.\u00a0 At one extreme, fear is frozen, blocking us from moving forward towards our goals.\u00a0 At the other extreme, fear is panicked and will impulsively act to sabotage our goals.<\/p>\n

Buddhist teachings inform much of our evidenced based mindfulness techniques in today\u2019s psychotherapy.\u00a0 Buddhists believe that a cause of distress is from living in these extremes of emotion.\u00a0 They teach \u201cfinding the middle path.\u201d\u00a0 On the middle path, there is a calmness (a still point you might say) that acts as the “weeding out” of our spinning thoughts.\u00a0 By plucking the weeds, light is allowed to shine on the seed.\u00a0 Clarity is found and movement towards the right action occurs.\u00a0 On the middle path, we can step forward towards our goals.\u00a0 The middle path does not mean that the process is easy.\u00a0 It just means we are led by our truth and not the negative thoughts that “weed up” our minds.<\/p>\n

So, back to my story.\u00a0 I planted a seed of intention many years ago.\u00a0 An opportunity presented itself.\u00a0 I was not without fear and all the associated \u201cweeds\u201d, but I sought clarity by doing the work to envision my intended path.\u00a0 I would like to say I am living day to day fearlessly in my private practice; but, the reality is I still have days when insecurity, doubt and fear emerge.\u00a0 None of us are immune to these emotions \u2013 not even your therapist!\u00a0 I just choose to walk my path finding a place somewhere between fear and fearlessness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u200bSo\u2026I opened a private practice\u2026WHAT?!\u00a0 It is exciting.\u00a0 It is challenging.\u00a0 It is meaningful.\u00a0 It is scary.\u00a0 It is overwhelming.\u00a0 It is a myriad of emotions that swirl and change daily culminating to the thought, \u201cWell, what now?\u201d\u00a0 To explain, let me start at the beginning. All goals and well thought out plans start with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1865,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}