Confronting Fears To Keep Moving Forward

Fears have the ability to take take many forms.  I believe fear is like a plant that has a root and spreads to other insecure parts of your mind.  In fact, I personally think that when the root spreads, it creates a cage that is often difficult to push through, but is ultimately worth it.  I often experience this when I am writing.  Sometimes on Twitter, I engage in #vss365 (very short story 365).  I usually participate in these when I have writer's block and am having difficultly trying to find topics to write about, so usually I just try to create my own.  A few mornings ago, I stumbled upon some ads on youtube about writing and I must admit that I felt inspired by the preview.  A particular quote from world renowned writer, Margaret Atwood, writer of The Handmaid's Tale and Alias Grace, made me think about myself as a writer, " If you want to write and are struggling to get started- it means you're afraid of something."  I paused the ad, reread her words carefully and tearfully nodded in agreement.  This prompted me to ask myself, what am I genuinely afraid of?  I began thinking about it not only from a writer's perspective, but from the perspective of my daily life.
Human beings do not live without fear.  Even if we do not want to admit it to ourselves, we each fear something consciously or sub-consciously.  Some fears have labels and are defined as extremes known as "phobias" and other fears are something we can't necessarily wrap our heads around.  Our fears limit so much of what we do in our daily lives and they usually stop us from being able to achieve our goals. Yet, we often see others who have made it and think about how lucky they are.  Honestly speaking, I think they made it because they conquered a fear- they took steps to keep going and pushed through it with their own determination.
Atwood's quote made me think about my own fears.  I knew what I feared on the surface (and trust me the list was abnormally long).  But I wanted to get to the origin of what I genuinely feared deep inside myself, which took quite a long time. I made a list of the things I feared on the surface, these were the fears that automatically came to me which consisted mostly of the fear of large groups of people,  the fear of not being enough for the people around me in my life, the fear of being judged in a negative light by those around me, and the fear of letting myself down.  When I analyzed this list, I realized that majority of these surface fears connected back to the deeper-rooted fear of ultimately ending up alone in my life.  I had to ask myself why I felt this fear so deeply.  I know I have abandonment issues from being adopted- fears about others leaving me and that's why I push people away, because I had a preconceived idea that most people would leave me anyway.  I know I always felt like in a crowd of people there was no escape and ultimately led me to be diagnosed with agoraphobia.  I began to realize that although these fears controlled me for a large portion of my life, they were just silly.  People are meant to come and go in your life, each with their own purpose for a specific amount of time.  And there is always a way to leave a place that has too many people in it, you just have to look for the exists.  It took a long time, but for me, understanding where my fears originated helped me heal and helped me find the ability to move forward from them in my life.
We must remember, there is no plant that we can not cut if we understand where the root is.  I encourage everyone to ask themselves what am I genuinely afraid of and separate these fears into two categories: "surface fears" and "deeper fears."  I am sure that many of your surface fears will lead back to a deeper fear that perhaps you aren't realizing.  It's time to cut out the things that are holding you back.