{"id":18005,"date":"2025-03-25T01:36:46","date_gmt":"2025-03-25T01:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/?p=18005"},"modified":"2025-03-25T01:36:46","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T01:36:46","slug":"how-i-embraced-softness-as-a-life-changing-remedy-for-fear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/?p=18005","title":{"rendered":"How I Embraced Softness as a Life-Changing Remedy for Fear"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Fear has always walked quietly beside me\u2014not always loud or overwhelming, but present, shaping how I moved through the world. For a long time, I didn\u2019t even realize it was there.<\/p>\n

I always thought of myself as a brave person. Throughout my life, I made plenty of choices that didn\u2019t always make sense to my loved ones, and I always felt a deeper trust that things would turn out OK. And usually, they did. Whether it was intuition, being guided by something greater or pure luck, things always seemed to fall into place. <\/p>\n

Making big decisions, like moving to a new country without a plan, didn\u2019t seem risky to me. But when I decided to leave behind my stable job to pursue a career path that truly aligned with my values, the certainty I\u2019d always felt began to crumble. And that\u2019s when fear found me.<\/p>\n

Fear can be mysterious and illogical<\/h2>\n
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Fear, to me, looked like the familiar thoughts of self-doubt that many of us know well. But it wasn\u2019t just mental\u2014it was physical, too. A cold sensation running down my spine, tightness in my chest and tense muscles. At times, the fear literally took my breath away. It was hard to focus on anything else, especially on the one thing I most wanted to focus on: how to figure out my life so I no longer had to feel this way.<\/p>\n

What was I so deeply afraid of? That\u2019s a question you might ask. The answers were many: failing publicly, being judged for something so deeply authentic to me, running out of money, and the crushing disappointment that could come from pursuing something I longed for but failing at it. These fears were tangible, but there was also a part of my fear that felt deeper\u2014something I couldn\u2019t fully explain.<\/p>\n

I realized that fear doesn\u2019t always have a clear, logical explanation. We can often trace our fears back to specific events or beliefs instilled in us by those who raised us. But sometimes, fear simply remains a mystery. It\u2019s a part of us that may be uncovered over time, but not always in the moment when we most want to understand it.<\/p>\n

There are fears we carry in our bones, ones that emerge when we\u2019re most vulnerable. And when they do, we may come to realize that we\u2019ve been carrying them all along\u2014we\u2019ve just learned to make decisions that have helped us avoid them. <\/p>\n

Our search for true safety<\/h2>\n
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Though I didn\u2019t always recognize my specific fears, I did recognize that I felt deeply unsafe when trying to grow my confidence while simultaneously trying to establish myself as an expert. The pressure to have everything figured out was overwhelming, and I constantly worried I never would. <\/p>\n

Every step I took towards the life I longed for required courage, yet I didn\u2019t always feel courageous. Instead, I often felt like a fraud\u2014sharing my knowledge about fear and the nervous system while frequently being overwhelmed by it myself.<\/p>\n

Though my loved ones tried their best to be supportive, I realized they didn\u2019t fully understand my fear. After all, I wasn\u2019t in any real danger, and I had consciously chosen this path\u2014a fact that weighed heavily on me. It brought a layer of guilt: Was I allowed to feel afraid when I had willingly left my safety behind? <\/p>\n

But fear doesn\u2019t follow logic or reason. It\u2019s simply a nervous system response to a perceived threat, and in certain moments, I felt deeply unsafe.<\/p>\n

During this time, I had a recurring dream: I tried to hold onto a wall with both hands and feet, but I kept slipping away. This dream mirrored what I felt in waking life\u2014I was desperately trying to grasp something that would give me safety, but nothing seemed to offer the reassurance I needed.<\/p>\n

Many of us don\u2019t know what to do with fear, so we search for something\u2014anything\u2014that will offer us the safety we long for. And while it\u2019s very helpful to surround yourself with supportive people, and we all need encouragement from time to time, true safety won\u2019t come from the validation or reassurance of others. External circumstances do matter, but true safety can still be found even when we\u2019re still figuring things out.<\/p>\n

True safety comes from within\u2014it\u2019s a deeper foundation you can always rely on. It\u2019s the trust that while life is unpredictable, you have the resilience to navigate its waves. Safety isn\u2019t about a life without fear; it\u2019s about knowing you have the capacity to process it. This is a vital life skill that many of us never learned while growing up\u2014mostly because our caregivers didn\u2019t have it, either.<\/p>\n

Softness as an antidote to fear<\/h2>\n
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