Dear ally:

I don’t feel guilty anymore. I still feel fearful sometimes, only a moment ago I did. I looked at your three line post and for a moment I feared aggression there, against me, some type of criticism. You gave me no reason to fear you. The fear exists in my brain before I knew of your existence, of course. It is decades old, the fear of my mother expressing aggression toward me, as she has done many thousands of times. This old fear, registered in my brain, got activated a moment ago.

What do I do with fear? I notice it and stay with it for a moment, not rushing to escape it.

This one sentence I wrote above takes months and years, in my case, to put into practice. It takes more to do this very day, for me. Here is the fear- notice- stay. Stay. When you stay still for a moment, after that initial spike of fear, it doesn’t feel like fear anymore. It passes on. It doesn’t stay… if you stay with it.

Tell me more about your guilt, will you?

anita