Courage is not the absence of fear; courage is fear. To quote Alan Watts:
”To remain stable is to refrain from trying to separate yourself from a pain because you know that you cannot. Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape.”
Exposure therapy techniques are useful if there’s something causing you more fear than it ought, but some level of fear is inevitable. Accepting the fear is the only way to conquer it, but trying to conquer it is just being afraid of the fear, and therefore not accepting it. So you must accept the fear, not because you want to be rid of it, but because you realise that resisting the fear is futile.
Courage is not the absence of fear; courage is fear. To quote Alan Watts:
”To remain stable is to refrain from trying to separate yourself from a pain because you know that you cannot. Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape.”
Exposure therapy techniques are useful if there’s something causing you more fear than it ought, but some level of fear is inevitable. Accepting the fear is the only way to conquer it, but trying to conquer it is just being afraid of the fear, and therefore not accepting it. So you must accept the fear, not because you want to be rid of it, but because you realise that resisting the fear is futile.