There’s a reason I keep talking about fears, both here and in real life.
Fears must be pulled out, dissected, and exposed in the light of day.
At first, pulling those fears out is difficult. They’re like mental ingrown hangnails. But pulling those brain weasels out of your head and dealing with them becomes easier (and faster) the more you do it.
Maybe you’ve been trained – explicitly or implicitly – to not address your fears, to not make your needs known. Acknowledging that training – and working to counter it – is the first vital step towards healing.
Sometimes it feels as if pulling that fear out, that speaking its name, will make it real. We see this all the time in our cultural myths, from villains like Voldemort and Sauron, to the comedic “don’t say ‘it couldn’t possibly get worse’.”
But you must acknowledge and tear apart those fears.
Otherwise they’re holding you hostage.
They’re holding you hostage – with a lie.
The fear is that things will get worse if you address your fear – but avoiding that fear also makes things worse… just slowly, and in a different way.
Let’s say your worst case scenario if your fears are true would be taking 20 hit points of damage in a round.
But what gets ignored is that avoiding the fear costs you one hit point a turn.
That adds up, quick… and it also ignores the possibility that the best case scenario wouldn’t do any damage at all.
And often, it will lead to you leveling up.