Name Your Fears: A Simple Step Toward Achieving Peace

Kaitlyn Clare Mason describes a method for keeping our fears at bay.

Would you believe me if I told you that there is a simple, quick way to face anxiety head-on and snap back into control of your emotions when things become difficult?

When practiced regularly (ahem … I need to do this more!), this process can have a big impact on your well-being and overall outlook on life.

Some of the things we fear in life are totally valid. Others, not so much. So, we can break up our fears into two categories: fear of things that are unknown, and fear of things that are known.

Our health in the future is always unknown, for example. I have no idea whether or not I will be in good health next week or year. We are definitely not guaranteed good health or physical safety in this life.

Now, if I have an upcoming surgery or medical procedure, or if I’m 9.5 months pregnant and I’m about to go into labor at any minute (hopefully), those are known things for which we may hold a reasonable, and often understandable, amount of fear.

In general, our fear of unknown things is often fabricated from “what-if” type scenarios, that may or may not ever play out as we imagine in real life.

Meanwhile, our fear of known things is often founded on a solid base of past experiences, an understanding of truth, and the fact that we simply cannot avoid inevitable things.

With all fear, we still don’t know how each moment in the future will play out, and we can trust that God gives us the grace for each moment in that moment.

Not before, not after, but during each moment as it is needed.

The good news is that with both unknown and known fears, we help fear lose its grip on us when we simply call it by name. In the Gospel, Jesus rebukes Peter’s lack of understanding saying, “Get behind me, Satan.” In this story, Jesus was able to both identify Satan subtly at work and to call him out by name.

Once Jesus called Satan by his name, Satan lost his grip on the situation. It is the same in our own lives. When we are able to identify Satan at work, we can call him by name and he loses his grip on our lives.

As soon as we name what is causing our anxiety and discomfort, we can make a decision about how to best proceed. By deciding and acting, we then gain confidence and security in how we are approaching and handling the situation.

And this sends fear running for the hills.

We can trust that God gives us the grace for each moment in that moment. #catholicmom

Copyright 2020 Kaitlyn Clare Mason
Image created by the author in Canva.com using free elements.