Friending Fear: How to Handle Trauma Like a Badass
In March of 2020 I was training for the USA Boxing Masters Division National Championship. My scheduled opponent was a professional MMA fighter with a lot of experience, she was allowed to compete because she had never boxed professionally.
She and her boyfriend did some shit talking on social media about how she was gonna sweep the whole masters division because she was such a badass.
I watched a few of her MMA fights online and shit my pants. She was much younger, strong and solid with some good kicking power.
What was I afraid of?
I leaned into my fear to see what it was saying –
“She’s younger.”
“She’s faster.”
“She might be better.”
“She might beat you.”
I let those thoughts and all their accompanying sensations wash over me — the clutching in the chest, the cold sweat, the pain in the lower back, the rolling of the stomach.
I didn’t run away from these feelings. I didn’t distract myself. I just let myself marinate in fear.
When you allow your fear in you get to know it better, and you can recognize it the next time you feel it.
Most people are unwilling or unable to do this because there’s an energy to fear that makes us want to jump out of our skin.
Add in our subconscious “helping” us avoid fear with some neat tricks like suppression, repression and distraction and we can avoid fear forever!
But that’s not healthy, because in order to do that the subconscious develops a whole bunch of coping skills (i.e., bad habits) for us to use to avoid fear: people pleasing, perfectionism, poor boundaries, codependency, etc.
And if I hadn’t allowed my fear in, I would have fallen prey to one of them — likely perfectionism.
Perfectionism in my subconscious sounds like this — “I can’t win so I shouldn’t bother trying.”
But your subconscious doesn’t allow you to hear that. Instead it sets up blocks to make everything more difficult. Injuries, strange roadblocks appearing out of nowhere, feelings of being unmotivated, etc.
The whole thing falls apart because you subconsciously fear humiliation, but instead you can actually blame your injury or your drop off in training and then rationalize it by saying “I was injured,” or “I slacked on my training.” These rationalizations are created by your ego to protect you.
Can you see how damaging a lifetime of fear avoidance can be?
Can you see how out of touch with reality you can become?
But back to my story — in this case I marinated in the fear until it was gone (yes it goes away!). Then I shook myself off, satisfied with my ability to tolerate such gross feeling emotions and sat down to process my initial fear inducing thoughts.
“She’s younger.”
But I’ve been training hard. And I’m more mature and have better boxing IQ.
“She’s faster.”
But I’m stronger and I hit harder. I know she’s NEVER felt anything like getting hit by me.
“She might be better.”
Not a chance. I’ve got way more boxing experience than she does.
“She might beat you.”
Maybe in MMA, but NEVER in boxing.
I knew it in my bones, I knew it in my soul — I was going to win this thing!