The following excerpt is taken from the new book Five Steps for Overcoming Fear and Self-Doubt: Journey Into Present-Moment Time, by Wyatt Webb. It is published by Hay House (June 2004) and available at all bookstores or online at: www.hayhouse.com

Five Steps for Overcoming Fear and Self-Doubt:
Journey Into Present-Moment Time
By: Wyatt Web

Step 1

Acknowledge the Fear and Self-Doubt

It’s almost midnight on April 16, 2003. I went to bed early tonight to get plenty of rest in preparation for tomorrow afternoon, when I’m going to do what I promised my publisher: Get my ass up that pole at Miraval. Yet I woke up approximately 30 minutes ago with my head racing . . . and I realized that the pole isn’t the problem.

I think what I’m about to confront has nothing to do with anything other than my own beliefs about myself—what I should be, what I’m not, what others are going to see, and what I’m going to be forced to look at. The stories going on in my head are endless. Sure, on a daily basis I’m able to sit with people, comfort them, and be supportive and understanding so that they might walk through their own fear and self-doubt. But now that it’s my turn, it’s not so easy. Intellectually, I know that I’ll be strapped into the safety harness and feel physically safe as I climb the 30-foot pole. I’ve done that part before. However, in the past I couldn’t take the last step—I didn’t even try. Instead, I went through the pretense of saying, "At least I went as far as I could, and that’s okay."

Those words were nothing more than mental masturbation. Back then I had to make myself believe that it was okay. If I’d tried to take that last step, I would have had to get in touch with what I’m about to confront tomorrow. I’m not even sure what that is or what I’m dealing with right now, but I think it’s about admitting the physical limitations (or the perceived physical limitations) of a 60-year-old man who hasn’t taken care of his body.

I remember that as a catcher in college I was able to stay behind the plate for an entire game, bouncing up and down on my knees for nine long innings. My legs were extremely strong then, but today I feel so much pain that I can’t squat at all anymore. I’ve lost all the cartilage between the two main bones in my legs at the knee joints. People often ask me what’s wrong as they watch me walk with an unconscious favoring of whichever leg hurts the most that day.

Basically, this comes down to my fear that if people see who I really am, they’ll feel sorry for me, and I’ll feel ashamed. I tell people every day that it’s okay to be afraid and to doubt themselves—after all, I say, we’ve all been programmed in this way. Well, it’s not okay for me right now.

If this sounds melodramatic, it isn’t—this shit is real. It’s been with me forever, and I just don’t want to avoid it anymore. I notice how naturally the anger comes up when I think about dealing with all this, and I’m trying to offset it. I want to be able to walk through this without raging at it. I want to work through this stuff at a deeper level than I’ve attempted so far. So agreeing to write this book has presented me with the opportunity to do so.

If I hadn’t come in here to sit down and begin to write about all this, I’m afraid I would’ve suffered through a sleepless night. I’m doubting myself at levels that have nothing to do with present-moment time. This experience is bringing up the trauma and beliefs I’ve carried around regarding who I should be as opposed to who I am. This all has to be confronted. Now I’m sure there are those who will read this and ask, "What the hell are you doing this for? Look at the things you’ve already overcome." Well, I haven’t overcome anything 100 percent, except maybe my willingness to look at what’s scary and to look at my shame. This shame business is really some dark stuff: It smells bad; it feels bad; it’s cold and hot at the same time. But it feels like I’m close to the core of what my problems have been for much of my life.

I don’t know whether I’ll be able to stand up on the pole or not. I don’t know if my legs will support me, and I’m going to have to deal with what’s left. But at least none of this seems quite as big as it did when I got up an hour ago.

Where Does the Fear Come From?

Step 1 in our process is to acknowledge the fear and self-doubt. Yet we can’t do this if we don’t recognize what causes us to feel afraid or insecure. So what can we do?

As you probably noticed from the above notes, one of the things I do—because I’ve been conditioned to respond to my fear by getting angry—is to start with my anger and trace it backwards. Finding out where fear originates or what sets it off is one way to recognize it, but we can use physical and emotional clues as well. If these clues are acknowledged early on, when we’re children, then we don’t have to use defense mechanisms such as anger or busying ourselves with compulsive behaviors in order to deal with our fear and self-doubt later on. We can just say, "This is what it is, and it’s okay to be afraid because that’s what happens to people." If we’d just pay attention to our bodies, we wouldn’t miss these clues, and we could learn to deal with fear and self-doubt in a healthy way.

Our bodies carry all of our unsolved mysteries, all of our unhealed wounds that have been covered with scar tissue. Our bodies tap us on the shoulder all the time, saying, "Hey, now’s the time to deal with this." That’s one of the reasons why we feel uncomfortable in our bodies, because we’re constantly getting these messages that we try so hard to ignore. We’ve never been taught that it’s okay to listen to our bodies and heal. And that’s what this is all about: healing.

Have you ever stopped to think about where all this fear and self-doubt comes from? Over the years, I’ve noticed that it all seems to originate from our cultures or our families, which are often dysfunctional in nature. The dysfunctional-family system says, "Don’t talk, don’t trust, don’t feel." So what happens when we confront or go up against these systems in any way? Generally, we risk being labeled, and rarely are we labeled in a favorable way. Men who feel and show fear may be labeled as "sissies," while women who do so may be seen as "bitches" or "cold." Yet no matter what sex we are or how old we are or any other factor we can dream up, it’s important to take that first step and acknowledge the fear. When it’s kept secret, it’s like a tumor that continues to grow. As soon as it’s acknowledged, it gets exposed to the light, thus losing some of its power.

People in our culture often say things like, "You should be over that by now." But how can we be over something if we’ve never dealt with it? That’s like telling a flat tire that it shouldn’t have gone flat. Yes, it should have, if it had worn down to where the tread was gone and the steel showed through. The same thing can happen to us. We get all these opportunities to replace our old "tires" with new ones, and we get chances to patch or repair them, but we don’t do it. If we ignore the signs long enough, we’ll eventually become totally nonfunctional. It’s entirely up to us to decide which outcome will occur. And that brings us to Maria.