Fear Dance

1. You hurt. What does your hurt look like? Think of the range of emotions you feel when you are wounded: bewilderment, sadness, disconnection, anger, confusion, worry, rage, frustration, horror, embarrassment. Those are just a handful of the words that could describe your real-life huts.
2. You want. When you hurt, you want a solution. You want things that will make you feel better. Sometimes you might think that eating will make you feel better, shopping will replace the hurt, focusing on the children or other things will make you forget your troubles, drinking will dull the pain. You spin lists of things that you believe would satisfy your wants. Or you reduce the conflict to that one, solitary thing that you believe you need to feel satisfied: if only the other person would change so that you could feel better.
3. Misplaced expectations. When you expect people, places, and things to fulfill your wants, you will be disappointed. And anytime you put your expectations for help in the wrong place, the result is fear.
4. You react. When you feel your wants won't be fulfilled, you experience fear: If you are like most people, you—consciously and unconsciously—fall into well-worn patterns of reacting when someone pushes your fear button. You'll do anything to soothe your hurt. You'll do anything to avoid the awful feeling of want. You'll do or say anything to calm your fear. You may fear losing control, so you try to seize control. You desperately want your way—to be sovereign, to overcome your feelings of helplessness.
5. Your Feelings.
Acceptance
Rejection
Grace
Judgment
Connection
Disconnection
Companionship
Loneliness
Success
Failure
Self-Determination
Powerlessness
Understanding
Being misunderstood
Love
Being scorned
Validation
Being invalidated
Competence
Feeling defective
Respect
Inferiority
Worth
Worthlessness
Honor
Feeling devalued
Dignity
Humiliation
Commitment
Abandonment
Significance
Feeling unimportant
Attention
Feeling ignored
Support
Neglect
Approval
Condemnation
Wanted
Feeling unwanted
Safety
Danger
Affection
Feeling disliked
Trust
Mistrust
Hope
Despair
Joy
Unhappiness
6. Bottom line. This means that it's not merely your core fear that disrupts and injures your relationships. It's how you choose to react when someone pushes your fear button. Most of us use unhealthy, faulty reactions to deal with our fear, and as a result we sabotage our relationships.
Only you can except or reject the thoughts that go through your mind and your reactions.