Fear is Loud, Trust is a Choice | Messages for the Empath Soul Podcast
How can you trust your path? How can you feel good about the direction you're heading in? When fear is loud and overwhelming, life can feel challenging. Fear has become a constant in your experience recently because you are becoming more and more aware of your emotions and thoughts.
Along your personal growth journey and through your spiritual awakening, your awareness levels are heightened. This means you can sense your own fear more than ever before and it feels debilitating on your path. The question remains, how do you come back to trust on your path?
In this episode I dive deep into why fear is so loud, the root of your belief system and how fear is being triggered, and of course how to come back to trust again.
When you know you want to change your patterns of fear and you want to break free of the tension and overwhelm fear brings, then this is the episode for you. Press play to get the inside scoop on why fear is so loud, and how to see trust as a choice in life.
The 22nd episode is Fear is Loud, Trust is a Choice.
Listen here, or scroll down to read more on what this episode is all about!
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Back to the blog - Fear is Loud, Trust is a Choice
Here I will share a condensed, polished, written version of the podcast episode. I highly encourage you to give it a listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
INTRO
Hello hello hello, welcome back to another episode of Messages for the Empath Soul. Today we are talking about fear, we are talking about trust. It all ties back to your belief system and the beliefs you are holding onto. The reason why I am wanting to talk about this, well I talk about fear a lot. I have numerous episodes about fear and really it’s because as humans we experience fear so easily. Fear is oftentimes the root of what’s driving our actions, our behaviours, our habits, our triggers, our emotions and even our thoughts. As we start to dig deeper when we are doing the personal growth work and the spiritual healing work we start to notice how much fear is at play.
Recently I had a moment where fear had taken over and it had enveloped me and my experience. It all stemmed from an old belief system that I am currently working through. Well, let’s be honest, I’ve been working through this belief system for a while now, cause it does take some time to really shift beliefs; but I’ve uncovered new layers to this belief system and I’m feeling more empowered through this shift that I am creating.
When we are starting to find new layers, new perspectives, and we start to evolve and expand through our lives on this timeline, we start to experience fear in different ways. Sometimes fear comes in and it feels like it fully envelopes you and it can feel hard to break free and guide yourself back fully into the space of trust. This is why I wanted to bring this topic forward today because it is something that I have experienced many times and it’s something that I have re-remembered recently. Hopefully this will bring a fresh perspective to you, or a new way of looking at things, or maybe it’s something you’ve already considered or thought of and you are simply needing the reminder as well.
If you are brand new here, thank you for choosing to be here and press play on this episode to listen to the messages I have to share and the thoughts I have to offer. If you have been listening for a while now and you are in my membership space or you have worked with me one on one, thank you for coming back, thank you for being loyal and choosing to continue to show up for yourself. Whether you are new here or you’ve been around for a while, ultimately you’ve come to this episode because you are choosing to show up for yourself. You are choosing to learn more on your journey, to create a space for healing and to create a space for expansion because you believe in growing and understanding yourself better. You believe in trying to be the best version of yourself. Thank you for being here.
Allow me to introduce this space.
This is your soul journey and I am here channeling messages from the Universe to help guide and support you.
This is Messages for the Empath Soul.
If you’re new here, I’m Sydney a ⅖ generator, with a deep intuitive connection. My mission is to empower as many spiritual empaths in this community, creating a ripple effect of compassion and peace that is felt around the world.
Again, thank you so much for being here and choosing to listen to this episode.
Today we are talking about fear is loud, trust is a choice. More specifically how this impacts your belief system.
Recently inside my virtual membership The Soul Care Space we tapped into the concept of shedding old beliefs and I led my community through 2 different mentoring sessions for this. I think shedding old beliefs is a way of expanding on your timeline and it is a way of growing and evolving as a soul, and as a human. A lot of times the beliefs that we hold onto, the beliefs that create the core of our belief systems are programming and conditioning that we’ve been taught from a very young age. Whether you were taught from your parents, your grandparents or from society, or maybe it’s from your ancestral lineage that came before you. Just because something is part of your belief system doesn’t necessarily mean that it is true, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a belief that is going to carry you into the next phase of your life. I am constantly looking at my own beliefs and asking myself “is this a belief that is limiting? Is it restrictive? Do I still want to believe this in being true? Or is it something that has been conditioned into my subconscious mind as a belief and I am choosing now to work through it?”.
The first session was all about unpacking the old way of thinking because ultimately a belief is created through repetition. A belief is something you accept to be true and as you start to question that belief you are ultimately telling yourself that you don’t necessarily know if you want to believe this to be true anymore. Throughout your lifetime that belief has been reinforced by your thought patterns and by your mind continuing to pull examples of proof that reinforce that belief.
One of the beliefs that I am working on recently is around feeling as if I need to be doing more in order to attain my desires of success and abundance. So to shorten it output equals input, the more I do the more I receive. I’ve been unpacking this belief and working through it. As I work through it I can start to see how the conversations that my parents had while I was growing up; the things I noticed in society around me; the things that were passed down from my ancestral lineage; how all of this information or my own personal experiences, have gathered proof to try and reinforce that belief. It takes a lot of effort and a lot of unbecoming in order to rearrange your belief system and shed an old belief. Through this process you start to notice how fear becomes really loud.
This doesn’t necessarily only relate to shifting your belief system, it can translate to many different things, but this is just how it’s come up for me recently.
The first session inside The Soul Care Space on Shedding Old Beliefs was on Unpacking the Old Way of Thinking and I had a member reach out to share her experience after moving through that session. This is what she said… “For me what came up in this week’s session was the failure energy and I’m stunned at how much it creeps in throughout the day. Giving us a few weeks to acknowledge and allow was brilliant. I had no idea how often I transfer being disappointed into failure energy. All subconsciously. I’m hyper aware right now. I’m acknowledging and I’m allowing the original energy while saying to myself ‘I can see why you’d think you were a failure, and that’s okay, and let’s allow the actual energy of disappointment’.”
What I love from her vulnerable share was simply how she began to notice the deeper pattern of fear of failure that became triggered from the original emotion of disappointment. This is exactly why I love supporting and guiding my community through the deep inner work because there are layers upon layers that are impacting your behaviours and self perceptions.
I wanted to bring the conversation of Fear is Loud, Trust is A Choice to today’s episode because I was reminded through my own experience how easily fear can fully envelope our experience and how it can feel really difficult to come back into trust.
My response to the member that shared her experience so beautifully was this… “It can be so hard when we catch ourselves too… like any time I catch myself in a negative loop in my mind I just want to criticize myself for being there and I feel upset that I’m still experiencing those thoughts. It takes diligence and practice to find that acceptance of ‘it’s okay I’m thinking this, it’s a deep pattern and my awareness of it shows my growth in this moment’. Part of me feels like I’m not as far along on my path when I notice those old cycles and patterns, but reminding myself that the awareness of it shows how far along I am. It’s tough sometimes. But you’re exactly right, just having the time and space to notice over the next few weeks will be the key to then creating the shift.”
So, in all of this, coming back to the episode at hand, what does this all mean for you, you, the one that’s listening right now?!
How can you start shifting your old beliefs? Well you have to know that Fear is Loud and Trust is a Choice.
I want to lead you through the 3 lessons that will support you in overcoming fear and strengthening trust.
1 - Noticing the pattern of fear
2 - Choosing differently
3 - It’s a practice
NOTICING THE PATTERN OF FEAR
As I was saying, my own pattern or belief system that I am working through is output equals input. I have to be doing more in order to receive the success and abundance that I desire. This is something that doesn’t feel true to me, but it is so deeply embedded in my belief system, so my subconscious mind is constantly finding different patterns of thought tied to this feeling that I’m not good enough because I’m not doing enough. The belief that my worth is tied to my productivity. When you start to look at your fears there are so many different ways to see how your thoughts and how your beliefs systems are impacting you in a subconscious way.
It’s subconscious because you’re not aware of it until you are. That’s why you are here, listening to this podcast episode because you’ve become very aware in your experience as an empath. You’ve become so aware of your emotions and your anxious thought patterns and you don’t know what to do about them. As we build that awareness we then learn how we can support ourselves moving forward.
Noticing the pattern of fear starts with: What does it sound like? What does it feel like? When you start to actually take time for reflection, which is something I strongly recommend. It’s something I tell all of my mentoring clients, all of my members inside The Soul Care Space, anyone inside my community. I tell my friends, my best friends, I tell my family members, literally anyone. I say the power of reflection is so important. You have to take time, whether you use a journal and pen or you use your laptop. You have to remove things from your mind and put it down somewhere in order to understand with a new perspective.
When you begin to notice the pattern of fear you need to ask yourself “what does it sound like?”. For myself, when it comes to the belief system that is tied to output equals input, productivity equals my worth. On a more materialistic scale, my productivity determines the income that I make or the success I achieve. The thought patterns that have always been subconscious to me but are now becoming more conscious because I’m becoming more aware of them are, “oh you’re not doing enough. You should be doing more. You shouldn’t be resting. You’re constantly taking time away from your business, when you should be putting more energy in your business.” I went to school for business, that’s what I studied in University. I have a business degree. My mind then throughout that entire experience, when it comes to my spiritual business, my mind and my subconscious is always saying “what’s the strategy, you have to do this, this and this. You’ve got to market and you have to do this, and you have to do this.”
It’s not that all of that stuff isn’t correct, it’s not that I shouldn’t be marketing or that I shouldn’t be thinking of strategy. Really what it is is noticing how that constant stream of thoughts is causing anxiety in my body. What does it feel like? It’s causing an overwhelming amount of stress. The tension in my body, the resistance that I feel is causing me to doubt myself. This is causing me to second guess myself. It’s causing me to worry that once a client signs up to work with me they will all of a sudden decide that I’m awful and they will want to leave.
I experience fear of judgment and fear of rejection really easily. These are the two fears that are really prominent in my human experience in this lifetime. So when that old belief of output equals input becomes triggered and my subconscious thoughts that have tied my worthiness to my level of productivity, then all of a sudden it triggers that space of fear within me that says “what if I become rejected? What if I become judged?” Then I end up judging myself.
It’s a huge cycle that you move through and it can be triggered so easily. I can have an extremely productive day and a very intentionally productive day. Not coming from a sense of pressure or forcefulness, but actually coming from an aligned, intentional, purposeful energy. I can take a moment and think “oh my god I got so much done today, I can’t believe it. That felt so good. I am so proud of myself.” Then something sets me off. I choose to rest for the evening and then I get an alert that a business expense has come out of my account, a normal monthly business expense. Then all of a sudden this tension rises within me and I feel this resistance build in my body. My mind starts to go “you aren’t doing enough, you need to be doing more, you are never going to be successful. You are never going to have the amount of clients that you need to have in order to make the money that you want to make.”
The pattern of fear can be triggered so easily and I think the more aware you become the easier you notice the old thought patterns. I remember noticing this really early on in my healing journey as I started to become so much more aware of my emotions and the energy that I was feeling, I started to become so much more aware of negative thought patterns. I always had considered myself to be a very positive person but after my spiritual awakening of my mental and emotional breakdown, I started to notice these negative thought patterns and I thought there was something wrong with me.
There wasn’t something wrong with me and there isn’t something wrong with you. It’s simply that your level of awareness has expanded. You are now noticing those subconscious thought patterns in a new way and at a new level of awareness. It can feel all enveloping and overwhelming. Especially because pains from past experiences become triggered. Not only am I feeling that sense of fear in this moment when that money leaves my bank account for one of my monthly expenses, but the trigger of this subconscious pattern is tying back to wounds that I experienced years ago. When I had an unexpected payment come out of my bank account or when my taxes ended up being way more than I thought they would be.
This is because the way your beliefs are built over time is they pull on experiences that you’ve had in order to prove those belief systems to reinforce those belief systems. It is something you are accepting to be true. All of the fear that you’ve experienced in this lifetime, maybe even the fear that your grandparents or great grandparents experience because that energy resides within you as well. All of that becomes triggered and everything in your being says “I don’t want to experience this”. When fear becomes triggered within you, your nervous system becomes dysregulated and your ego begins saying “I’m not safe. I’m not safe.”
Fear is loud and it’s important that you start to notice the pattern of fear. It’s important you start to notice what it sounds like and what it feels like. You will gain new levels of awareness in those old thought patterns. All of that information and awareness is important, it’s the information you need to then create the shift. Noticing the pattern of fear.
CHOOSING DIFFERENTLY
This brings us into choosing differently. I think this is an important lesson because when you notice the pattern of fear, it’s so easy for everything in your body and in your mind to just want to succumb to that feeling. But as you start to practice choosing differently you teach yourself that there is a better way that you can feel, a lighter, a more freeing way to feel and to live. This is about taking the time for reflection when you feel grounded and calm.
When I notice the pattern of fear coming up within me, I notice it pretty quickly now because it’s something I’ve practiced. I know what it sounds like and I know what it feels like, so I’m constantly learning new layers of that fear. When it arises I’m not jumping into reflection, that is not the time for reflection. When it arises, this is something that I work through in the mentoring sessions that I lead the members through inside The Soul Care Space, and also in my 1:1 mentoring, is how to support yourself, how to guide yourself, how to nurture yourself when fear becomes triggered. In one of the courses I’ve been creating I take you through a step by step practice of healing. Healing really is the process of feeling and understanding the feeling in your body in a much deeper way.
When it comes down to choosing differently it’s important to take the time for reflection when you feel grounded and calm. When I start to process and understand fear a little more clearly for myself, I don’t do that when I am in fear. I do this afterwards. Again, this is why I believe journaling to be very important. I journal typically in the mornings before I start any work, I believe that this is a great way for me to reflect and understand myself deeper. Sometimes I journal in the evenings, sometimes I journal every day of the week, sometimes I only journal a few days of the week. It’s all dependent on how I’m feeling, what I’m moving through and really just creating a level of consistency for myself. Consistency for me does not mean every day, it just means cultivating a lifestyle for me, something that I show up to as regularly as I can.
When you are reflecting you need to ask yourself: What do you want to experience? How do you want to feel? In that reflection you are also noticing the pattern of fear which is the first part of reflection. In choosing differently the reflection you are looking at is what you want to experience and how you want to feel.
Trust isn’t knowing how everything is going to work out; it’s believing everything can work out. This is a key difference, a lot of times fear is rooted in a need for control. I’ve seen this in a lot of my clients, especially if they experience perfectionism. The moment that something looks like it’s not going the way they want it to go, instead of waiting to see how it unfolds, fear is triggered within them. All of a sudden that perfectionist within them says “oh my gosh I just have to do this myself and I just have to figure it out” because they believe that they know how everything should work out. This isn’t trust, that is control.
Trust is believing everything can work out, it’s about surrendering to the unknown. In surrendering to the unknown you learn to trust in the bigger picture. This is where having faith in something is important, because without believing in a bigger picture you can struggle to find dependence on that trust. What is believing in a bigger picture? Call it God, Universe, Creator, Source, Goddess, Higher Power, the Great Mystery, call it whatever you want, whatever it is that you believe in. All of it is a knowing within you that there is something bigger than this moment, there is something bigger than yourself. You don’t need to grip onto control, you can relax because you trust that something is happening behind the scenes for you.
Choosing differently is knowing what you want to experience in life, how you want to feel. It is starting to reflect on a more positive outlook. Both are important, you have to notice the pattern of fear and you have to be very clear with yourself on what emotions you do want to experience. What thoughts you’d like to have. You are not your thoughts, you are the awareness of your thoughts, you are the spirit who is aware of the thoughts moving through the mind.
When you start to noticing the thoughts that begin to say “I[m not good enough, I’m never going to be good enough because I’m not doing enough, or because of this or because of that”. Or my member who said she felt disappointment and her mind went to failure, “I’m a failure because of blank. I’m a failure at this.”
Notice that, allow it. Again, I dive deeper into guiding you on how to do this inside the membership. It all comes back to choosing differently. Once you’ve moved through that process of allowing yourself to feel the fear and giving space for yourself to feel it, you then get to choose differently. It is a choice. You are either choosing to continue to live into that pattern of fear, or you are choosing something different.
I’ve caught myself so many times and this is why I said in my message back to my member that it’s not always easy, it’s hard. I catch myself in a negative loop in my mind sometimes and I just want to criticize myself for being there. I still feel upset that I am experiencing those thoughts and it takes diligence and practice to find acceptance, to flow through it, to let it go and then to choose differently.
Choosing differently is empowering yourself. It is making a stand for yourself and recognizing that I’m tired of this fear burdening me, I’m tired of this fear overwhelming me. I’m tired of hearing the same thing again and again, I don’t want to believe this anymore. I want to believe something else, it’s a choice.
IT’S A PRACTICE
This moves us into the third lesson, which is that it’s a practice.
You will always find yourself in the cycle of fear again, because it’s something we naturally experience as humans. There is no way around it. Fear comes from the ego which is trying to keep you safe. The ego sees something as a life or death situation, so deep in your subconscious state your ego is saying, “this isn’t safe, this isn’t safe, this isn’t safe”. You’re not hearing this at a conscious level.
Again, coming back to my old belief system that output equals input that I’ve been shifting. My ego is saying “it’s not safe to rest, it’s not safe to rest, it’s not safe to rest”. My ego is saying it’s not safe to trust that the way you want to build your business, or grow your business, or expand your business; the way you want to do it Sydney, the way that your soul feels called to do it, it’s not safe. It’s not safe, you can’t trust yourself, you have to do it the old outdated way of hustling. You have to constantly be putting more effort in because your output will equal your input. When I sit down and process through the fear that I’m feeling and understand what it’s saying I can break it down that much easier. But deep within me, the only thing that is really happening is that my ego is saying “this isn’t safe, this isn’t safe, this isn’t safe”. Which is why I’m feeling the tension in my nervous system.
Fear is always something that we are going to experience. It’s how you choose to experience the fear that matters. As you practice choosing differently you create a new pattern for yourself. This is the key, creating a new pattern. The old pattern is letting that voice win, letting that old belief system win. Letting that feeling of overwhelm and exhaustion force you into an action that does not feel safe or does not feel good.
Sometimes you’ll get caught back up in it again, it’s normal. But the moment you become aware “oh fear has enveloped me again” you end up calling your power back to you, which is the power to choose differently.
Sometimes you’ll find yourself saying “damn, why am I still experiencing this? Why can’t I seem to break free?” That is what I noticed, that frustration. So much frustration. Why hasn’t this belief fully shifted yet, how many years have I been working on this. That frustration is telling me, keep going. Sometimes when the frustration comes forward and the body is saying “I need to find relief, I need to find relief, I need to get safe”. You rush yourself into action, you rush yourself into avoiding looking at it, ignoring it, denying it. Numbing yourself so you don’t feel it, so you can’t hear it. Sometimes you actually need to let yourself breathe, come back into your body, come back into your heart and soul. The clarity will come through. The awareness alone is proof of your growth. Even when you are questioning yourself. Even when you are angrily shouting “why can’t I seem to break free from this pattern?”. That awareness alone is proof of your growth.
The patterns of fear in your thoughts are deeply embedded, which is why you start to notice how easily the subconscious falls back into that fear. Whether it’s showing up as worry, doubt or stress… it’s all tied back to fear.
It’s a practice. It’s a practice of recognizing “Oh yes, fear is loud. Fear has come forward again. Trust is a choice. How can I move back into trust?” What works for me? Meditating, journaling, going for a walk in nature. Talking to a friend or family member who is supportive. Key, bolded, underlined, italicized who is supportive. I am not going to call a friend who is going to jump on the bandwagon of bitching and complaining. I am going to call a friend or family member who holds space for me. Someone who says “Oh I know that can be hard. You may not feel like it, but you’re doing amazing.” I am going to call the friend who is going to say “oh you sound really overwhelmed right now. Do you want to go for a walk and maybe just get some fresh air. Maybe then you’ll gain clarity.”
Trust is a choice, especially when it comes to shifting your belief system. That all resides on practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Every single time I notice fear coming up, I take the time to journal again. No matter how many times I've journaled on this because I’m learning my pattern in new ways. Then I choose differently. What do I want to believe? What do I want to fill myself up with? What do I want to feel to be true? What do I want to experience? How can I practice this daily?
Practicing again and again and again because fear will always come up. Choosing differently, coming back into that faith. Believing that everything can work out and having faith in a bigger picture. Not gripping onto control, but trusting that the Universe has your back and things are happening behind the scenes even when you can’t see them. It all comes back to noticing the pattern of fear. What does it sound like? What does it feel like?
I want to bring this all the way back to you again.
SELF REFLECTION CREATES SOUL CONNECTION
I have a few journal prompts that I want you to take the time to reflect on so you can bring this knowledge and integrate it into your own life. Self reflection is a powerful tool that helps you to better understand yourself and strengthen your connection with the Universe. Which is where you build trust and find a way to surrender more easily.
Use these journal prompts to shift from fear into trust.
1 - What does fear sound and feel like?
2 - When do you notice fear being triggered?
3 - What would trust sound and feel like?
4 - How can you support yourself to choose differently and come back to trust more?
This is your journey, so I want you to tap into what you feel and the patterns that you notice. There are many different ways to do this thing we call life and finding the way that works for you is the most important.
If you want to dig deeper into this and you are intrigued by the idea of shedding old beliefs. You are thinking “yes I need to be supported in this practice”. Then join my membership The Soul Care Space and check out the sessions on Shedding Old Beliefs. They are going to guide you through a new level of awareness and an energetic shift.
In each session I don’t only share a lesson and guide you through journal prompts, but I also guide you through a meditation which has deep integrative effects in your life. It creates an energetic shift in your mind, in your body, and in your soul right now so you feel empowered to carry that lesson into your everyday life. Check it out, there is a link here for you.
As we close things off I want you to remember that fear is loud, and trust is a choice. It’s all about practice.
GOODBYE
Remember, your life is happening right now. There is not some future moment you need to rush forward to. Be here, take a deep breath, know that you are meant to be in this moment.
Life will always bring more lessons.
Your soul will always guide you to more healing.
Your mind will always require support to see from a bigger perspective.
You will always desire to be seen, heard and understood.
Be here now for yourself. In time you will feel the call to share more light and compassion with the world.
I’m Sydney, signing off and saying thank you, thank you, thank you.
Take your spiritual growth journey to the NEXT LEVEL and start creating real, positive changes in your life now.
You want to live more authentically.
You want to feel more fulfilled.
You are tired of feeling like you’re in the wrong place, working towards the wrong things, or surrounded by people who don’t get you.
Access the FREE Spiritual Workshop - Embodying Your Spirit as an Empath - by signing up for my email community at the link below!
Until next time, sending love & light on your spiritual journey,
Sydney Smith
Spiritual Mentor
Founder of Adventuring with Poseidon Wellness
