Being Present with Fear

Kim Reindl
May 26
7 min read

INTENSION: Presence

TOUCHSTONE:

Be Present as Fully as Possible. Make space and show up. Be here with your doubts, fears and failings, as well as your convictions, joys and successes, your listening as well as your wondering, your heart and body, as well as your mind.

Thoughts on “Being Present” and “Making Space”

It seems that in order to be present, I have to invite space for my own presence. I have to give myself permission to be in this moment, no matter what this moment holds. Such seems to be a form of extravagant generosity.

If I think about it, how often do I give myself permission to be in the moment? My mind is often racing ahead to something that hasn't even happened yet. I'm preoccupied with my thoughts of tasks and expectations. My To Do List can be large. My mind is full of the future. I have even caught myself walking down a beach while in the midst of a vacation thinking about my next vacation!

If I'm not thinking about the future, I'm often thinking about the past… thinking about or ruminating over something that happened last week or last year. The point is that I'm not living in the now, but isn't the now all I have?

Being present is all about the NOW. Making space for the now. Inviting myself into the now. Yet what if the now is not pleasant? What if the now is not where I want to be?

It seems that this is where spaciousness truly comes in. Spaciousness to give myself, as well as others, room to stand in the present moment… whatever that moment holds.

What?! Welcome Fear?!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about fear. How am I to be present with fear? What do I do with fear? How do I hold fear? Where does fear show up in my body? What is the result of my fear?

While reflecting during The Weekly Wake Up earlier this week, one of the prompts was, “What does fear feel like when you experience it?” I realized for the first time that I often feel fear in my chest. This got me to thinking about how the chest is the area of the heart. As I allowed my thoughts to unfold, I wrote the following in my journal:

I feel fear in my chest. Interestingly, how I hold the fear, can either make the heart hard and brittle, or soft and supple. If I sit with the fear it may relax. Its hold on me may loosen. Yet, it may also deepen and get stronger if I allow my mind to take over. The fear in that case becomes a spiral of thoughts. On the other hand, if the fear is held with compassion and love, if I notice why it is there, if I welcome it and sit with it as a guest showing it hospitality and care, that fear may transform into a teacher.

Fear tries to alert me. Fear tries to wake me up and bring my attention to things that I need to notice. Fear, in the end, can offer me a pathway forward when it is noticed and invited in. Instead of bolting the door and working to keep fear out (which is its own kind of fear; the fear of fear), welcoming fear with an open and loving heart may offer me something that I need.

Showing Up to a Broken Heart

Parker Palmer writes on the two possible results of heartbreak in his book, Healing the Heart of Democracy, as well as in his Substack article, “The Alchemy of the Broken Open Heart,” published on May 9th. In the article he says,

“It’s the brittle heart that breaks apart, explodes into a thousand shards, and often gets thrown like a grenade at the ostensible source of its pain. But there’s another kind of heart, a supple heart, that can break open, not apart, giving greater capacity to love and generate new life.”

I am learning that how I am present to my fear is directly connected to my heartbreak. Life can be heart breaking. Experiencing disappointment, pain, and failures—with myself and with others—can generate fear. These experiences of life can cause me to fear the future in that I do not want to experience more of the same. Also, such experiences can make me fearful of the past because of the emotions that such remembrance brings to the surface. Yet, if I choose to sit in the present with my fear in a state of self-compassion, my heart may break open instead of apart.

Two Pathways for the Brokenhearted

When I am facing fear, I experience following: Fear arises. I feel it in my chest (my experience; you may feel it somewhere else). I don’t like this feeling. It grips me. My body begins to tighten. At this point I have a choice. What do I do?

Incorporating Parker Palmer’s insight, I have two choices:

1) I can choose to NOT be present to my fear. The tightness of the fear remains, but I do not want to acknowledge it. I resist it. Hence, I am now in defense mode. I put my armor on. My heart continues to clinch. This becomes the state of the brittle heart. I really don’t like this feeling. I want it to go away, so instead of being present to my fear, I start to deflect it. The more I clinch my heart, the greater my fear becomes. The cracks in the armor are growing until everything breaks apart. This is the broken heart that “explodes into a thousand shards…like a grenade.” All of my unhealed grief, disappointment, failures, and hurts are projected into the world. I demonize the other and project onto them all that I resist. (This is the point when I start to blame others for my own unhappiness, discontentment, loss, etc.) The cost of such is great. Pain is not avoided but multiplied.

2) I can choose to be present with my fear. This is the state of the broken open heart. When I choose to be present with my fear through self-compassion and curiosity, I welcome the opportunity for greater awareness, healing, and growth. Instead of clinching my heart and closing myself off in a state of defensiveness, I welcome and acknowledge the fear. I name it. I literally say, “This is fear that I am feeling.” Then I ask, “What is it that I am fearing? Fear, what are you trying to show me?” I invite my fear in and I give it love and attention. In this process I acknowledge the pain I am feeling, the loss or anticipated loss, the disappointments, the failures, the grief. I invoke courage and offer love to my tender heart. Through this compassion, my heart softens and remains supple. I do not avoid broken heartedness; I sit with it. Instead of my heart breaking apart, it breaks open. In the breaking open, all of the compassion that I have offered myself falls into my heart.[1] From this state of being present to my fear, I grow in compassion. I am now able to greater understand the pain of others because I have felt pain myself. Fear no longer holds power over me. It is no longer a threat to be avoided. Rather, fear becomes a tool and a teacher that offers a pathway for transformation. Through making space and showing up to the parts of myself that I might have resisted, I am now larger with compassion and love. I am now connected in the very essence of my being with the suffering of others. Through such connection, pain and suffering are transformed into pathways to compassion and love.

Becoming Present to Fear

Oddly, and counterintuitively, as we become more present to our fears we can grow in compassion and love. Perhaps this is one of the great paradoxes of wisdom. Perhaps this is why suffering is a pathway to love.[2]

As the Christian scriptures say in 1 John 4:18, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear expects punishment. The person who is afraid has not been made perfect in love.” (CEB)

I understand this to mean that fear that results in punishment is the antithesis to love. Such fear resists love and embraces pain, inflicting such on the self and others. Such is the state of the heart that breaks apart. Yet, as love is perfected (or in other words grows) fear diminishes. As we grow in love, what once gripped us, now decreases in its ability to take hold. A broken open heart emitting love and compassion becomes our more common response to the suffering and pain of life.

An Act of Courageous Presence

Making space and showing up to what we are inclined to avoid, such as fear, is a true act of courageous PRESENCE. Presence, in this sense, is a way of welcoming everything, even the things we fear the most. This makes me think of Rumi’s poem “The Guest House.” It's a way of meeting every unexpected visitor... every joy and every depression at the door laughing. What a radical thought!

Being present is making space and showing up to my own life, and in doing so trusting my ability to stand in it! Such is a way of trusting that healing is possible. It is finding the courage to say, I choose to be here. With every doubt, fear and failing... with every conviction, joy and success, I choose to be here. With my listening and my wondering, I choose to be here. With my heart and my body, as well as my mind, I choose to be here.

Presence is the act of accepting the invitation into my life. This invitation is not into a perfect life, but rather a REAL life. A life that is messy and unpredictable, miraculous and fully mine. This invitation feels spacious... It feels airy and expansive, allowing for whatever comes... It feels like breath... fluid and open, flowing and generous... full of courage, hope, and love.

With love and gratitude,

__________

[1] See Palmer’s Substack article for the Hasidic Tale that illustrates this point; https://parkerjpalmer.substack.com/p/the-alchemy-of-the-broken-open-heart?r=27oygq&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

[2] Suffering must be distinguished from evil. To live is to suffer. Life is difficult and suffering is part of the natural human experience, or for that matter the experience of what it means to have life as also witnessed in the natural world. Yet to willfully and intentionally inflict suffering upon another, that is the definition of evil.

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