Art Journaling...Fear

I took an on-line parenting course a couple of years ago led by Heather Forbes. Her basic tenet is that there are only two underlying emotions: Fear and Love.

It took me a long time to wrap my brain around this concept...what about sadness and anger and happiness and all of the other emotions that I have? Well, what I discovered is that she's right...all of my "yucky" feelings are based in fear. All of my "good" feelings are based in love.

"This principle may be very difficult to grasp initially because we live in a fear-based society and anger is generally our immediate reaction to a threatening event. Seldon do we actually experience ourselves as being afraid. This emotion of fear, however, is the root of our anger. We avoid it because it feels safer to be in a place of anger (a protective feeling), while we feel exposed and vulnerable to be in a place of fear." states Heather Forbes in her book Beyond Consequences, Logic and Control.

Sharon Soneff has a bit on Fear in her book Art Journals & Creative Healing, "Phobias can be paralyzing, but even common fears can become obstacles to growth and achievement. Facing, on paper, that which we fear and dread is a wonderful stride toward facing those same things in our daily lives."

So what do we do with THAT? you might ask...

My challenge to you today is to open your journal and fill a page with fears. They can be irrational fears, real fears, silly fears...any fear that you might have. It's amazing what you find when you sit with fear for a few minutes. Take 15-20 minutes with this exercise and see where you get.

This is where I got:

For those of you who don't like to share your innermost thoughts and feelings for FEAR of someone else seeing them, fear not. We will be covering up this litany of fears in our next exercise....