Bridging the Gap

Unhealthy thought patterns can lead to the creation of fears. The reference guide by Louise Hay often mentions fear as part of a probable cause of health problems. Fears can be associated with many diseases—fears we created around our own unhealthy thought patterns. A fear is created by us. We create fears to avoid things we think may cause us discomfort. The construction of a fear is part of our defense mechanism or protection to keep us away, or to prevent us, from experiencing unpleasant or painful feelings. How do we manage to turn an unhealthy thought into a fear? To answer this question, I will use an example of the unhealthy thought of not being good enough. The negative emotions evoked from this thought may be small at first. Often, the emotion pops up when someone says something critical about us or our work. At first, the emotion we are likely to feel is irritation. This emotion is confirmation that we have a belief in the unhealthy thought of not being good enough. If we did not believe in this thought or if we viewed the thought with neutrality, we would not experience the negative emotion. As time continues, when we hear criticisms over and over, the level of irritation will likely increase. The negative energy of this emotion of irritation will reinforce and further solidify our belief in the unhealthy thought of not being good enough. The negative emotions are uncomfortable, and we will create a defense mechanism in attempt to avoid them. This defense mechanism is called a fear. Since criticism of us or our work is something that evokes the negative emotions we want to avoid, we will try to prevent our exposure to criticism. At first, we may not perceive it as a fear until it gains more power. It gains its power in various ways but largely by the energy created in our negative emotional reactions. Over time, as the power of the fear grows, our irritations evoked from hearing criticisms can turn to anger. Anger has more energy than an irritation, so the fear grows as it uses this energy. Eventually, even the slightest criticism can get us highly agitated. As time passes, we may find ourselves in a state of more and more anger, and as a result, the fear grows more and more. We are creating a massive fear of criticism with the negative emotions evoked from the thought of not being good enough. Often, the sensitivity can be heightened if the criticism comes from someone personally close to us, such as a family member. Knowing we will likely hear something critical from them that will result in us being angry, we are likely going to avoid them and others who we feel will be critical. We have become very sensitive because the fear has become so large and dominating. It is controlling our actions. Once we recognize our attempts to isolate ourselves from some people around us, our increasing anger, and the lower levels of energy we now experience, we may finally realize there is a health problem. In the example above, this person was experiencing feelings of depression.