Fear of Change and My Friend the Ego

My friend the ego has a serious fear of change!  Fear of change can do real damage in your unconscious mind! It can easily hold you back from thinking BIG and keep you in your comfort zone. Personally, I am working on breaking free of small-minded thinking and in this session of My Friend the Ego, I share how I am uncovering what’s going on in my deepest, darkest psyche so that I am set free of limitations set up by my frightened little ego.  Watch the video and listen to the podcast or read the blog below…

My Friend the Ego is my new series of blog posts, podcasts and videos that explore the ego and its workings.  Ego can be our best friend and worst enemy but it’s up to us to decide how it functions in our lives.  The goal is to become master of our earthly experience and to find guidance from our Inner Wisdom.  But the ego can really get in the way!  This series is meant to help you find the path of freedom, connection and integration— in other words, wholeness! Each week, I’ll be publishing a written post on my blog that talks about a practical aspect of emotional well-being and how to bring ego into alignment with it.   There will be a video on my Youtube channel that shares my personal experience around the subject and a podcast will come to you through Soundcloud.

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Watch the video:

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Backstory for the Fear of Change & My Friend the Ego video…

Listen to the podcast…

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The weather here in Zagreb has been oppressively hot and humid. With temperatures in the 90’s, it has been difficult to sleep at night, and I’ve found that my creative day get cut off by an undeniable urge to nap right in the middle of it. At night, I’ve been going to bed between 11pm and 1am but the sleep has been fitful with these weird bouts with mosquitoes buzzing in my ears, stinging my fingers and just driving me crazy. Because my natural body clock wakes me at my usual 4:15am, I’ve been getting get up groggy and heavy, unfocused and unenthusiastic. I’m accustomed to thriving off of five to six hours of sleep but a short sleep pattern requires deep, uninterrupted sleep in order to be effective and like I said, the mossies and the heat have been lethal to my rest and thus lethal to my productivity.

Being ineffective is a major downer for me. I love working and I derive tremendous pleasure from it. My work is writing and coaching beautiful Souls. I created this business for myself and there is nothing I love more than organizing it, visioning it, and creating more opportunities to do it. Usually, when I awaken in the morning, I have to put the reigns on and reel myself in from being too indulgent in my work. But not this week. This week did in my head because I could not find a rhythm with my sleep, my writing, and my client sessions. I couldn’t focus or get clear.  I felt like I was failing at everything and I was sinking into a state of panic.  These were definitely stirrings heralding a fear of change.

I had considered that I need a vacation, and instinctively I tuned into my spiritual guidance system to see if this felt as true in my body as it did in my mind. Prior to this breakdown, I had been working a lot! I’ve had Mars, planet of energy, focus and opportunity in my 6th house of daily work for the last four weeks and I’m telling you, I’ve been so productive and clear and strong and my work has been EXCELLENT!  It would not be surprising for Spirit to call me to rest and recharge. But that is not the case here. My sleepless nights and groggy days were NOT because of burnout. I am a workhorse with a strong constitution.  I have at least two more weeks of serious creation in me and after that, I will relax myself into a nice, summer vacation somewhere here on the Croatian coast. But not now.  Something else was brewing.

So when I awoke yesterday, groggy as hell, I thought that I would make my way down to Impact Hub, my new co-working space. I thought– get out early, have a good walk to work, and get busy!  Yeah. Well, I did manage to get out of the house and into Hub, but the quality of my usually sharp focus was soft and gooey. I even fell asleep right at my desk– sitting up with my back straight, head facing forward and hands and fingers perched over the keyboard. Fast asleep! Okay, look.  This has happened every day this week. But on the days when I’ve been home, I’ve had the benefit of getting up and diving into bed.  I’ve taken the luxury of two and three hour naps, but it hasn’t been enough.

This is NOT my usual patterning of behavior, and of course, I’ve been listening to my psyche like a worried mother hen. It wasn’t until yesterday, however, that I got the meaningful answers I needed. After finishing at Impact Hub, I decided that I wanted to take a new route home. One of the beautiful things about the area where I live in Zagreb is that there are many, many curvy, shady paths. I live on a hillside and there are dozens of roads connected by beautiful pedestrian staircases that can give me an infinite set of ways to arrive home. Since we had a break in the temperature yesterday and one of the roads I noticed had a steep hill up, I decided to have an adventure.  So with backpack in place, I walked briskly up, knowing that the adrenaline and eventually the endorphins would help me gain the clarity I desired.  Don’t you just love that about walking??

Here’s what I found out about my friend the ego…

Sure enough, I found that I was able to feel my feelings and hear my Intuition very clearly. I pulled out my phone to access my digital oracle decks to run things by them, as well.

Essentially, I learned that with all the soul-opening changes that I have been making while here in Zagreb, my subconscious mind has been freaking out. And it’s understandable! In the last several weeks, I have become intimate with people– exposing my soft underbelly, taking risks and showing my weaknesses without guile. Ego feels totally vulnerable!  In my rational mind, this is a good thing because allowing myself to feel vulnerable means that I am open hearted and open minded.  To deliberately allow unguarded expression is to proclaim safety and trust in the universe.  As someone who has lived her whole life wearing masks, being defensive, and protecting herself through isolation and keeping the world at arm’s distance, it is strange for me to be opening up and letting people in.  As much as I am independent and varied and whimsical and nomadic, my ego has a deep fear of change, especially when it is taking me from an inward way of living to one that is outward.  This was really big and my ego, beneath my consciousness was rebelling by pulling back on my creativity, my energy, and my outlook!

Now, you might be wondering what my vulnerability looks like.  In what ways I have been exposing myself? What’s promoting this fear of change in my friend the ego?  I will try to briefly explain because I want you to understand how subtle these things can seem on the surface, but how freaked out my friend the ego has gotten inside my mind!!!

I am naturally nomadic, so moving, in and of itself, is not stressful for me.  I have no problem packing and organizing, planning and traveling, unloading and nesting. I actually enjoy it. BUT this last move was different for me in that I went from a secluded cottage in the countryside of Normandy, France where I enjoyed a peaceful, reclusive existence, with little face-to-face contact with people, to the vibrant, engaging city of Zagreb, Croatia where the language 100% eludes me (I cannot understand a damn thing on any of the signs around me and it’s kinda scary.) Language aside, it’s the people here that are probably freaking out my friend the ego more than anything.  Croatian people are are unbelievably open and warm with me.  Okay, you’re probably wondering why I’d freak out over kindness.  Well, it’s because of my history of feeling unworthy and isolated.  My personality is one that withdraws from society.  I have a history of feeling like an outsider and there is an unconscious expectation that I am going to be rejected.  Also, I grew up in a country whose foundations were rooted on disdain for brown skin and kinky hair.  Although I am blessed to have received much love from many different ethnicities in the US, my early childhood, those formative years, were plagued with biting issues of race. And politics in the U.S. are not doing anything to strengthen race relations under our nation’s leader, Donald Trump.  As sophisticated as I am, I am still emotionally wounded by racism.  On a side note, Back Story released a powerful podcast called Skin Deep, Whiteness in America.  In it they explore how racism was based on power mongering and how it was strategically developed to sequester power for the the wealthy.  I definitely recommend it as an enlightening listen.

With that being said, I landed in Zagreb expecting, at best, to be treated as an equal member of society (it’s a city, people don’t always acknowledge one another, but  nobody’s mad-dogging you sending you messages that you don’t belong) and at worst, loathed as an outsider.  What I did not expect was the amount of positive attention and affirmation that I have received as not only a physically beautiful woman, but also as a respected and appreciated one.  Folks stop me on the street to learn about me.  Old women invite me home for dinner and want me to meet their sons.  Old men give me flowers.  The thing is, you can’t imagine the intensity of the interactions here.  So I went from reclusion to inclusion and I didn’t really ask permission from my friend the ego.  Hahahaha!  I just kind of showed up and have been taking it all in.  Also, I have opened my heart and mind to dating and I now look men in the eye, smile and connect.  And there are LOTS of cuties here– old and young.  The movement into love and community is one of the biggest changes that my friend the ego fears. But probably the most scary thing of all is that I have DECIDED that I am a writer. This decision means that everything I do now serves writing. This makes ego uncomfortable because it has all of these negative beliefs that it is holding deep in my subconscious mind.  Ego thinks:

1. Only the lucky make money from writing.
2. Client appointments are the source of income and if I dedicate six hours a day to writing and research that that doesn’t allow enough time for client appointments.
3. How am I gonna make money??
4. I am too terrified to write a book!
5. How am I gonna support myself?
6. An artistic life is chaotic. I can’t control life as a writer. I can control life as a worker first and the art can come later.
7.  What am I gonna write about??

Believe it or not, the list actually goes on and on in this way. The real problem, though, was not the issues I have listed here. These issues I could deal with easily with a little grit. They were issues of practicality, budgeting, building business, and for all this, I had real solutions. The problem was ego’s deeply rooted fear, which I uncovered on my walk home yesterday: Change. When I was walking and using the Druidcraft Tarot, I asked the question, “What is the subconscious battle that is keeping me from moving forward with my work this week?” I pulled the reversed Death card. To me, this gave instant clarity. Upright, the Death card is very much about embracing transformation and letting things go.  It’s about saying goodbye to the old ways and making way for the new.  It’s also about giving up control.  Ego was afraid of dying and letting go of the old structures and belief systems that kept things in my world status quo. The belief that I would not be supported as a writer; the belief that I am old and powerful sexual intimacy is a thing of the past; the belief that I am unlovable because I am inflexible, weak, and flabby. All of these subconscious beliefs were making it very difficult to move forward in my visioning, planning and executing the business I desire, the relationship that excites me, and the fitness level I crave. These beliefs were causing me to rot from the inside out. Ego would let me have a tiny bit of success, but the moment my ideas started getting too expansive and too powerful, and the moment I started taking big risks with intimacy, vision and even health, I had an inner malevolent tyrant that would rise up and squash my plans in the most covert way.  Fear of change was wreaking havoc in my life by wreaking havoc in my subconscious mind.

What to do about my friend the ego’s fear of change??

After I got home, I felt really good about the insights that I had gotten on my walk. But I realized that had LOTS of work to do! I needed Shadow Work to help me root out the fear of change, Healing to help me clear away the fractures and find integration, and Light Work to help me vision and manifest a bigger future worthy of my magnificence.  This was going to take some time, yo!

I had a two-hour massage scheduled for that evening and that was a good start. Physical touch grounds me and the deep relaxation I get, especially from male therapists, does much to raise my Kundalini energy so that my naturally keen Intuition can flow freely. After my massage session, I got some Chinese food, a beer and some cookies. I came home and slept like a baby for six hours and I awoke feeling hopeful, clear and determined. I have a lot of inner work to do today and probably for the next few weeks. But I know on what I need to focus. I will be sharing with you my Shadow Work process so that you can use it, too!  I’m really good at Shadow Work!  Really good.  I have some very powerful techniques that I use and I really enjoy sharing them.  But for me, at this point in my life, I am not in a rush to heal.  I know that it all comes in Divine Timing and this is so important!  Re-membering that I am an unconditionally loved be-ing of God/Goddess means that I don’t have to push for success to prove my worthiness, I can sit back and allow my life to unfold in its own most precious manner.

On a darkly humorous note, I have discovered that a part of my psyche, is quite determined to express itself in the most vicious and nasty way– purely out of fear of failure. How do I deal with this? Well, as I said, Shadow and Light Work and Healing, sure. But I think that I also need to give her a channel. Perhaps for my Light Work I will create a deliciously malevolent character for Vampire LARP. That way, I don’t have to deny this naughty and creative aspect of myself, but I can direct her energy into something powerful and useful.

Like I said, I have a lot of work to do! But every bit is exciting. I’ll keep you posted about it all.

By the way, if you don’t know what LARP is, you can check out my friend Ivan’s blog, Diary of a Croatian LARPer. LARPing is Live Action Role Playing and I’ve really gotten into it.  Look, it’s about the geekiest thing I’ll ever do, but it’s also the most creative and potentially sexy.  These LARPers get into their roles and they LOVE being challenged by one another’s fire.  You can definitely expect me to make a video or two about the ones coming up this month.

Be sure to check out next week’s episode where I delve into that inner tyrant and take on jealousy and possessiveness.  Sign up to get My Friend the Ego delivered right to your inbox and you’ll never miss an episode.

Sending you a boatload of hugs from Zagreb,
Crystal Lynn and Ego ♥

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