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Fear Inventory - the deets
May. 27th, 2017 12:48 pmHere are some rails for writing fear inventory that will actually take you into your minds tricksy ways and help me understand my fears and how they are effecting me.
Technical Fouls:
1. Don't write on things that are "coming at you." Or what other people are doing. Focus on what you have agency over.
2. Get specific. Stop the high level of abstraction... "If that were true, then what." What's the evidence of that that thing you're afraid of?
3. Avoid looking at it laterally - move down the thread
4. Avoid changing topics
5. Avoid future or past
6. Avoid generalizing and
7. Look at not beating yourself up
8. Avoid coaching yourself.
Avoid I don't know or I can't.
Hints that you're about to be on the spot:
If you're going in a circle, in a drain, you're off the spot. The mind is insulating itself from the thing.
Or it will look at the same topic from the different angle.
Or you'll start coaching yourself.
That means that right before you did that you were getting somewhere.
Example: "I have fear that I am using chaos and slowness so that there was chaotic thing and then we can't do this thing.
"I have fear that I cannot do this alone."
Don't use anything that's more than about 3 days old
You can't touch a memory without altering it. Your memories are nothing like what happened. It's harder to get vigilant with things that are older than a few days.
Avoid jargon in your inventory.
Binaries
(a level 2 thing)
Fear Inventory is a really useful tool for bringing to light this thing that human minds do when there's something I don't want to wrestle with, deal with, as a means of insulating myself... I'll make a binary.
This situation is either absolutely this way or that way. Other things are impossible.
Corollary: if this, then that.
We are looking to make meaning. "If it's new then it's incorrect." "If it's this then it's wrong." Or right
Fear is useful to bring that out into the light. What's the seed of the thing? Why did you make that decision or judgement?
In Fear Inventory we can bring that to light. We can then decide if there are other possibilities. Yes or no is a good answer.
They might decide, "yeah I want to keep that one." You have the opportunity with the option of honoring that process. Trust that.
Set a timer.
If you always do 15-20 minutes, try an hour. Try an hour every day for awhile. Look at your energy accounting - how much time do you spend on your crazy
Not just when you're upset - write when well so that you can take a look
Must read it. Without back story or context. Hearing yourself say it changes what's goig on in the mind.
Don't replace it with other practices like desire or gratitude practice.
Technical Fouls:
1. Don't write on things that are "coming at you." Or what other people are doing. Focus on what you have agency over.
2. Get specific. Stop the high level of abstraction... "If that were true, then what." What's the evidence of that that thing you're afraid of?
3. Avoid looking at it laterally - move down the thread
4. Avoid changing topics
5. Avoid future or past
6. Avoid generalizing and
7. Look at not beating yourself up
8. Avoid coaching yourself.
Avoid I don't know or I can't.
Hints that you're about to be on the spot:
If you're going in a circle, in a drain, you're off the spot. The mind is insulating itself from the thing.
Or it will look at the same topic from the different angle.
Or you'll start coaching yourself.
That means that right before you did that you were getting somewhere.
Example: "I have fear that I am using chaos and slowness so that there was chaotic thing and then we can't do this thing.
"I have fear that I cannot do this alone."
Don't use anything that's more than about 3 days old
You can't touch a memory without altering it. Your memories are nothing like what happened. It's harder to get vigilant with things that are older than a few days.
Avoid jargon in your inventory.
Binaries
(a level 2 thing)
Fear Inventory is a really useful tool for bringing to light this thing that human minds do when there's something I don't want to wrestle with, deal with, as a means of insulating myself... I'll make a binary.
This situation is either absolutely this way or that way. Other things are impossible.
Corollary: if this, then that.
We are looking to make meaning. "If it's new then it's incorrect." "If it's this then it's wrong." Or right
Fear is useful to bring that out into the light. What's the seed of the thing? Why did you make that decision or judgement?
In Fear Inventory we can bring that to light. We can then decide if there are other possibilities. Yes or no is a good answer.
They might decide, "yeah I want to keep that one." You have the opportunity with the option of honoring that process. Trust that.
Set a timer.
If you always do 15-20 minutes, try an hour. Try an hour every day for awhile. Look at your energy accounting - how much time do you spend on your crazy
Not just when you're upset - write when well so that you can take a look
Must read it. Without back story or context. Hearing yourself say it changes what's goig on in the mind.
Don't replace it with other practices like desire or gratitude practice.
