Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Welcome to New View Advice with Amanda Durocher.
Hey, beautiful soul. My name is Amanda Durocher, and this is New View Advice. If
you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast where I offer guidance for
the healing journey. I don't believe I have all the answers you seek. I believe
you have all the answers. You just may need a new view and a little
help along the way. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. Today,
(00:22):
I'm answering a listener question from someone who has struggled over the
past couple of years, and they're finding things to be going well in their life.
And they're finding that this is actually quite difficult for them, that they
have the fear of things being too good to be true, the fear of everything
falling apart, and they're having trouble enjoying the moment and being present. Instead,
they're struggling with a lot of anxiety, overwhelm, and fear.
(00:44):
And I love this question because I think we can all relate to this, and
I think it's one of the most fascinating things about humans is that we
struggle to be happy. We actually get really triggered when we're
happy. And happiness and peace and a period
of calm can be really triggering to us rather than a time of
enjoyment. And so I think this is such a great question that so many people
(01:05):
can relate to. And in this episode, we're going to talk about why do we
struggle with the idea of things being too good to be true rather than enjoying
the moment. And we're also gonna talk about ways to begin navigating
these difficult feelings that arise and how we can begin to
reassure ourselves that it's safe to be where we're at in the
present moment and how we can begin to alleviate those fears of the future.
(01:27):
So with that, I'm excited to jump into this question. But before we do, I
always like to mention that if you haven't already, I invite you to check out
my website, newviewadvice.com, where you can find more free resources for the
healing journey. This includes journal prompts, meditations. I have another series called
Reflections, and I have poems and just a bunch of stuff on
there to assist people on the healing journey and to help people to feel less
alone. And also on my website, you'll be able to find today's episode show
(01:50):
notes at nuvioadvice.com/12one. And with that,
let's jump on into discussing why do we fear when things seem too good to
be true.
Hi, Amanda. I recently came across your podcast, and I can't stop binging it.
I'm so grateful for the work you do. It's already been incredibly helpful to me.
(02:11):
I have a question. Since the COVID nineteen pandemic, my life has taken
some unexpected turns. To put it simply, it's been a rough ride. I
lost my job, had to move back in with my parents, and, unfortunately, I lost
touch with a lot of friends over the last few years. To be honest, it
was a really tough time for me. During that period, I began focusing on my
healing. I've made significant progress, and I'm definitely a different person now.
(02:32):
But I still struggle with a lot of anxiety. In the last few months, things
have started to shift for me. I found a job I really enjoy. I was
finally able to move out of my parents' house, and I've started meeting new people
who make me feel like I can truly be myself. It sounds great. Right? But
here's the problem. I'm finding it harder than I expected. I'm overwhelmed with
anxiety, constantly waiting for everything to fall apart. It's like I'm waiting for
(02:54):
the other shoe to drop. I find myself playing out worst case scenarios in my
head, and I often feel like everything I've worked for could be taken away from
me at any moment. Deep down, I know it's not true, but I also know
life can be unpredictable, and that terrifies me. I thought I'd feel happy now,
but instead, I just feel fearful and anxious. Any advice on how to navigate
this? Thank you for your question. As I mentioned in the intro, I think this
(03:15):
is such a great question that so many people can relate to. I also wanna
say thank you so much for your kind words about the podcast. I'm so grateful
you found it and that it has been something that you have
found bingeable. That's kind of a funny thing for me to hear because, not gonna
lie, I don't think I can binge my own podcast. So I'm like, props to
you. Thank you so much for listening. I really, really, really appreciate it. But
(03:36):
with that, let's talk about your question. I think this is a great question. I
actually had to think a lot about this question because I thought it was really
interesting how you mentioned the COVID nineteen pandemic in your
question. Because I have thought about how much that impacted us, but I
actually think that might be a real thing that's playing into your
question here. Because you mentioned in your question that
(03:57):
you also know life can be unpredictable, and that terrifies
you. And it sounds like when the COVID nineteen
pandemic happened, when the shutdowns happened, I'm not sure what happened in your personal life,
but it sounds like there was likely a fear of the unpredictable
happening. And now you're in a place in your life where you're finally getting back
on your feet, And that's such a beautiful thing. I wanna say that's amazing.
(04:19):
I'm so happy for you. I'm so happy that you have been able
to rebuild your life in some ways because it sounds like a lot of things
fell apart at one point in your life. And I think it's beautiful that you
haven't let that knock you down and that you've you've actually been building your life
from scratch in a way. Right? You got a new job. You are making new
friends. You were able to leave your parents' house for what I'm guessing is the
second time. You left after childhood, and then you moved back, and now you got
(04:42):
to leave again. So I just wanna say that, to me, that's amazing that
you were able to lift yourself back up. I think it shows your resilience
and your strength that you're able to overcome challenging
times. And I think that's such a part of life. Perseverance,
showing up when it's hard and just continuing to push forward and to move
forward in different ways. And I think that we forget that
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sometimes. We think life is supposed to follow the road map that our minds
want it to follow. And as you mentioned, life's unpredictable. And I think
that's what makes life interesting, but it's also what makes life terrifying.
You mentioned struggling with anxiety, overwhelm, and fear.
Those make a lot of sense to me here. You went through a very
difficult time, and it sounds like you did a lot of inner work, a lot
(05:26):
of healing. Again, that's beautiful thing to have spent those years
doing. Not everybody does that. Not everybody chooses to grow. Not
everybody chooses a growth mindset when things become challenging. It
sounds to me like you were hit with difficult times, and you
were able to create good from that. That's what I view it as when we
choose to heal. We begin to look within. We begin to become friends with our
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emotions. We begin to get to know ourselves. That is creating beauty
from difficulty. Many people come across the healing journey from a difficult
time. I haven't met a single person in my entire life who began healing
because their life was so good. I just haven't. I think that would be cool.
They're like, oh my god. My life's so good. I just wanna heal. That doesn't
tend to be the case. People come to healing and inner work when something difficult
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often happens externally, and they're not able to solve it
externally. So the answer becomes an internal answer. And I mentioned that
because that sounds like the case for you. You've started healing when you were going
through these really difficult times. And so now that you're
stepping out of what I view as the cocoon, I mentioned it a
lot, but I view the healing journey like the journey of a caterpillar to a
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butterfly where we're often a caterpillar and we're going about
life. And then something happens in our external life, and oftentimes, we
decide to go into that cocoon. And when we go into the cocoon, we change.
It's a metamorphosis period, and we break down entirely. And
when it comes to the healing journey, we look within. We begin to become
aware of who we are, how we got here. We look at childhood patterns.
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We look at present day patterns. We look at our relationships,
and we begin to heal. But then there becomes a day
when we need to take that new version of ourselves and bring them out into
the world, and that's the journey of becoming the butterfly where we choose to
share this version of ourselves with the world. And we go through this process
multiple times. But when we are in the process of taking all that inner
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work and that metamorphosis and sharing it with the world, we are like
opening a cocoon and becoming a butterfly. And that process is very
uncomfortable, and that sounds to me like what you are currently navigating.
Because when we fear things being too good to be true, it's often
because we're hitting what Gay Hendricks calls in the book The
Big Leap, which I do recommend for you. I'm not gonna give a synopsis of
(07:39):
the book. But in this book, he talks about how humans hit their upper limit
problem. So we have a capacity for how good things can
be, and we can continually increase this ability for
things to be good. But, actually, because of the way we have evolved over
time and our survival mode mechanisms, we actually hit an
upper limit, an amount of goodness we're willing to tolerate, and it
(08:00):
takes awareness and growth in order to stretch that
to more and more goodness in our life. But when we hit that upper limit,
it often triggers feelings like you're talking about, anxiety, overwhelm, and
fear. Because why we have that upper limit, as Gay Hendricks calls it,
or why we have that capacity for things to be good, why we
can get triggered by goodness, is truthfully because the past has
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shown us different, and we're living in the past still. We're
using the past to tell us that things won't be good now because
we're looking back at the past for all the times that things didn't go
well, all the times those shoes dropped, as you mentioned in your
question. All those times things fell apart. And we do this because
we're trying to remain safe. And so when things get
(08:44):
good and when things get better and better, that is uncharted
territory, and it so often triggers within us that fear
of things not feeling safe. And for emotionally wounded people
and people who have gone through hard times, which I think is everybody, and traumatized
people, myself included in that, I don't know what your background is. But for
us, things have gone really, really bad at some point in our life, so we
(09:05):
are trying to remain safe. And by always
jumping to the bad scenario, we're able to, in
some way, feel safe within because if something bad
happened, it's like we were expecting it, so it wouldn't hit us so
hard. So we may remain feeling kinda yucky, but in a way, we feel
safe in that yuckiness, if that makes sense. But we
(09:27):
obviously don't wanna feel that way. We don't heal to feel yucky. We
heal because we feel how that healing and that inner work
improves our lives, how we can create that inner safety and an inner sense of
peace one step at a time. And so for you, I think
it's really important for you to ask yourself
what the fears are that are arising. Why are you so afraid
(09:50):
of things to be too good to be true, and why do you
struggle with the unpredictable element of
life? It's gonna be a different answer for everybody. For you, I was
wondering if when the COVID nineteen pandemic happened, if that was very shocking
for you, if that was shocking for your nervous system in some way, and if
all these things that happened afterwards just felt like knife wounds, you
(10:11):
know, like, stab, stab, stab, for lack of a better phrase,
and if that experience was a bit traumatizing
for you, if this snowball effect of painful experiences
is something that you're still afraid of happening again and if you just need to
offer yourself more love and compassion for going through that. Because I also found on
my own healing journey, I often go back to childhood when healing. I believe in
(10:33):
childhood wounds and or child work. I talk about that a lot on the podcast.
But many of the experiences we have today are triggered by something that goes
farther back than the present moment. But I also have found that I've
been wounded in my twenties and in my thirties. And as you
mentioned with the COVID nineteen pandemic, I had to be with that version of myself.
I was 28 in 2020 when the world changed,
(10:55):
and I have had to do my own healing around that and
grieving of where I thought life would go and where my life is
now and how I'll never get back those crazy years. And
I share that because maybe there's a part of you that's still
afraid or still holding on to something that you're ready to
let go of in regards to those past five years. And
(11:17):
one way that I recommend for letting go is to
spend some intentional time. I call it ceremony time, but you can call it whatever
you want. And finding a place in nature, finding some quiet time in
solitude, and just honoring the last five years you went through,
honoring who you were before and honoring who you are now, and seeing that
growth and reassuring yourself that you have grown and that you have your own
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back and that you are a different person who, if something
happens again, that you have new tools to deal with
that. You know, you have been on a journey of growth, and it's important
to remind yourself of that. That if something unpredictable
happens, you are not who you were the last time an unpredictable thing
happened, or you're not who you were five years ago, ten years ago, or maybe
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your unpredictable wound goes back to childhood, and you are a different person
now. And it is so important when healing to remind ourselves that and
to reassure those versions of us within. That's how I always
view it when I feel fear and panic come up, one of the first things
I do is I'm like, is this present me, or is this another
age? And I sit in meditation, and I allow that age to come
(12:23):
forward. I hope that makes sense. But oftentimes,
a part of me needs reassurance. A part of me who has
very real fears, has been very wounded, needs me
to reassure them that I am here. I am a safe person, and
I am capable of protecting them and also capable of that
resilience and that strength we talked about at the beginning of the episode. Because you
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are a resilient person, you are a strong person. You're here listening to this
podcast, you have a growth mindset, and that is incredible. That's amazing.
You have the tools. You just may not always know it in the moment, but
you do have the tools. And if you don't have the tools right now, you
have the capability of finding the tools that will help you along the way. I
assure you of that. After everything I've been through, I have time and time again
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found exactly what I needed to help me through the toughest times of my life.
It's not always easy, and it's not always overnight, but it's through
that perseverance we mentioned that we're able to continually find
what we need and to continually move forward and reassure ourselves that things are gonna
be okay. Life is unpredictable. And the other thing I wanted to mention here with
your question is I'm wondering if your anxiety, your overwhelm, and your
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fear are connected to you feeling like you need to be in
control. Because when we are trying to
control life, that is when we can't
allow life to be as good as life can get. Because
when we try to control things, we are trying to keep ourselves safe inherently.
Because if we're controlling life, life is predictable. And when life is
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predictable, we feel safe. We feel protected. We feel
like we have life on a leash is how I'm viewing it. Like, life
is a dog. You have it on a leash when you're in control. But when
we let go of control, it's like a dog off the leash,
and the dog's like, follow me. Follow me. And the dog is all happy, and
you're like, oh my god. You terrify me, dog. Where are you going?
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That's the visual that came to my mind. But what you'll find if you follow
the happy go lucky dog off the leash is that dog,
a k life, is going to teach you how to let
go of control because you are not in control of life.
If you learned anything over the past five years, my guess is one thing you
learned is that you are not in control. Life has a funny
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way of knocking us down when we try to control it.
And part of learning to be present with life and enjoying the present moment
is not attaching to really anything. You don't wanna attach to the really
good times, and you don't wanna attach to the really bad times. And by living
in the past and living in fear and anxiety, it sounds like you're attached to
that fear, and we wanna begin to let go of that fear. Because
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the more you let go of the fear, the more you will enjoy
the present moment. Because I want you to enjoy your new job, enjoy your new
home, enjoy your new friends, but these anxieties and these fears are just
showing you that you're in uncharted territory and you're likely trying
to control life still. And as you are that butterfly coming
out of the cocoon that we talked about, you have to learn how to dance
(15:19):
with life in a new way. And now you might be thinking, Amanda, that sounds
all good and dandy, but how do I do that? It's gonna be different for
everybody, but one thing you can begin to do is
to bring more awareness and more compassion to these hard
feelings you're having. Your anxiety, your overwhelm, and your
fear are not there to punish you. They're there
(15:40):
to show you what you are afraid of so that you can
overcome that fear. You can look at that fear. You can see
where that fear really originated from. But I find that
anxiety, especially anxiety around the idea of things being too good to
be true, that anxiety is just showing us that we are
uncomfortable with this new way of being. We're uncomfortable,
(16:02):
and I think that's part of life. I believe we're always
gonna come across discomfort, and I think we're always
going to hit fear because both these things
arise when we do something new. And the only way you'll stop
feeling uncomfortable and you'll stop having fear, in my opinion, is
if you stop doing new things, if you stop growing.
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And the older I get, I'm like, why else are we here? Aren't we
here to grow, to love, to learn, to live life
to the fullest? And that involves getting
uncomfortable, and there's absolutely nothing wrong
with the way you're feeling. So I wanted to offer you that
because how do you begin navigating these hard feelings? You reassure yourself that
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there's nothing wrong with the way you're feeling. You let go of those inner
judgments. We wanna stop judging ourselves, and we want to
become curious with ourselves. Curiosity has a
compassionate tone to it. It also has a playful tone to
it. I think so many humans want certainty, but life
is never certain. We are thrown into
(17:08):
uncertainty the more we embrace life and the more we
allow life to guide us. I think that so many
times we're asked to take a leap of faith before we are certain
of the outcome. That is terrifying. That triggers
anxiety and overwhelm. You are in a period of
goodness. I view it. You're getting the fruits of your labor.
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You have worked hard to be where you are. How do you allow yourself
to enjoy it? You reassure yourself that you
deserve where you are. Because, also, when we fear the
too good to be true, it's an unworthiness wound. We're like, am I
worthy of this much goodness? There's often a part of us that thinks we don't
deserve life to be that good, so that's why we struggle to believe life
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can be that good. And it's this cycle of unworthiness and not
feeling like we're enough. And so if we don't think we're worthy of the
goodness and we don't think we're enough for that, we will just punish
ourselves and throw ourselves in a cycle of negative thoughts or anxious
thoughts because we are hitting that upper limit Gay
Hendricks talks about, or we're hitting that belief about ourselves. We're
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hitting a belief about how good life can be. You know, that
happens in my life all the time. When things get really
good, I get really triggered. I relate to this question. I'm not
saying any of this is easy. I can struggle with anxiety myself. The
more I lean into the things I enjoy, the more anxious I can
become, for sure. It's a real human behavior. And when things
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get good, we can malfunction is how I view it. My brain's like, cannot
compute so much goodness, and it, like, breaks. It's crazy. It's
crazy. It really is. It's crazy. And if you take anything from this
episode, I hope it's that you can soften around yourself. Because what tends to
happen and what I kinda see in your question is that we begin
to get really stressed and judgmental of ourselves when things aren't
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going well or not going how we thought they would. We judge ourselves for
it. And as you mentioned, life is unpredictable, and it's
about, as I said, getting curious with yourself.
I'm uncomfortable here. What is triggered? Why am I
feeling this way? Why can't I allow myself to be happy?
And sometimes it'll be an easy answer, like,
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oh, that's just an old way of being. I'm ready to let that go.
And sometimes the answer will be something much deeper, and
it'll be a really painful truth. I won't be like, oh, I don't wanna
look at that, Or, oh, I didn't think that was still there. But
as I hope you have learned through your own healing journey, the
more we process the past, the more we
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become friends with our feelings, the more we're able to
dance with life rather than fight life. Because when
we try to control life or when we fear life or when we get really
judgmental and stressed, we're fighting life. And
spoiler alert, life is always gonna win. Life
is a force that is much more powerful
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than our human minds and our human selves. And the more we can
begin to soften to life, which is just letting go of that
control we've talked about and letting go of attachment to the outcome of
things, the more we're able to appreciate the present
moment. And so for you with this question,
I think that, one, be kind to yourself. Be kind to
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yourself. You did go through a rough five years. It may take some more time
for you to trust life again. You're rebuilding trust with life. That's
also what happens when this too good to be true wound comes up is that
life wasn't good, and you're stepping out of your comfort zone and you're like, life,
do you have my back? Like, what is happening here? And when we're
rebuilding trust with life, we're really rebuilding trust with ourselves. And as
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you mentioned, life can be unpredictable. But what we learn through that unpredictability
is how to have our own back, how to have that strength, that courage, and
that perseverance to continue to move forward no
matter what life throws at us. I also invite you
to practice meditation. I think meditation is a beautiful
practice. And when I say meditation, I'm really talking about sitting and
(21:11):
contemplating a question. So my form of
meditation is sitting down and quiet. Sometimes I use a guided
meditation. Sometimes I don't. But really sitting down, getting to that
still place within through breath, and dropping in a question
and allowing myself to see what arises. That may be confusing
for some people, but it's a practice. And the
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more we are able to be with ourselves and to be still with ourselves and
to be quiet with ourselves, the more we're able to get to
the truth of how we're feeling. And if meditation
is not your thing, I recommend journaling. I think you can have a question.
So say the question is, why do I fear everything
going away? Why do I fear everything falling apart? And allowing
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yourself to free write that answer. And just keep writing.
You'll surprise yourself with what comes up. That's what I find time and time again
when we free write journal, not when we stay in the mind and we think,
what is that? And you you put your pen on the page and just keep
writing. And when we allow that free write to come through, so often the
answer can surprise us. When you're feeling really overwhelmed and
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anxious, I also recommend you go out in nature. Nature is so healing. I
know it's winter. At least when I'm recording this episode, it's winter for most people.
I live in Arizona, so my winter is honestly the summer when it's a 20
degrees out and I can't go outside. So I can go outside now, but come
six months from now, we will see how sane I am when I can't
go outside so much. But finding ways to relax your
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body. So when we are anxious, overwhelmed, and fearful, it is
finding ways to regulate your nervous system to calm down and to reassure yourself you
are safe. Because that is what I see here. The fear that keeps arising for
you is that you don't feel safe because you went through a time in your
life where it didn't feel safe. You lost a lot of things. And that's
why, as I mentioned earlier, there may be a grieving process that goes on because
(23:00):
you may have not fully allowed yourself to grieve what those five
years were like for you. Sometimes when we're in the midst of a period,
it's not till after it that we can grieve it or after it that we
can see it clearly because especially when we're on the healing journey, sometimes things are
really, really hard and we're healing in the moment something from the past. And then
when we move forward, we have to heal that moment, if that makes
(23:22):
sense. You know? For me, for an example in my life is I lived
with PTSD for a very long time. And when I
stopped having PTSD, at first, it was like, oh my gosh. I don't have PTSD
anymore. But then when I stopped having PTSD, after a couple weeks,
I then saw how much that PTSD had impacted my life in
a way I wasn't able to see when I was in the midst of it.
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When I was in the midst of it, I couldn't see the devastating impact
that reliving the most horrible things in my life had on me. And
when I stopped having PTSD, then I had to go through a whole grieving
process about those years where I lived with PTSD. And it's a
very confusing cycle, and sometimes it feels like it will never end. But
with each layer and with each step, we gain more inner freedom
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is how I view it. We're liberated from those difficult feelings, and we learn
how to process things in our own unique way. Because as I
mentioned, I mentioned meditation, journaling, nature. I also love baths. I
think those are great. And finding a creative element to help
you heal. But I mentioned all those things, but for each person, it's gonna be
individual. You're gonna find what helps you process things. You're gonna
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find what helps you move through your own inner world. You're gonna find
what works best for you. And that's why I wish I
had all the answers, but I don't. Because I don't know your past, I don't
know your present, and I don't know where you're going. Spoiler with that one, nobody
knows where we're going. We can all think we know where we're going,
but that's part of the letting go of control is that we really
(24:52):
don't know what's around the corner, which is why we fear the shoe
dropping. But at every moment in time, we can either choose fear or
choose love. But what I mean by choose love is we can choose trust and
we could choose faith that no matter what's around the corner, we got this.
We got our back. We've learned and we've grown,
and we have the tools moving forward. And if we don't have them, we'll find
(25:14):
them. And in each moment, we can choose to feel unsupported by life because it's
so unpredictable that's so scary, or we can choose to feel supported by
life. And to know that life is a ride, it's not
a straight line, It's not linear. It's filled with loops
and curls and ups and downs. And sometimes in the moment, it's
incredibly challenging. But it's down the line that we get
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to see our strength. We get to see our bravery. We get to see
the things we overcame. And from overcoming challenges
is where we build our self esteem, is where we build self respect, is where
we build self love for ourselves. It's truly where we learn to love
ourselves because we learn that we're not perfect, and we pull
ourselves off this pedestal we'll never reach, and we
(25:59):
learn to love ourselves right here, right now, and to be kind to ourselves.
So many of us grew up in critical environments or neglectful environments
or environments where we never felt good enough or worthy enough. And
it's through these challenging moments or it's through these moments that feel too good to
be true where we get to step up to the plate and we get to
reparent ourselves or we get to be our own best friend and we get to
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reassure ourselves that we got this because you do. You do have
this. I know it doesn't always feel like that. I know your feelings can feel
overwhelming. I relate to overwhelming feelings. God, do I relate
to overwhelming feelings. But time and time again, it's slowing
down and just being kind to myself where I realize that the
anxiety and the fear I'm feeling are just that,
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anxiety and fear, and that they're often teaching me something that I'm
afraid of, but that they don't have to run the show, and they can take
a back seat. And they're able to take a back seat the more I see
myself, the more I show up for myself, the more I love myself. I hope
something in this answer was helpful. I know I didn't have any concrete advice,
so I do hope something in this answer was helpful. And if anything, I hope
(27:03):
you take that you are not alone. There is nothing wrong with how you're feeling.
It is part of the human journey to be uncomfortable when things are really
good. And if you need a little permission today, I wanna give you
permission to lean into feeling good. And I am rooting for you and your
success and your happiness because, dang, you deserve it. I hope something
in the answer was helpful. Thank you so much for this question.
(27:29):
Thank you for joining me for another episode of New View Advice and for having
this conversation about why do we fear when things are too good to be true.
If you haven't already, I invite you to rate and subscribe to the podcast. Ratings
and reviews help to bring more people to the podcast and help me to continue
to grow, which is my goal for 2025. So if you enjoyed this episode, I
invite you to rate and review the podcast. Thank you again for joining me for
(27:50):
another episode of new view advice. As always, I hope I was able to offer
you new view on whatever you may be going through. Sending you all my love.
See you next time.