Learning to silence that negative voice in your head

Dear Fearful Friend,

Sometimes you can be your worst enemy that little whisper in your head can make you feel so low and paralyzed, negative thoughts rushing in your head, is making you question your intelligence, your worth or even your existence. I know many people who struggle with fear. They get fearful of being stuck in one place too long, not growing as a person emotionally, financially, spiritually, and so much more. I understand because I often get afraid of the unknown as well. This article is an open letter to all the people who doubt themselves. If you can do this with me breathe, in and out. Breathe in deep count to four and breathe out and count to seven slowly, try this breathing exercise at least 3-4 times. Find a relaxing position that could be on your bed, or your floor, if you can’t lie down someplace, find some quiet place you can go to and think to yourself. Breathe again, stop focusing on what you are afraid of for one second, I know it hurts or you don’t see a resolution but keeping breathing the exercise I told you to do. Now that you feel a little bit calmer, I want to tell you that I get it, you feel paralyzed, afraid, and worried. You think no one cares about you, or understands you. I may not understand everything but I know what fear feels like, you feel like it’s you against this big issue you can’t shake off your back, you feel your chest tightening, your hearts racing, and you spend the whole day worried about it. Relax take it one step at a time. First breathe, second find a place you can relax, third understand that fear is FALSE EVIDENCE APPEARING REAL. If you can pray, talk to a friend, write your feelings down, get it out of your mind as much as you can and place it elsewhere, do this every time you get afraid. I want to share with you this story I experienced recently last week, I was in my college math class and I have been struggling with math for the longest of my 22 years of existence. I understood elementary and middle school math and then I reached high school and college math and I have hated math ever since, I do this thing where I make jokes about math and I say to friends or friendly listeners I encounter on campus “I can’t stand math, she’s a hoe! She’s always trying to find her X’s and we don’t know Y!” People laugh at my corny jokes, but it still doesn’t help me feel as confident when exams come up every two weeks.

So I was in class last week and my Professor was talking about our homework and showing us math equations, when he started graphing points, drawing the infinity signs with brackets and negative coefficients I was like “What the hell is this? I don’t understand all these math terms, nor can I read this man’s handwriting.” I was cringing in my seat watching in confusion at this math professor, he was so quick and everyone around me seemed to get it, chiming in their answers like beats in a pop song. I started to think to myself “Oh my gosh, everyone here is so smart and I’m not. I am scared I will flunk out of this class and not get my degree in theater, I will just be stuck at my minimum waged job, not following my dreams because I can’t graph these equations.” Finally class ended and I was walking out feeling defeated and I bumped into another classmate and she asked “ Do you get anything he said?” I was hesitant to answer truthfully but I did it anyways and I said “ I don’t understand a thing, I will be living in math tutoring for the remainder of this semester.” We laughed and she expressed to me how she’s been doing tutoring to understand this math class and she still has problems at times with math. That gave me some encouragement because I thought everyone was getting it but others are probably in the same boat with you, all you have to do is simply relax and take it one step at a time. Yes math is challenging, but I am getting my degree and nothing is going to stop me. Breathe and keep persevering. Fear can make you feel hopeless and that’s not fair replace fear with faith, have faith in yourself even if you win or lose. You need to try. Do it for you and tell that negative voice that you can make it through it. Fear is False Evidence Appearing Real.