“The fear of loss is a path to the dark side” – Master Yoda

Fears. Or more precisely: Fear Of Loss.

We know them, we are aware that they are bad, yet most of us seem incapable of shaking them off. I tell you, in fact, they are more dangerous for you than you can image. They paralyze you, make it impossible for you to stand up and take care of the problem. It’s important, however, to know them by name, so that you can choke them off early. This article will teach you how.

Napoleon Hill introduced us to the six ghosts of fear: the basic fears of which every human suffers to a certain degree. They are:

• The fear of POVERTY
• The fear of CRITICISM
• The fear of ILL HEALTH
• The fear of LOSS OF LOVE OF SOMEONE
• The fear of OLD AGE
• The fear of DEATH

Some people tend to suffer only from one specific fear, but most of us are affected by several of them.

It is vitally important that you are absolutely clear that fears are a state of mind. We consciously or unconsciously create fears to protect ourselves, allegedly. In fact, they create an opposite effect to protection. In the stone age fears had their right to exist. A “good healthy fear” of anything insured the stone age man’s survival. Yet he knew nothing about fear of criticism, poverty or old age. These are “civilization fears” we created artificially.

So, some fears have been good back then, but what nowadays really protects us is the absence of fear. Hill gives us the example of the physicians, who never became infected by contagious diseases because of their immunity which solely consisted on their absolute lack of fear.

Does that mean that merely fear is attracting just what we are afraid of? You can bet it does. That’s the law of attraction helping us to get what we desire. And we do exactly that: we have it constantly in our mind, connect it with a very powerful emotion, negative but powerful. That’s all the law of attraction needs to fulfill our thoughts.

Think about that.

The fear of loss is the basic fear of loosing a person you love. A person you think you need in your life in order to survive. Would you believe me when I say that I experienced myself how my fear of loosing literally drove the person I loved away from me? That is true.

When we fear to loose someone, we’d take measures that we think will ensure the person we love stayed with us. What would we do? What measures would we take?

• We would do anything to assure that our partner loved us
• We would very often tell them that we loved them ourselves
• We would very often get very very jealous
• We would accuse, argue, fight

Jealousy is in fact the most common symptom for that fear.

And all this because we are afraid to loose our partner, despite of loving him/her so much.

I will give you an example.

Here’s an email of a reader that demonstrates what I mean:

We have both been hurt in past relationships, her more so than I have. I was cheated on by a girlfriend at 17, and that’s following me to this day. Since we both live so far away, and we won’t get to see each other again since august, past fears have started to resurface in both of us, especially since we have recently learned in more detail our sexual past. For some reason, even though neither of us has even thought of being with someone else physically or otherwise since we’ve met or even become exclusive, this has distraught us to the point of severe anxiety and depression over the last few days. The mere thought of her with another guy drives me insane, and the thought of me with another girl drives her insane. These thoughts have started to plague both of us.

We talk about it incessantly, and it seems like the only way to cope with them is to reassure each other every day. It has gotten to the point, a few days ago, where neither of us could function normally during the day because of the severe anxiety caused by these thoughts. Furthermore, we are so afraid of them that neither of us wants the other to be around persons of the opposite sex for too long, and we are even afraid of the possibility of flirting with other people. I trust her, and I know she won’t do it, but somehow I can’t get these nagging thoughts out of my head.

This distance thing has been the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my life, and I have absolutely every intention to marry this girl in the next couple of years, so how do I cope with these thoughts? Neither of us ever spends ANY time with people of the opposite sex, and so it seems unreasonable to even have these thoughts, and yet we get jealous at the POSSIBILITY of unfaithfulness, even though this has never happened and neither of us ever do it. What can we do?

Being in a long distance relationship doesn’t help in this situation, it makes things worse.

I wrote to this young reader that the solution here is to understand and accept that they can not help each other in that matter. They’ve learned already that reassuring faithfulness only lasts about 24 hours, before it haunts them again.

So, it is indispensable that both work on their personal problems first. The solution for their relationship problems will follow.

There a multiple reasons for the fear of loss and it is not always clear where the fear is coming from. It is my opinion that when fear of loss and fear of unfaithfulness gets real bad it is usually a lack of self-confidence, the feeling you do not deserve each other. Very often you have some experiences in your life, like being dumbed or being cheated on, that amplify that believe.

That is why reassuring each others faithfulness usually doesn’t work.

You first have to learn that you are lovable persons. You have to love YOURSELVES first. You have to be FAITHFUL that whatever happens, you will deal with it. Affirmations are a very good way to achieve this. Only then you will notice that the fear of loss and unfaithfulness will be gone. And only then you will have trust in each other. Overcoming jealousy is first loving yourself and getting clear with yourself. All else will follow.

Of course, this seems like an arduous task, the inner voices keep telling the opposite, but you have to work constantly on it.

There is no other or easier way. At least I don’t know one.

Keep fighting this haunting ghost, for it knows only evil.

Your friend,

Eddie Corbano

(Photograph is a courtesy of Lorena)