Are You A Screenwriter For Your Horror Movie, Or How Do You Scare Yourself?

Are You A Screenwriter For Your Horror Movie, Or How Do You Scare Yourself?

I vividly remember being in my late 20s and starting my first job in a non-profit in the city after the graduate program. I felt terrified by its prospects of low salary, the high risk of burnout, literally having a hole in the floor in my office, and seeing co-workers in the place of life when I did not want to see myself in 20 years. 

I remember how I felt stuck and paralyzed by these prospects and terrified to take steps to do something about it. I felt helpless and hopeless that the situation will ever change or that I have the power to change it, and the change can come from inside of me, not outside. In other words, change can come when I would tell myself, yes, and I can change the situation or realization what stopping me from changing or how I was scaring myself that it will never change.

Through the years of professional development and personal growth-aka-working with my therapist, I started realizing how I was scaring myself, how I was experiencing this in my body, and how it was paralyzing me to start doing something.

I start bringing awareness of how I live in the worst-case scenarios and afraid to face these scenarios even in my thoughts.

I often hear from my clients, “ I cannot quiet my chatterbox in my head… or What if I will not get the promotion, What if I will not get promoted or find more suitable employment, What if something is not going to work….” What if the element of anxiety. Anxiety is a protective force. Evolutionary anxiety or fears helped us to survive or prevent danger.

If you are reading this blog and suddenly the bear comes into your surroundings, the protective force of anxiety will tell you to run or pretend dead, which will be an adequate response to real fear.

We do not live among bears, but we have hypothetical bears in our heads. What if something dangerous happens? What if I will be laid off… What if I will not receive a promotion?-it is a paralyzing thought it makes to live as you already facing this situation, or you will feel stuck (the case with the bear when you pretend dead), and you stop yourself from thinking about how would you cope with it if will happen.

The moment when you ask yourself how you would cope with it you stop being a screenwriter for a horror movie, and you become a writer for realistic fiction. So you start bringing your resilience. You start aware of different body sensations that make you paralyzed or fearful but bring your superpower or empowerment to cope with the stressful or hypothetic situation.

In my work with clients, I am helping clients have a self-discovery journey into their thoughts, feelings, body sensation, and behaviors to better understand what is stopping them and how they scare themselves. I am focusing on bringing awareness to their narrative, the themes, its rigidity. Together we experiment with this narrative to see if narrative changes can bring hope, resilience, and empowerment.