{"id":2902,"date":"2019-03-03T11:22:45","date_gmt":"2019-03-03T09:22:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vanhemmuusneuvola.sivustamo.dev\/uncategorized\/how-to-turn-fear-into-trust\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T12:57:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T09:57:31","slug":"how-to-turn-fear-into-trust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vanhemmuusneuvola.fi\/en\/blog\/how-to-turn-fear-into-trust\/","title":{"rendered":"How to turn fear into trust?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Parenting can quickly go off the rails if you raise a child through your own fears. Acknowledging and acknowledging your own fears requires self-awareness and the courage to admit that you are afraid. I myself have fallen into the pit of fear many times and noticed each time how fear insidiously eats away at my ability to enjoy parenting. <\/p>\n\n

I find that I am already a fairly trained observer of my own thoughts. When I’ve found myself stressed or distracted by my thoughts I’ve tried to stop immediately and focus on shaping my thoughts by visualising and verbalising myself to calm myself down. <\/p>\n\n

When I notice that I am afraid of something (a child falling while climbing, being hit by a car while moving alone, missing attention while I am concentrating on my own needs, being robbed, dying before my time, etc…) and intend to react driven by fear, I try to visualize myself in a safe place to give my body a real experience of being safe. Simply verbalizing fear does not work because it is too rationalized a solution. Emotion is first and foremost embodied and therefore requires an embodied experience to support the verbalisation. <\/p>\n\n

After providing my body with a real experience of being safe (I say real experience because the body doesn’t know if it’s imaginary or real) I provide my mind with a lesson by translating the phrase “I’m scared” into the phrase -> “I’m safe”, “I’m sick -> I’m healthy\/I’m getting better”.<\/p>\n\n

My body believes what I feed it. This habit of speaking in positive terms has become a fun habit in my family, as my child also uses the phrase “ahhh I think I’m getting better from something” when expressing that she has noticed her body struggling with a bug. We are learning to look at the world through positive things and that has a huge impact on the way we look at the world. <\/p>\n\n

Through these concrete actions, I signal to my body that I am safe and that my nervous system does not need to be on alert, as it would otherwise be in fear. I teach my thoughts and my body. <\/p>\n\n

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All emotions, like fear, have a purpose in life. It makes sense to know how to fear the right things to protect yourself and your child.Primitively, the purpose of fear has been to keep humans alive and thus enable the survival of the species. Fear prevents us from doing risky things. <\/p>\n\n

There is cause for fear when you are genuinely threatened. Then fear helps you to act to survive. <\/p>\n\n

Fear becomes harmful when we cultivate it unnecessarily. Over-worrying and fear is something that should really be feared. Fear and over-worrying or worrying cause stress to the body. When stress is prolonged, for example by chronic worrying (what if something bad happens), worrying or fear, it becomes a permanent or chronic condition in the body. Your thought patterns are automatically set in a resistant climate of fear. <\/p>\n\n

The stress state in the body is then the most familiar nervous state we know, and getting rid of it and establishing a new safe state in the body will also be stressful for the body, but with a significant improvement in quality of life, it will be worth it.<\/p>\n\n

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“Confidence has been the key to moving away from fear.”<\/p>\n– Tuuliajolla’s Tuulia<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n

I have trusted myself and that my choices are the right ones. They are right anyway from some perspective, so why worry. My choices are always the right ones because they lead me forward and allow me, either to succeed or to experience learning. <\/p>\n\n

I trust that<\/p>\n\n