Written by: Javier Peñalba, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Understanding your deeper needs and finding conscious ways to satisfy them can help you to conquer your fear of missing out and bring about stability and calm in your relationships and life.
One of the main issues that made me flee most of my romantic relationships was a sense of incompletion of desires. I felt that, since I had always been so shy and insecure, I had not been able to date enough in my late teens and in my twenties. Add on top of that my tendency to compare myself to other men, seeing how skillful they were socially and with women, and I ended up feeling powerless, restless and frustrated. These feelings came up when I was single and would usually subside for some time when I was in a relationship, but they would resurface later on, especially as my infatuation stage ended and I gained more emotional control in the relationship. Then, the feelings around the frustrated desires would make me restless and anxious in the relationship, triggering my fear of missing out on better partners that, in my opinion, would make me happier. That would usually signal the end of my relationships, at least internally, taking some time to conclude in a formal breakup.
Having now talked to many other people with avoidant or disorganized attachments displaying fear of commitment, it has come to my attention that this particular issue of frustrated desires and a sense of incompletion is extremely common with them. This is because, hidden behind the hard layers of confidence and independence many times hides a soft, insecure and hurt human being that has had many of his needs unfulfilled.
So, what has helped me to overcome my frustrated desires, which have resulted in increased confidence and diminished fear of missing out and a more secure attachment? Below are three tips that I consider can be very powerful, both for people with a fear of commitment that can help them also to move into a more secure attachment, and generally for anyone feeling frustrated in their lives:
1. Explore your felt sense around your frustration and be comfortable with it
How do you feel exactly when experiencing your sense of impotence and frustration? Take some time to feel within your body. Perhaps it feels like a pit or a lump in your stomach, tightness in your chest, overall emptiness, sweaty palms, or pressure in your head. Be aware of all of your bodily sensations. Meditation, breathing exercises or yoga are great strategies to connect back to your body and to get familiarized with those feelings without running away from them.
Desperately looking for a partner, escaping your relationships, or fearing missing out on other relationships are all just subconscious ways for you to stop feeling those sensations. In other words, your mind tells you: “if you just could be able to find this perfect partner or relationship, these feelings would be gone”. However, these sensations are all residual energy from unproperly processed experiences from your past that is stored in your nervous system, most probably from not having had your needs met as you were growing up because of a difficult childhood with parents that had their own issues and/or because of traumatic experiences. As long as those residual feelings are not fully felt and accepted, they can remain within and arise again even if you dated a top model or rose all the way up the ladder of your career.
You first have to accept and stop fighting those sensations or looking for someone or something out there to make them magically go away. Find a sense of peace behind those feelings, which comes from a total acceptance of what is, and you can reduce the stress around them. Remember, right in the eye of a hurricane, in the center of all that chaos can there be deep peace; in the depth of your frustration and impotence there is likewise the eye of your Self, and the more you can connect to that with acceptance, the easier it will be for you to release that stuck energy.
2. Explore and connect with the feelings that you would like to have
How would you like to feel? Coming from a place of acceptance and peace explored in tip no. 1, make a list of those feelings that you are looking to experience. Perhaps you want to have a feeling of acceptance by others, of true connection, of accomplishment, of power, of attraction, of excitement or of being loved.
Identify which is the stronger one of those feelings and explore why that is important to you. At times, the reason for its importance hides a deeper need that is usually connected to a lack of love in your life. For example, if what you want is to feel attraction and you ask yourself what lies behind it, you will most likely realize that when you feel attracted you feel connected and loved, so perhaps it is a sense of being loved that you are missing. If you can get to the core of what you really need, try to come up with a way to connect to that in the now even if you don’t externally have what you think will give you that.
You can aid yourself through visuals, meditations or affirmations to create whatever feeling you want. For example, let’s say that you discover that what you are looking for is a sense of being loved and connected. You can practice the kind eyes exercise by Diane Poole Heller, whereby you focus on visualizing kind, loving and compassionate eyes looking at you, whether it be those of your parents, friends, pets or anyone in your life that you love. Notice what happens in your body as you direct your awareness into that kindness. There is usually a connection that happens within us that can be very soothing which, ultimately, is our original state and is the result of being fully here and now.
Remember, the mind and body don’t make a difference in whether what you are imagining is or not real, so as long as you can feel those deep emotions now, you can already start healing and transmuting some of the old energy that has been stuck in you. For these types of exercises, I also recommend Dr. Joe Dispenza’s meditations such as his morning meditation, which have been of great help to me in my own journey.
3. Create a conscious plan to connect more on your day to day with how you want to feel
Remember, your mind is tricking you into believing that there is only one way to fulfill your needs. For example, if you want to feel accepted by others or seek a sense of accomplishment, your mind may think that you need an extremely attractive partner, an expensive car or a big house to show off to friends so that you can feel accepted or successful. However, that is not entirely true. In fact, as described beautifully in the Second Noble Truth in Buddhism, “the source of all suffering is craving or attachment”, so stubbornly attaching yourself to those desires has the potential to create further frustration and suffering in your life.
In this tip, I suggest that you start performing actions on your day to day that help you to connect consciously with that which is really important to you, remembering that whatever you do is only a channel to achieve a deeper connection with yourself and that there’s not only one way to get there. For example, if you were lacking a feeling of connection and your old self thought that only by having the perfect relationship you would be able to achieve that create a plan on how to feel more connection with your current partner or with colleagues on your day to day and experiment with it. If you have a partner, for example, you can create a plan including:
15-minute connective conversations before going to bed where you share your worries and celebrations;
a warm welcome greeting ritual when you meet; or
taking part in a mutual activity like meditation, doing yoga or walking in nature together.
Likewise, if what you want is a sense of accomplishment, you can focus on working on a project that is important to you, such as on developing your own company or finding ways to help others.
Gratitude and appreciation are vital here. Through them you can devote your energy to what you have and who you are with today, which in the end brings you back to the present moment where all your deepest needs are met. To help you with this, I recommend that you use my Love and Gratitude Journal that I created with my wife, which can help you to refocus on the positive energy in your life. Thus, as you spend more energy on what’s now in your hands, with gratitude and appreciation, you can more easily let go of old, unnecessary attachments, making you feel more invigorated and increasing your overall wellbeing. This can also help you to gradually move into a secure attachment and a more fulfilled life.
I hope this article helped you to find a greater sense of peace and fulfillment. You can discover more about my work by visiting my website. If you are interested in working to improve your relationships and overcome your fear of commitment or simply to create a lighter life, I invite you to apply for coaching here and let me know more about your situation so that we can explore how I may be of help to you. I further invite you to subscribe to my newsletter by filling out the form on my website by following this link. By subscribing you will receive my Free Gift where I provide 3 tips to overcome fear of commitment to create fulfilling relationships. You will also get updates from me occasionally including articles and videos about this topic.
Until next time!
Javier Peñalba, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Javier Peñalba is an ICF certified life coach helping people with fear of commitment to create fulfilling relationships. Having dealt with anxiety for decades since the young age of 6 after the sudden suicide of his father some meters away from him, Javier has worked on a long journey of self-discovery, where he uncovered symptoms of commitment phobia, relationship OCD and anxiety. In particular, he could not stay in any intimate relationship for more than a few months without running away from it. Having dedicated the last years of his life to understand and overcome this issue, Javier is now happily married and is providing seminars and life coaching services to help people suffering fear of commitment.
