I feel like I’ve referred to my fears a lot throughout this blog so far. When talking about moving sublets, I referred to the fears I used to have about moving. When asking who am I, I talked about my fears of being undeserving and unworthy. Frankly, fear played a role in a lot of my past. I let it rules my actions, my choices, my thoughts. I remember telling a friend, “I’m afraid of everything.” His response was “We all are,” and perhaps he was right.

 

At the heart of my fears, I was afraid that I didn’t have a place in the world, and I was unsure if I deserved one. Unsure if I deserved the right to exist. And, as time has gone on, I’ve discovered that I’m not alone in this fear.

 

At the base of this fear is a subtle energy that’s out of balance for many of us: the root chakra (muladhara).

 

Chakras (pronounced with a hard “ch” as in “check”) are wheels of energy in the subtle or energetic body. You’ve probably seen the charts: the outline of a body, with colored circles (following the colors of the rainbow) going from the base of the spine to the crown of the head. Maybe you have some experience with chakras yourself, or maybe you thought a chakra was a weapon Xena Warrior Princess fought with. Whichever side you fall on, there’s much to be gained from this ancient wisdom of energies.

 

The root chakra sits at the base of the spine. It’s the foundation upon which all the other chakras build. Connected to the earth, the root chakra is literally is what grounds us. When it’s in balance, we are calm, secure, able to focus and sit with ourselves. We feel safe and connected to life. When it is out of balance, we feel the opposite: insecure, unfocused, afraid, disconnected from our bodies and our right to exist. (Or, if over-active, it can be the definition of “anal retentive,” causing us to be controlling, competitive, or even a bully.)

 

That phrase, “right to exist,” may seem extreme or hyperbolic. I know it certainly did to me the first time I heard it. I thought, “Of course I have the right to exist. I exist, don’t I?” But the more time I spent in contemplation of my root chakra, the more I saw the truth in it. For years, I was in a constant battle with my fears.

 

Even remembering those times makes my heart beat a little faster. My anxieties were constantly at a high, even though I managed to remain calm and collected to everyone around me. I didn’t panic in stressful situations because I was always panicked! I may have looked grounded, but until I could accept that my feet had a right to be on that ground, my fear would keep rising higher and higher.

 

It wasn’t until someone said the words, “Suffering begins with fear,” to me that it all started to click. If the beginning of suffering is fear that means that fear also has a beginning. It means that fear isn’t a normal state. And fear also isn’t just a part of who I am. Ignorance that we are whole, we are complete, and we have the right to exist is where fear begins.

 

When I finally stripped all the layers away, I understood: I wasn’t convinced that I had a place on this planet. Through all my years of struggling with perfectionism, the approval of others was what I’d believed gave me my right to continue existing. When talking about perfectionists in her book Daring Greatly, Brené Brown says, “Somewhere along the way, they adopted this dangerous and debilitating belief system: ‘I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it.’” For me, this was absolutely true. How well I accomplished tasks was what gave me meaning. I used to tell people my only talent was hard work, and I believed it.  

 

I felt invisible, and, in a way, I was. I was invisible to myself. I was driven by the fear of what I thought other people would think. I was driven by fear of the disapproval I imagined they might have.

 

In the midst of one of my lowest moments working back-to-back 80-hour weeks (while dealing with the only actor who has ever made me cry), I remember being upset when someone asked me if I was okay. Not because I was touched by this big, burly, bearded carpenter caring about me. But because it meant that I must not have looked like I was okay.

 

At that point in my belief system, that scared me. I was scared that people would think I was weak. I was scared that they would disapprove of my inability to cope. I was scared that they would think me incapable or incompetent. Instead of being grateful that I had people who cared about me, I lost myself in irrational fears that I’d somehow let people down by being human.

 

In that moment, I lost it. In the middle of a busy scene shop, with carpenters and scenic painters rushing about their work, I did the worst thing I could possibly imagine: I started to cry. And the amazing thing? No one judged me. None of my fears came true. In fact, not only did I have one dusty, cynical carpenter put down his tools to hug me (and promise to beat the living snot out of the above-mentioned actor, should I so chose), but suddenly I had three big, burly, hard-bitten men who never hugged anyone outside of their children stop their work to be there for me.

 

Over the next week, they continued to check on me. They’d invite me outside for lunch—and would insist that I actually stop to take care of myself and eat lunch—and generally showed that, despite their “don’t mess with me” appearances, they were, in fact, total softies, at least when it came to the sweet, hard-working girl who put her heart into everything.

 

I, of course, was horrified.

 

Clearly, they thought me weak. They thought me incapable or fragile or not up to my job. In reality, none of that was true. They cared about me. They knew what it was like to be spread too thin and were concerned about my well-being rather than about what kind of job I would still do. It took me a long time to understand that. And I wish now that I could have been more grateful for their care, rather than ashamed that they seemed to think I needed care.

 

Understanding our right to exist is a powerful thing. When you live your life rooted in the fear that you don’t have a right to be/speak/feel/act/think/move/exist as yourself, your very foundation is that fear. And from that fear comes so much other suffering.

 

That doesn’t mean you have to know who you are today, tomorrow, next year, or even next lifetime. It just means you have the right to honor who you are. You have the right to exist. And when you can become truly grounded in that, centered in the energy of the root chakra, you can start to rise up and find balance in the rest of your life.