Hey, I noticed I always had a problem facing fears. I've been writing since I was 10 and a couple of months ago, I came up with the idea to publish one of my novels. I'm insecure and give up easily, mostly because I fail at life. I started a book series last year about 5 characters that I have to face their fears. The characters struggle but always find a solution in the end. Of course, they work as a team. Is it weird I look up to these characters because they're stronger than me? I know. it's a little weird I wrote 3 books about characters needing to face their fears and I can't even do it myself. I am happy with the series I wrote. I love the story. I love the characters. I just wish I had that kind of courage. I lived with a narcissist for a while, who belittled me and gaslighted my every move. She basically made me feel like I'm not a person. She called me abusive and told people she was afraid of me. Now that I'm out of that situation, I fear she was right about everything she ever told me. I think that's what makes it harder for me to believe in myself. I feel like a bad person everywhere I go. I fear that I will never be courageous enough.
The most important thing in overcoming a fear is the desire to want to overcome it in the first place.
Due to some unfortunate events when I was younger, I developed Aquaphobia (The fear of water) that prevented me from doing literally anything to do with water. No baths, no showers, no drinking water, even rain absolutely terrified me. When I was 18 - 19 I really wanted to move past it, I was sick of people telling me that I stink or being judged for drinking anything but water and I went to therapy for quite a while, it was difficult and in retrospect a little funny that I had to get comfortable with just having a bottle of water in the same room as me without feeling uncomfortable. Then holding a bottle of water, then drinking it, then pouring it over myself and realizing that I won't drown if I do it.
It took about a year of work, every week but eventually I was able to start drinking bottles of water, able to have a shower, have a bath. Nowdays, it's downgraded to Thalassophobia (A fear of open bodies of water), I won't go in the ocean, I won't go in a pool, near a lake but I can more or less live my life normally now.
I don't actually WANT to work on my fear of open bodies of water though, I continue to allow myself to be afraid of it. There's no desire to improve on it, so there won't really be. I'm working on being able to go in things like Jacuzzi's because my dream is to go to a Japanese onsen one day.
The first and the biggest step, is to WANT to move past a fear; once you've decided that you want to do it, you've already won half the battle. Then it's about finding the right person to help you move past the fear, it's absolutely something you can do if you want to do it.
