A great part of courage is having done the thing before.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Reading that quote reminds me of when I was told we only fear things that we've had bad encounters with, now lets play a memory trigger game - name your fear and the possible or probable causes to that fear.

Spiders - I wouldn't of even been four years old, I was helping my Dad split wood *god knows how a four year old can actually help lol* I remember splitting open a chunk of wood and out popped the biggest, blackest, hairiest, ugliest looking spider which decided to take an express route to freedom by crawling over my face. *shudders*

That disgusting incident has forever moulded my fear of spiders, or anything that even resembles a spider.

Abandonment - My parents divorced when I was three, almost too young for me to even have a memory of them "together" Being mummy's little girl of course I wanted to go and live with her but for reasons I wouldn't discover until many years later I was left to live with my dad.. I just presumed that my mum didn't want me and from the pass-over parenting my dad provided he didn't really want me much either. My step-mother was more of the parent, my dad preferred taking no genuine interest at all.

Now I'm forever stuck with the paranoia and fear of being abandoned, it doesn't matter how many times someone says "I love you" if your own parents can't stick it out then why would anyone else?

So how do we overcome our fears? Is it as simple as finding the root of the problem and then trying to fix it?