New starts and new beginnings are a part of life, but many people freeze up at the prospect of starting something new. For most people this stems from childhood conditioning and traumas. But like in all other areas, this carries over into adulthood and even gets passed down to future generations. This week in Deeper Thoughts we’re going to briefly discuss places where this fear of starting new things stems from and some ways you can break free of that fear.
A lot of children growing up are encouraged to take risks to try and start new things, but others have helicopter parents that try to prevent them from doing this. The children develop a "fear of the new" because they never got the chance to try new things. These parents are constantly watching over their children, fussing over every little thing they do to try and prevent them from hurting themselves. While yes, it’s important to keep an eye on your children, if you’re not letting them take risks and scaring them with your nervous behavior, then that will carry on into adulthood where they won’t take risks then because you’ve not let them build any confidence in themselves and feel the fear the parents imprinted on them whenever they tried doing something new.
Some Children have parents that are dismissive of these actions and put doubt in the child. This discourages the child from taking risks or trying anything new because they don’t have any faith that they’ll succeed. Once again, they don’t develop confidence because throughout their childhood they were derailed from trying new things from the start. The fear of the new is due to all the self doubt.
Some examples of this are when children are discouraged from trying new foods and are met with parents saying “Oh you wouldn’t like that.” Or a little boy wanting to try karate and counted with, “Oh no that’s a terrible idea, you’ll get hurt.” A young girl could want to try ballet and her parents tell her “You don’t have the skill or coordination for that.” Another example could be a child wanting to join a band, or just to learn an instrument and the parents tell them, “Why? You don’t have a single musical bone in your body.”
Many children are shamed for trying new things. This is oftentimes tied back to the helicopter parents who have knee jerk reactions. A young toddler climbing up on the couch, or a young child trying out a friend's skateboard causes the parents to react in fear and admonish the child. This pattern throughout the child’s life reinforces shame in trying new things so that in adulthood, they feel shame for when they want to try something new and thus have fear of the "new".
Over time these children don’t develop the confidence that other children with supportive parents had. They worry about all the things that can go wrong and stop there, or they tend to over analyze and plan everything and get stuck in analysis paralysis.
Adults who jump at the opportunity to try new things don't have this this fear of the new because more often than not they had parents who encouraged such behaviors, or even gently nudged them to do so. They wanted their kids to try new foods, to try different sports or hobbies to encourage growth and development. Even encouraged them to keep trying new things when the child failed so they wouldn’t let failure prevent them from moving forward in life.
So what do adults who didn’t have supportive parents do to break free from this "fear of the new"? Well there are two major things that can help with this.
The first thing is these people need to do the inner parts work and reparenting needed to heal these wounds and conditioning. Looking into your childhood to see how your parents or caretakers discouraged you from trying new things to understand what your resistance is. Once you can heal that resistance the second step will become much easier, although you should still be doing it along with this step.
The second is to start taking action to start and try new things. Will you always succeed? No. Will you always fall? Again, no. But you’ll never know until you start. Like most things you can start small like signing up to start yoga or martial arts. Go from there. Don’t be afraid and take initiative to ask that girl out. Start a small side hustle that earns you a few extra bucks. Just get started and do it!
Starting small will be less scary to you overall and if things don’t work out or you don’t like it then you’re not going to be devastated. Little steps outside your comfort zone like this will build up your confidence to increase the frequency in which you try new things. More often than not, the fear you feel is going to go away once you get into whatever it is you’re trying out.
Hopefully this article has helped you to understand why you might feel resistant to trying new things, or possibly why someone you know might be. It’s another example of why awareness of yourself and your past can lead you to growth and expansion. Go inward and learn about yourself so you too can be of Fear of the New.
Thank you again for reading, and I hope you have an enlightening day.
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