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Dread is the sense of apprehension or fear.
Dread, we all face it from time to time. It manifests as uneasiness in our gut. Also felt as a quickening in our heart or a clenching of our throat, dread is your inner voice offering you a message. Call it an impulse, yearning or a beckoning, the truth is we don’t like to listen to dread. We speed right past the tightening and tension in order to not face the truth these messages bear. In fact, we’re more likely to drown apprehension by staying busy or pushing fear so far down in our gut that it remains out of sight (or so we think.)
The bottom line is we submerge dread and it’s subtle signals arising from our head, heart and gut all of the time. Signals that offer guidance, direction and insight into what we truly desire and what’s working or not in our lives. Such messages disguised as sensations emerge to poke and prod at our consciousness trying to wake us up out of our slumber.
- What is beckoning you to wake up and listen?
- What is stirring in your heart?
- What are you being called to do or say that you keep putting off?
- Why are you making yourself so busy?
- What are you avoiding?
Clearly feeling dread is auspicious. For the most part, it’s a good sign that you’re about to access really helpful information — from the depths of your being — from the vast emptiness of our most intelligent self.
Such apprehension about how you’re living may make you agitated or whiney. Dread may manifest as anxiety or depression. And it make feel like emptiness — in your heart, your gut, you name it.
I call dread the plea of your soul to wake up and listen.
In this episode I tell you about my dread and how I’ve learned to lean into and listen to subtle messages instead of avoiding them.
Like an expecting mother that feels her fetus stirring, or quickening at around 18 weeks, we are continuously sensing an inner stirring of our own. Some call it our innermost intelligence speaking to us. When uncomfortable these messages spark dread that sense of apprehension and fear.
But what is apparent is that these messages emerge when we let down our guards so to speak which is why dread often appears in the early hours of dawn.
In addition, the quickening of your inner voice breaks through your busy mind in the following ways:
- Silence
- Stillness
- Nature
- Music
What does dread feel like?
Sometimes consistent morning dread could indicate that you are depressed. For more, take a look at this research-based article: Morning Depression: What It Is and How to Treat It.
Oftentimes dread is an indication that we are simply avoiding the truth. In this case dread might manifest as the following:
- Feeling uncomfortable looking others in the eye
- Avoiding silence
- Habitual judging of others
- Inability to be still
- Nervousness
- Agitationor frustration
- Exhaustion
In conclusion, dread leaves clues. Listen to what’s prodding and poking your gut. Give these messages airtime. Most of all, don’t avoid them or try to drown them out. Push them away too often and the stirrings manifest making us feel like crap. Ignore the direction of your inner voice and you may find yourself a few decades from now living in the same conundrum you’re living in today.
The great news is that still a fire inside roars.
You don’t need to live at the mercy of dread every morning. Instead, when you wake up, try to immediately focus on one thing situation or person that you’re grateful for. Doing so will activate your parasympathetic response and increase your levels of serotonin and oxytocin (your love hormones).
Without a doubt there’s a flame of passion and creativity that continues to flicker in every one of us. Clearly it doesn’t go out until we literally take our last breath. Even amongst the deepest guttural dread lies your flame of creativity and aliveness.
With that being said, there’s something moving through us all day long beckoning us to wake up and show up for life — right now. You may notice it in the middle of the night when you wake up with a mind that spinning out of control. Also you may hear it as a quiet whisper in you ear prodding you to get going on your hearts desire.
Calling it dread is fine but then move on. What’s most important is to not avoid it’s messages.
Are you listening?
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