Anatomy of a Posting

After publishing my post yesterday about my great triumph over fear and self-doubt...I sort of felt like a fraud. Not in the sense that I wrote anything untrue, but I felt I did not give enough credence to the very real self-esteem blow and discomfort my fear-induced inner critic caused me for several days. I also failed to mention that I had no real clue about my own effective recovery process while it was happening. I know I wrote about how my fears did start to take hold and I began to question what was really going on, then I began to challenge the fear by visualizing my own success and keeping my eyes on the prize, as it were...yadda yadda. We all love happy endings, right?

Well, what's really funny is that when I sat down to write that post, I wasn't fully aware even of what had transpired between my fear and me. I knew I felt better...yes, that part was salient for me. Yet when the fingers first hit the keyboard, I assumed I was about to write about how this fear came up for me when I started to dip more of myself into the juice of life. Simple as that. No part of me was really aware of the how and why I actually felt better, more confident, less fearful. Until I started writing about it. Literally, the very construction of that post led me to do the self analysis to see how I'd gone about shutting up the fear monger that lurks.

Innnnnnnnteresting, right? Perhaps not. As an adult, I've always found journaling, any type of writing really, to be instrumental for my thinking processes. To honor my fear abolishing epiphany's true origins, I didn't want that last post to come off like I was this enlightened person who just totally knew how to conquer fear and by golly, I'd set out to do it -- and succeeded! That is absolutely not how it happened. I know now that me responding to my own fears by staying focused on my dreams is what allowed those very fears to shut up and go back to time out where they belong. However, at the time when that was happening, I was not consciously aware of any of this. Through the process of writing that post I allowed myself to understand my own recovery steps and how it happened. Or so I think!

I seem to not have a very full picture of self-awareness until I write. This is perhaps why I crave to write the way I do. Can I get this type of self realization without writing? Should I? Does anyone else experience this?