When we master our thoughts and emotions, by deepening our self-knowledge and understanding through emotional process work, we become able to calmly navigate the external storms, interactions, and experiences that would have ordinarily triggered us into our survival response. Whereas we used to react, struggle, and fight for our lives, we are now able to respond to each situation with a powerful, quiet confidence. This confidence doesn’t come through bypassing our fear, burying our fear, or by dominating our external environment to conform to our will, since our fear is merely the effect of our lack of knowing who we are in our totality. Rather, our confidence comes through neutralizing our fear with self-knowledge and understanding, which integrates our externalized and fragmented shadows back into a unified Self within.
