I write today to elaborate on my insights and new awareness of last night. The fear in which I cloaked myself all most from the start as landed immigrant was the fear of not succeeding as an immigrant and then having to go back to my family and old country. Such a chain of events I was bound and determined to avoid at all cost. In that manner fear became my scourge urging me on from one accomplishment to the next without let up. Neither would I allow myself a break nor a celebration of an accomplished goal, with the result that after some time, I had forgotten how to validate myself.

This fear was associated with my father in a symbolic way and prevented me from recalling encouragements and praise by him from my time in the family. It is only during the last year or so now, that I have started to recall such instances of praise.

This internalised structure of fear came to a full experience for me following a dream in 2000 when I was living at the Ijssel Singel 106-? in Rheden, NL. I had taken to sleeping in every room and this time I had spent several nights in the attic for my night’s rest. Around the third night I awake from the following dream overwhelmed by fear. I am holding myself still so as to appear un-alive to the fear that descends and hovers as if looking for a place to possess. I hold totally still, do not think except to hold still and not stir, to let the fear wash over me, but not letting it in either. Playing un-alive like this the fear subsides after I sensed the cold sweat of fear, yet I governed myself so as not to physically shiver. I would call this an archetypal fear experience.

The dream that preceded this fear experience was as follows. I am fleeing in fear of something that pursues me. I am fleeing down a dark corridor and as I come to a side double door exit I dash out and close the double doors securely and quickly behind me. In the process of exiting I glance over my left shoulder and see the image of my Dad’s body in the funeral home, with his mouth half open in rigour mortis. That was how I saw his body as I viewed it in 1997 when he passed on. After this glance I quickly and firmly close the double doors. I have escaped, but then this reported fear comes over me like a heavy dark and powerful rain storm until it too subside and goes of yonder, leaving me frightened, relieved and in total puzzlement as to the significance of such a devastating experience.

That self worth feeling this time based on my own life accomplishments and not based on taught class values that I acquired during my upbringing.

Thinking about this now, I can see that this dream showed me what I had done to myself, making the father authority my fear scourge for all those years. That was now behind me as I lay in bed in that attic in a rented house in Rheden in my first year of retirement with a pension to support me. No more need of this fear, which by now had to go as it had become an obstacle to further development.

That dream was in the spring of 2000 and now I am in the last days of summer in 2016, getting in touch again with feelings of self worth and self respect for my own person. That self worth feeling this time based on my own life accomplishments and not based on taught class values that I acquired during my upbringing. Those cultural based values were only partly transferable to the new world of Canada. I experienced this as having to build things from the ground up in this country of my choice. In doing so I made this radical move of denying myself any sense of value that was not based on an accomplishment in this new country, with fear of failure in pursuit of myself urging me on from one task to the next.
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