CC Ep #7

Welcome & Announcements

[00:00:44] Samantha Young: Hello friends, welcome to episode 7. I'm so excited to have you here and I really can't wait to share with you the conversation that I had today with my friend Brittany. She is a [00:01:00] channeler, a fear alchemist, a cancer survivor, just an inspiration to me really. We had a really wonderful conversation about fear alchemy and what that means, what fear really is, how capitalism weaponizes fear against us, the overlap and interconnections between grief and fear and shame and how we can actually work with the emotion of fear in a really healthy and generative way that doesn't involve avoidance and doesn't involve completely given into and being consumed by fear. I don't want to take away from Brittany's wisdom that she's going to share with you. We'll get to that in just a minute.

[00:01:44] But, I wanted to check in, see how it's going. There's obviously a lot to fear right now. There's a lot of very scary things happening. And at the same time, there's a lot of very scary things happening at all times, [00:02:00] so there's never really an irrelevant time to explore fear alchemy and to strengthen your relationship to fear. There's never really a time where it's not relevant, but especially now, because understanding where your fear comes from, being in relationship with it... the more people that do that, the more grounded we can be as a collective, and that's the type of leadership that we need.

[00:02:27] The concept of leadership has really just been circling around lately, and I touched on it a bit back in the episode where I talked with Siobhan back in December. It's come up in a lot of conversations in the months since then.

[00:02:46] There's a lot of fieriness happening in the astrology of the moment that's, I think, reflecting this. It's revealing a gaping hole in our need for [00:03:00] leaders. And this is a tricky thing to talk about sometimes in the context of late-stage capitalism because a lot of us are raised to be leaders. Especially in the United States, that whole exceptionalism thing that's drilled into us pretty much from the womb, we're all raised to be leaders. We're not raised to think of being a follower as a first choice or a best choice, but that's a really individualistic way to raise our children, right?

[00:03:35] If everyone's a leader, nobody wants to be a follower, then the people who eventually do become followers, they're gonna feel what? Shame and resentment about it. And it can take a lifetime to undo those things, those feelings, and it can really keep us trapped in one place. I'm not talking about a need for leadership in terms of, "we need [00:04:00] one or two or three special people to step up and rally us all and guide us toward the revolution."

[00:04:08] It's more about a need for leadership itself, the essence of leadership. It's more about a need for people to learn how to lead themselves first before even thinking about leading other people. We need to be led by ourselves internally so that we can band together with other people who are capable of leading themselves. It's not about rallying around a single leader who's going to make decisions because we deem them the most fit or the most intelligent, the most wise, the most capable. It's about locating those characteristics within ourselves, strengthening those characteristics within ourselves, learning how to lead yourself first.

[00:04:52] And I just feel this need, I feel that hole, that gap in [00:05:00] self-leadership that's needed right now. So this conversation with Brittany, I think, is really going to fall right into line with these things that I've been talking about here. Because a good leader, whether they are leading themselves or other people, has to have a good relationship with their fear.

[00:05:17] That doesn't mean they don't feel fear. That doesn't mean that they don't get scared, but they have a good relationship to fear and a way to work with it, to communicate with it and transmute it, if need be. Really excited to get into that.

[00:05:33] Also, I am speaking at the Business Magic Virtual Summit next week. It's Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and I will be speaking on Tuesday morning, Pacific Time. I'm very excited to be giving this talk. It's a brand new talk. It's about the Shame Alchemy side of my work and how business owners specifically can use Shame Alchemy [00:06:00] to work through their feelings about being an anti-capitalist and also owning a business and addressing the contradictions that arise with that.

[00:06:11] I'm going to give you guys a framework that I've been building up for a while for addressing and transmuting this very specific type of shame. The event is totally free to join. If you can't attend live and you sign up anyway, you'll get a replay sent to you. So I highly recommend doing that. There's a ton of other great speakers on the panel, so I will be in attendance. I hope to see you there.

[00:06:33] I'm also really excited to talk to you about eclipse season. So let's get into that.

Astro Mission Log

[00:06:46] Samantha Young: So we are here, we are officially in eclipse season. I think everybody's nursing their eclipse hangovers today, because the lunar eclipse in Virgo was just last night, and [00:07:00] I'm feeling a bit of that, a bit of that hangover. But honestly, the South Node and the North Node were rocking my shit for the last couple years, being in my first and seventh house, because I am a Libra rising. It was a bit of a quiet eclipse for me, but we'll see how it goes.

[00:07:18] Eclipse season is here the "portal" has been opened, so to speak, and we're officially in between eclipses, and I wrote about this a bit. If you aren't already subscribed to my newsletter, you'll be able to do that in the show notes, but I wrote about this a bit on my newsletter last week: eclipse season is a rupture point that happens twice a year. It is cosmically chaotic, and it usually reflects chaotic happenings down here on Earth, surprising things happening down here on Earth.

[00:07:50] There's a power in micro-disruptions. The issue that capitalism has, or I should say the issue that I have with capitalism, [00:08:00] is that critiques of capitalism, movements of resistance against capitalism, if they become too popular, they become too trendy, they become profitable. And once they become profitable, they're cut off at the knees. They lose their teeth. They lose their effectiveness. And this is a tool of capitalism.

[00:08:20] This is how capitalism is able to self-perpetuate by taking critiques of itself and turning them into a product. That's what "commodify" means. "Commodify" means to take something that was not previously bought and sold, that did not previously have a monetary value assigned to it, and assigning one, and putting it into the market as something that can now be bought and sold.

[00:08:43] So capitalism commodifies resistance. It commodifies its own critiques. Film and television is always a really good example, a really easy place to look for these things because it's the spectacle and [00:09:00] it's Jupiter constantly telling us how to perceive society and what's right and what's wrong. Plato's cave, blah, blah, blah, blah, shadows and whatnot. But the point is, film and TV are a really good way to locate and notice where critiques of capitalism become commodified, or reduced to a joke, or a trope, or something like that, right? It's really easy to notice these things once you start looking for them.

[00:09:28] What I propose is micro-disruptions: things that aren't necessarily popular or trendy or flashy or loud. It's not going to get a lot of attention and that's what you want, but it still causes disruption. There's many different ways you can do this. I've listed some examples in the article that I wrote, but truly, there's thousands of ways that you can micro-disrupt systems of oppression, and it doesn't always have to be you know breaking the rules.

[00:09:59] If you're somebody who's [00:10:00] really conscious of not getting in trouble with the law, because there's lots of valid reasons for that-- I personally can't do things that would get me in trouble with the law or place me at risk of being arrested because I have a child that I like to come home to every night, so we're not here to police the way that people do their micro-disruptions, but it's important to find your micro-disruptions, find what's accessible to you, find the very small, not profitable, not trendy, not flashy ways to throw a wrench in the system and do that. This requires some creative thinking, because solving problems always does. Problem solving is a creative process.

[00:10:46] While we're here in eclipse season, while things are chaotic, while we have our double retrogrades happening in Aries-- Mercury has now officially stationed retrograde in Aries, joining Venus, who's been there for a little bit. There's a lot of chaos [00:11:00] down here on Earth, and the stars are reflecting that.

[00:11:03] Your place in that chaos is to try to wield it for the greater good. If the chaos is here, and it's here to stay, and we can't really expect it to resolve itself anytime soon, then your job is to throw a wrench in the system whenever, wherever, however you can. And like I said, again, this doesn't have to be breaking the law, it doesn't have to be breaking the rules, it can be really small things.

[00:11:30] Going back to using cash when and where you can is a really good example of economic resistance, since it resists surveillance, because cash purchases are obviously harder to track than electronic purchases, and it keeps money out of the hands of these credit card payment processors who are constantly leeching money from businesses and from customers like us.

[00:11:54] That's just one example, but this is what I mean. Disruption can be something that is done [00:12:00] on a micro level, does not have to be putting yourself at risk of encountering the law, and it can be done over and over again. It's just up to you to figure out what that is, to try, to be ready to fail, to admit that you don't know things or that there's more that you need to learn before you can be effective at something.

[00:12:21] The eclipse that we just had was the first on the Virgo-Pisces axis. We had the full moon in Virgo, and Virgo is very much about tending to what can be tended to in order to refine and perfect-- and not just refine and perfect the product, but to thus, in the process, become refined a bit yourself.

[00:12:47] So you will become refined in this process. You will start to figure out what disruptions work for you, which ones feel good for you, and which ones are the most effective. But you have to [00:13:00] try. You have to be willing to try imperfectly. Virgo gets a rap as being a sign that's not about imperfection. I think that's wrong, because the only way that you can achieve perfection is by failing over and over again, many times, by going through imperfection repeatedly.

[00:13:18] With all that being said, let's get into this conversation with Brittany. I can't wait to share this with you. I think it's gonna tie together a lot of things for a lot of you, when it comes to fear and what's actually available and accessible for you right now within your body to start resisting capitalism.

[00:13:36] Let's do it!

Intro to Brittany

[00:13:38] Samantha Young: When you first told me about fear alchemy, I was like, that phrase sounds so compelling to me. And I felt like I immediately understood it, but I also immediately wanted to know more.

[00:13:50] Brittany Wittig: Sure.

[00:13:52] Samantha Young: Immediately. I think you and I talked briefly about this, too. I've referred to some of the work I do as shame alchemy, which feels similar, [00:14:00] but fear is so much, I don't know, I guess scarier. Bigger and scarier. So I'm excited to hear about your process, how you arrived at alchemy, if you maybe at some point want to share. We can just let the conversation flow, but I was thinking at some point if you wanted to share a bit about what happens in a session with you, if that is something that comes up for us.

[00:14:25] Brittany Wittig: Cool. And just so you know, I am primarily doing this work in workshops now rather than one-to-one sessions. Not to say that I'm completely opposed to sessions, but I've found it to be more potent in workshop form because really truly with this work, I'm guiding, but the person is really working with themselves.

[00:14:46] So not to say I won't offer one-to-one sessions ever with this again, but I do find that in a one-to-one session, there's not as much time for education. And I find that there's education that needs to happen [00:15:00] before we can get into the work of it. So that's why I've shifted the way that I do this work primarily into workshop form.

[00:15:08] Samantha Young: Nice. I love that. That makes a lot of sense, actually.

Defining Fear Alchemy

[00:15:10] Samantha Young: So how do you define fear alchemy? How does it work? How did you arrive on this for yourself? I'm very curious about it.

[00:15:21] Brittany Wittig: To start, the way that I would describe it is that fear alchemy is transforming fear into potent personal power. But the way we get there is recognizing that there is an inherent paradox in fear.

[00:15:43] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[00:15:44] Brittany Wittig: So on the one hand, fear is highly protective. It's a sacred messenger. it is telling us when we're in danger. It's telling us when something isn't right for us. And then, on the other hand, [00:16:00] fear can hold us firmly in place when forward motion is necessary and when forward motion will benefit us.

[00:16:08] So both of these opposite polarities are true at the same time, and the key, I think, the real key to fear alchemy, is holding both of those opposite ends of this polarized spectrum as true at the same time. So it's really non-duality work at its core.

[00:16:31] Samantha Young: That makes sense.

[00:16:32] Brittany Wittig: And let's see, so how did I get into this work? It's very much soul led for me. I have experienced living through my greatest fear three times in my life. The first time was when my mother was diagnosed with cancer and passed away from that cancer back in 2012, which was absolutely my greatest fear. My mother was my closest [00:17:00] friend, my confidant, the closest human in my life.

[00:17:03] In that experience, though, what was so eye-opening to me was that living through my greatest fear was horrible and awful, and I'm not going to sugar coat it was awful; and, on the other side of it, my life expanded. I reprioritized things. It changed me in a profoundly positive way, and so that got me thinking, What is up with this? Maybe fear isn't what I thought. And I got obsessed with fear.

[00:17:31] And then nine years later, from my mother's death day, almost to the day, I was diagnosed with cancer. Which was, as you can imagine, my greatest fear again, totally terrifying. And it was through that experience of my own cancer journey, my journey through treatment and all of the terror associated with that. It was through that journey that I really solidified this fear alchemy [00:18:00] practice, and it was after that I began sharing this publicly.

[00:18:03] Samantha Young: Yeah. Wow. It's interesting that you bring up living through your greatest fear, because I think about this a lot. I don't even remember what my fears were before I was a mother. Honestly I don't remember. I don't remember what I was afraid of, because now all of my fears have to do with my child, or my husband.

[00:18:23] I've done things for myself. I was fascinated when you talked about fear alchemy, because I feel like as a deeply introverted, anxious child-- I wasn't introverted. I was deeply in my own world. But I would do these, whenever I had anxieties, I would do the like worst case scenario thing in my head to try to work it out of my system, almost.

[00:18:43] Brittany Wittig: Sure. Yes.

[00:18:47] Samantha Young: My relationship to fear has changed as a mother because I go through scenarios in my head where I'm like, the way that it affects me is one thing, but I think about all the ways that things that affect my child-- or like my worst fear, obviously [00:19:00] losing my child-- but it's changed a lot of priorities. Even just having that fear, without even going through it, just having it be there and exist shifts so much of my priorities. And I've thought a lot about this because you hear this phrase like, "Don't live in fear." Like when people say that, don't live in fear, I'm like, but fear does guide us, in a way. And like you said,: it can keep us in place, but it can also guide our priorities.

[00:19:24] Brittany Wittig: 100%. And what I love that you're bringing up there is an example of what people tend to do with fear. Not you, but that phrase, "don't live in fear."

[00:19:36] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[00:19:36] Brittany Wittig: People have a tendency to attach very strongly to one of the polarities of fear. So you meet people that are like, "Don't live in fear. Fear isn't real. Fear is the enemy," and that's one polarity of fear. And then you meet people who attach to the opposite end, that fear is protective. Fear is supportive. And [00:20:00] what's interesting is anytime that anyone attaches strongly to either one of those polarities, fear is actually controlling their behavior.

[00:20:08] Samantha Young: Right.

[00:20:09] Brittany Wittig: If they're saying don't live in fear, then they're denying it and denying it and they're behaving ways to avoid it.

[00:20:14] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[00:20:15] Brittany Wittig: So it's so fascinating to me. The way that this works, it's just so interesting. Yes, 100 percent, fear is sacred. That fear that you're expressing, that is so natural and so normal and healthy. That fear for the safety of your family and your children, that is helping inform your actions in a powerful way, in a beautiful way, right?

[00:20:41] Samantha Young: Yeah, I think there's something... I don't know, especially as the climate and the political climate in the world gets more and more insane by the day, I see I've been noticing in the last few weeks a lot more of what you're talking about: the identification with either side of that polarity.

[00:20:58] Brittany Wittig: Yes.

[00:20:59] Samantha Young: Many [00:21:00] people saying "No, you should be scared. You should be afraid because this is really bad," and then the other side, "You can't be scared. You can't be afraid." I always just find myself sitting in the middle being like, what if I can be scared, and that can just be part of my value system, almost? Not that I value the fear itself, but like, can't this just be something that informs, just like any other feeling?

[00:21:21] Brittany Wittig: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And what you're touching on there, I love. That's the middle way, right? That is the middle way. Just like with any polarized anything, finding that middle way through is key.

[00:21:36] And I would actually argue that it can be really beautiful to value the fear, valuing that message and what it's bringing to you and what it's showing you. It's telling you, "Something is not right here for me. Something's not okay here."

[00:21:51] Now, obviously there's the real obvious, "I'm being chased by a bear in the woods," but most fear in our modern world is a little more [00:22:00] existential than that. It's giving you a message. It's saying to all of us right now, the reason this is coming up so much is it's telling you: something is not okay here. Something is not right here. And I always like to make the point something is not right for me, here, when I have that sensation.

Fear As A Tool of Capitalism

[00:22:18] Samantha Young: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. And I was thinking a lot about this when I was making the notes for this, because I talk a lot about fear being a tool of capitalism. Really what it is, it's a tool of control.

[00:22:30] Brittany Wittig: Yes. Yes. Yes.

[00:22:32] Samantha Young: But I think about it as a tool of capitalism, because the fear there is, I think simultaneously a bit abstract and also like a bear chasing you in the woods. Like, we're afraid of abstract things. For some people, yeah, it is stuff like fear of failure or fear of not meeting certain prescribed milestones, but then there's the very real fear. Like, capitalism shows you all the time that if you don't produce in this way, the end result is [00:23:00] death. So it is that serious, but I feel because it's removed-- like several steps removed-- sometimes I worry if that's where we get lost, and that's maybe that's where the capitalist control gets in. Do you have thoughts about this?

[00:23:13] Brittany Wittig: Yes. Oh my gosh, absolutely. 100 percent, fear is a mechanism of control, can be used in that way. Absolutely. And I absolutely can see in our society many ways that's happening. One big way that I see this regularly, and some of this may have to do with where I live, but I think it's happening all over the country.

[00:23:33] I live in the United States. I think one of the big reasons why the issue of the growing homeless population has not been addressed, at least part of that has to do with the fear that it instills in everyone. When we go out into the world and we see that there are these humans who are being abused by the system, who are homeless, and who are being rejected by society, [00:24:00] who are not having their needs met, it's a constant fear trigger, for everyone.

[00:24:07] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[00:24:07] Brittany Wittig: That's just one example, but there are so many examples of us being bombarded with scary imagery, scary messages. And then what I also find interesting is that we are conditioned to ignore and avoid fear. So that's the other thing is we are conditioned to think of fear as a problem. We're conditioned-- emotion in general, right?

[00:24:31] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[00:24:32] Brittany Wittig: At any negative emotion, right? We're conditioned not to feel our fear when it comes up. We're conditioned to not admit to the fact that we're afraid. And that combination of 'let's show you as many scary things as possible' and then 'let's teach you to completely avoid feeling any fear and admitting that you feel fear,' that puts us in this tense, pressure [00:25:00] cooker state of fear where we are constantly looking for distraction from that fear. And that's one way that fear begins controlling our behavior.

[00:25:11] Samantha Young: Yeah, just the need to distract from it. Offering up distractions from it.

[00:25:16] Brittany Wittig: Absolutely. And then you get into, "Look, spend your money on this vast array of distractions that we can offer you," right? And if you can't afford those distractions, then there's another thing to be afraid of, because then you're not enough, and there's a social rejection associated with that and it's so insidious.

[00:25:40] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[00:25:41] Brittany Wittig: Yeah, you can go real far down that rabbit hole.

[00:25:44] Samantha Young: Yeah, no, I see it. This comes down to something I've been thinking and also talking about a lot lately, which is just the idea of... I feel like one of the main goals of capitalism is to separate you from yourself so that there's always a solution that's the main [00:26:00] solution.

[00:26:00] The classic-- I don't like to shit on marketing as a whole, because I don't think it's like an evil thing-- but like the classic marketing tactic of like, point out a problem and then offer a solution. That's what it makes me think of, where it's like...

[00:26:11] Brittany Wittig: Yes.

[00:26:12] Samantha Young: Capitalism creates the problems and then sells you the solution. And I feel like this is a huge thing with the separation from self, like separation from feelings, vulnerable feelings, negative feelings, and grief, especially. We have no cultural norms around grieving, besides one day at a funeral.

[00:26:28] You're constantly feeling separated from yourself or there's something-- that fear, that thing that you always need to be distracted from. Then it's really convenient to just sell us back a solution or sell you back a way that you could feel connected to yourself again.

[00:26:40] An example I used in my workshop recently, I was talking about capitalism through the houses, and I was talking about the ninth house and astrology and how travel, specifically in a colonialist sense, is sold to a certain set of people as a means of self-discovery.

[00:26:55] Brittany Wittig: Yes.

[00:26:56] Samantha Young: Go travel the world, go do mushrooms in the jungle and [00:27:00] find yourself.

[00:27:01] Brittany Wittig: Yep.

[00:27:02] Samantha Young: Because why do you have to leave to go find yourself? You're not going to find yourself here. That's not what we do here. You're separated from yourself.

[00:27:08] Brittany Wittig: Oh, that's a really good example. It's so true. Very good example.

Acknowledging Fear & Grief

[00:27:13] Brittany Wittig: And the other thing that this sort of brings me around to is: one of the great keys to fear alchemy is first, you acknowledge that you are afraid. You just acknowledge it. Just admit it to yourself: "I'm scared right now. I'm feeling fear."

[00:27:30] That alone is revolutionary for a lot of people, just that step, and then the next step is allow yourself to feel that fear. And key to this is bringing yourself into a private, safe space where you can really feel-- and by really feel your fear, let it come out. Cry, scream, [00:28:00] punch, whatever, vigorous exercise-- going for a run can do this-- but really letting yourself feel that fear. That is the next key, and that is an act of rebellion in itself to allow yourself to feel your fear.

[00:28:21] To really feel that fear, it is so powerful to give that to yourself. It's huge. It's huge. The vast majority of people are spending an enormous amount of time and energy avoiding that right there. Just avoiding the full feeling of fear. It's huge.

[00:28:45] Samantha Young: Huge. And I don't know, I've been noticing a lot more people turning towards stuff like grief work or, fear in general, leaning more into these quote-unquote "negative emotions," because we're not taught how to process them. I'm talking in terms of [00:29:00] general, white American, blanched culture. There's no real systems. There's no real expectations around how to process these things. Even when you were talking about it, I thought about sitting with my worst fear and I'm like, no, I don't want to do that.

[00:29:14] Brittany Wittig: Totally.

[00:29:15] Samantha Young: I was like, "no, thank you."

[00:29:17] Brittany Wittig: Totally. And it's interesting as you bring up grief and fear are deeply intertwined. For example, just an example of this right now, the insanity and instability in the world, and especially in the United States is so potent that I have been setting aside time every single day to allow myself to fully feel my fear of what's coming up. And what's really interesting is that I find that as I allow myself to really feel it there, I'm feeling the fear, and then there is this element of grief that comes in. There's a grief that [00:30:00] I have to feel this fear. There's a grief that I am in a world and a situation right now that is this scary.

[00:30:10] It's almost as I feel into the fear, I'm also grieving. And it's so potent to be with those emotions right now. I'm sure especially everyone that lives in the United States is experiencing some fear around reality right now. And just setting aside... boy, 15, 20 minutes a day to really, truly feel and release what's coming up is so powerful. And then the beauty of this is, you release, you cry, you scream, whatever it is, however you want to do that. Sometimes I punch pillows-- like, hard. Like, my poor pillows.

[00:30:55] But as you do that for a little while-- sometimes I give myself longer, [00:31:00] sometimes it's half an hour, 45 minutes, an hour, it just depends on where I'm at-- but when I reach a natural completion of that release, on the other side of it, there is this neutrality, this beautiful neutrality.

[00:31:17] This is not a one and done thing, not like that neutrality is going to last forever, but you do get a short period of peace, of really powerful neutrality, and it is in that place that you can check in with yourself about decisions that need to be made. It is from that place that you can think about your next action. It's from that place that you can actually open up to your intuition, your higher self, and receive supportive information that you cannot, you can't receive that when your fear when the volume of your fear is really high.

What's a "Fear-Based Decision"?

[00:31:57] Brittany Wittig: I always say when the volume of your fear is really high, [00:32:00] you can't hear the whisper of your intuition or your world.

[00:32:04] Samantha Young: That makes sense. I was thinking, I'm glad you brought up that especially when it comes to decision making. Cause I've been thinking about this whole idea of making decisions out of fear, or fear-based decisions. And for a while I've not really understood. I'm like, aren't all decisions somewhat made out of fear to a certain sense, because you have to anticipate the worst possible thing? But I like what you're saying.

[00:32:27] I feel like what you're saying is there is a difference between like we were talking about before, avoiding fear in the first place, but then making decisions once you've moved through it or acknowledged it and that the information that comes through with the neutrality.

[00:32:41] What are your thoughts on that? Like the fear-based decisions? Because I feel like this falls in line with a lot with what people say-- don't live in fear, don't make decisions out of fear-- but do you think that in itself is a bad thing? And then also, do you feel like neutrality is an important part that people need to access?

[00:32:57] Brittany Wittig: I think, the idea of fear-based [00:33:00] decisions... Do they exist? Sure. I think sometimes I think what people are talking about when they refer to that is reactivity to fear. I'll give you a great example of this.

[00:33:12] So you're going through your mail and you get your electric bill and it's four times what it normally is, and you don't have that money. Okay. So in that moment, you're going to have a fear response. You're going to get scared because this is survival stuff. That's real life. So in that moment, you're going to be scared. You're going to feel fear.

[00:33:30] So you have options in that moment. A lot of times, what people will do is they will immediately go into reactivity, and this is what I would think of as fear-based decisions. So immediately, I'm scared. I'm feeling a fear response. I need to respond to it because somewhere in us, we're wired. And it makes sense, if you think of running from a bear in the woods. We're wired to kick into action when we feel a fear response to try and stop the threat, right?[00:34:00]

[00:34:00] Yes, there's an urgency. And so a lot of times what people will do is, "Okay, I need to start looking for a job right now, a second job, or I need to call my boss and ask for more hours," and immediately they jump into action. What I would recommend in that situation instead is: acknowledge you're scared. Put the bill down. Acknowledge that you're afraid, for good reason. Acknowledge the fear, and if you can, in that moment-- or when you can, if not right then-- but don't choose to take an action right away. Instead, allow yourself some time and space to feel that fear.

[00:34:36] Let that fear move through your system. Let your nervous system come back to a calm, neutral place. And the easiest way to do that is to fully feel that fear when you can let yourself sit with it. Cry. That's worth crying about. There's a bill I can't pay. It's okay to cry about that. That's scary. That's [00:35:00] scary. And it's painful. And it's unfair.

[00:35:02] Samantha Young: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:35:04] Brittany Wittig: Then, as you have allowed yourself to feel that, on the other side of it, you're going to be in that calm, peaceful, neutral place, and then ask yourself, "Okay, what should I do about this?" And the truth is, you may do the exact same thing that you would have done.

[00:35:24] You might go look for a second job. You might call your boss and ask for more hours. The energy from which you take the action is going to change it, though. Imagine if you call your boss up in a panic, "I need, I just, I need more hours, blah, blah, blah, blah," right? They're going to respond differently to that than if you call them up and say, "Hey, this is my situation. I feel like I have the time and space to give more hours. Do you have more to offer?" There's a different energy there. You're likely to have a better outcome when you're coming from that neutral place.

[00:35:55] Samantha Young: Yeah. I love that. I feel like so much of psychology is that too, where I hear [00:36:00] people say the same action can look the same on the outside, but it could be coming from a different place.

[00:36:07] Brittany Wittig: Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:36:09] Samantha Young: I know you were talking about before, the two sides of the polarity, either way being like, they still result in being controlled by fear. No matter if you avoid fear or if you lean right into it, it's still a controlling aspect, in a way. What do you think that is? I know you've given this example of practice. What do you think is the way to maintain that neutral middle like, on a regular basis?

[00:36:36] Brittany Wittig: So the other piece of this that I think comes into play here-- I've gone through the very first steps, and they're really the first steps anyone can employ right away after listening.

[00:36:46] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[00:36:46] Brittany Wittig: But the next piece of this work that I think is really important and also really beautiful is actually beginning to communicate with your fear.

Communicating With Your Fear

[00:36:57] Brittany Wittig: So beginning to see your [00:37:00] fear as-- and we've talked about this-- a sacred messenger, and taking that to the next level. Your fear is part of you. It is a part of you. It is a sacred part of the whole. You can actually communicate with it as a sacred part of you that is trying to help you.

[00:37:21] And so there are different ways to do this. The way that I usually guide people through this-- I do a guided visualization when I teach these workshops-- but you can do it for yourself. You can literally close your eyes, and I do recommend doing this once you're in the neutral space.

[00:37:36] So you've felt your fear, and now you're in that calm, peaceful place. You can close your eyes, breathe, and actually ask. You can out loud or in your mind, "I would love to speak with this fear." This specific fear, because it's going to be different for every fear in your life. But ask to speak with this fear. And literally ask it. Ask this part [00:38:00] of you, "Why are you here? What are you trying to protect me from and what do you need from me?"

[00:38:05] This is key. And asking without judgment or censorship, like really genuinely curiously wanting to know: what do you need from me, fear? And then honoring what it says, what your fear tells you.

[00:38:21] And all kinds of different things can come through here. In my own experience, when I was going through my cancer journey, I did this and I had my fear ask me for a whole wide variety of things, from checking in more often to taking a hot bath, to very tangible actions in my life.

[00:38:37] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[00:38:38] Brittany Wittig: But the beauty of this piece of the work is that you're forming a relationship with a part of yourself that you have previously denied.

[00:38:48] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[00:38:49] Brittany Wittig: And that relationship gets stronger and stronger the more you do this, and you begin to be less afraid of fear itself.[00:39:00]

[00:39:00] Samantha Young: Right.

[00:39:00] Brittany Wittig: When you're less afraid of fear itself, you begin to know that you can handle whatever life throws at you because you have a relationship with your fear. And so I think that this is the piece that makes this work more sustainable. You will find yourself ping ponging between the polarities less when you have this actual relationship with your fear. That make sense? I don't know, hopefully I explained that.

[00:39:31] Samantha Young: It makes perfect sense to me.

[00:39:32] Brittany Wittig: Okay, good.

[00:39:33] Samantha Young: Cause I don't know, I've done internal family systems. Like I've done parts work.

[00:39:36] Brittany Wittig: Yes.

[00:39:38] Samantha Young: Yeah, like I understand perfectly what you're saying. Making a relationship with the part of yourself that you have denied makes a lot of sense. And I think is something that I feel like collectively too, a lot of people are on this wavelength in one way or another, of just reforming that connection to [00:40:00] self, working through that disconnection that is taught to us and that we're formed by, recognizing that for what it is, and then also reconnecting to the self. So I love that.

The Future of Fear Alchemy

[00:40:13] Samantha Young: I know you said before, when you do workshops, things like that, the whole goal is stepping into personal power, right? Do you feel more these days that it's more important work? What's your kind of vibe on going into 2025 with fear alchemy?

[00:40:30] Brittany Wittig: Yes. Oh, my gosh. I honestly, I truly believe that this is some of the most important work that we could possibly do for ourselves right now, because more than ever, we are being bombarded with scary imagery, scary messaging, and scary actual happenings. It's not just messaging. It's also in our actual lives. Survival feels harder, and that's scary. That is happening. And the beauty of this is that as [00:41:00] each of us forms this sacred relationship, fear shifts from this thing that we have to avoid to an ally.

[00:41:09] Then, as we shift that within ourselves, we can then begin to shift that in our entire society. But I do think that we have to shift our own relationship with fear first before we can shift the entire society's perception of it, or the way humans are interacting with each other. I feel like this is key to liberation, because you're liberating yourself first.

[00:41:37] I also just want to point out that this work gives you a strong sense that you can handle anything. And I feel like that right there, just on its own, just having that strong sense... it's so important right now with everything that's happening in the world.

[00:41:59] Samantha Young: Yeah, [00:42:00] feeling like even if you're not in control, because you're never in fully in control, but that you can handle whatever comes your way.

[00:42:08] Brittany Wittig: Exactly.

[00:42:09] Samantha Young: This could be just an assumption of mine and maybe you will know better because you work with people on this, but I feel like more people maybe tend towards the freeze or avoid response when it comes to fear. Is that something you notice?

[00:42:25] Brittany Wittig: Oh, I think so. Definitely.

[00:42:28] Samantha Young: I definitely am like a freeze type of person, but yeah. Do you get to work with or have in your workshops more-- I'm curious about the other side of the polarity, because I've been hearing more from the over-identification with fear; like, everything means that I have to do something right now.

[00:42:44] This is where this question is coming from, because I've noticed people who have been in freeze in the past and now they're like, things are feeling so bad that now they're switching over to this over urgent need to act now, like the other side of identifying with fear, so I'm [00:43:00] curious about how you approach these different pillars, how you encounter them.

[00:43:05] Brittany Wittig: Yeah, I would say interestingly the people who tend to come to my workshops more tend to be people who are more on the end of avoiding for whatever reason. I haven't thought about why that is, but for whatever reason, people who know that they're avoiding their fear tend to be more drawn to this work.

[00:43:27] That's anecdotally in my experience. That's what I've seen. I do think that it's very common for people to ping pong between the polarities though. I think sometimes people go into reactive, like "I need to do something. My fear is telling me I need to do something," and then burn out on that.

[00:43:44] That constant reactivity becomes so painful that then they go into avoidance. I do think that people can ping pong between the two. And some of the beauty of this is you're finding your way between the two without having to ping pong so much.

[00:43:59] Also, I think [00:44:00] something that I want to be clear about is this work doesn't make fear not feel icky.

[00:44:04] Samantha Young: Right.

[00:44:05] Brittany Wittig: Fear still feels gross. Like, when I have a fear response, it does not feel good. I don't like it. I'm never gonna like it. And I'm a human, so it's always gonna be part of my life. But what this does do is, there is a part of me, when I have a fear response, when I'm scared, there's a part of me that knows that one, I'm gonna be able to handle it, that I know how to navigate it. And two, there's a part of me that knows that I am about to learn something important about myself because I'm having this experience. And that is just a little bit soothing. It just brings down the intensity a little bit to have that awareness.

[00:44:45] Samantha Young: Yeah, that makes sense ping pong back and forth, I feel that sometimes even in myself too.

[00:44:51] Brittany Wittig: Oh, me too.

[00:44:53] Samantha Young: Yeah, . Like some days I wake up and I'm like, "Okay, I have to save the world today, I can't think about anything else," [00:45:00] 'cause I read some headline or whatever, and then other days I just can only lay in bed. Just totally frozen and paralyzed. But the work, it's so important because it's what we need, right? Like we need people who are having a relationship with your fear. You don't have to be comfortable with it. You're not going to like it.

[00:45:20] I don't know, I was talking with some of my students in my Anti-Capitalist Astrology course about the type of leadership that we need in these times. I've been feeling really weird about talking about leadership, I think, because the way that I was introduced to it and learned a lot about it was through an MLM that I was in. So all of the leadership stuff that I ever learned was like, "you need to be a good leader so you can sell things."

[00:45:43] But I really did learn a lot, just about people leading them and the fact that like, true leadership is rooted in service to others and not in wanting to be served or wanting to be exceptional in any way. It's about...

[00:45:56] Brittany Wittig: Yes.

[00:45:56] Samantha Young: Leadership through service is, I feel like, what we need. [00:46:00] And in order to do that, we need people who can maintain that leadership through service when the fear is very present and real.

[00:46:10] Brittany Wittig: Yes.

[00:46:10] Samantha Young: Or like, the ones who can maybe alchemize fear for those who aren't as skilled at it yet, and say, okay, I feel your urgency or I feel your avoidance, but here's a way through. I feel like that's that kind of stuff is really important.

Fear Alchemy as Resistance

[00:46:24] Brittany Wittig: Oh yeah, definitely. I think it's huge. One of the greatest acts of resistance that I think we can engage in is working with our fear instead of allowing it to control our behavior. That's huge. Because fear is probably the main mechanism through which the powers that be are trying to control all of us. It has been.

[00:46:49] Samantha Young: Yeah, absolutely. There's so much, like with capitalism too, there's so many examples of punishment being put in our faces all the time.

[00:46:57] Brittany Wittig: Yes. Yeah.

[00:46:59] Samantha Young: [00:47:00] Especially when you were talking about the homelessness population. Because I live in Portland and you go to downtown Portland, it's very visible and has increased in the last five years, the amount of people who are living outside. And it's always struck me as bizarre in a place like Portland, which is the liberal center of Oregon, and Oregon itself being quite a progressive state, supposedly, and yeah, the fear-based responses people have to that.

[00:47:25] Part of it is, I feel like, the response capitalism wants you to have, where they're just like, "I'm just gonna hustle so hard so that bad thing never happens to me." Or sometimes it turns into misconstrued anger towards the people just for being the reminder, basically; being a reminder of what I fear. Now I'm mad at you for making me think about it again.

[00:47:46] Brittany Wittig: Yeah, absolutely.

Inside a Workshop with Brittany

[00:47:48] Samantha Young: So I guess what I'm also curious about, if you don't mind sharing, how do your workshops go? Like what generally goes on in one of your workshops?

[00:47:57] Brittany Wittig: So first we talk [00:48:00] about fear. We talk about what's happening in the body so that we're all on the same page about what it is. We talk about these steps of working with the fear acknowledging it, feeling it, communicating with your fear and then giving your fear what it needs after it's communicated that to you. So we talk about all of that. There's an educational portion that's really important, and we go into a lot more detail than we have today.

[00:48:22] And then I take everyone through, essentially, a guided visualization where they can connect with their fear. Now, depending on the workshop format, if and when I'm able to do this in person-- which I want to do more of-- then there's a portion of the workshop where we actually feel into a fear and allow ourselves to connect with a fear.

[00:48:47] Generally, I tell people to use a small one for these, because it's a private space and again, we don't want to bring up a feeling of being trapped with all these people around, anything like that. I tell people to work with a [00:49:00] small fear in these. And then we go into a guided visualization where I walk you through the process of communicating with your fear, of actually speaking with the fear and letting it tell you why it's there, where does it come from, what does it need from you.

[00:49:16] And then at the end of the workshop we journal about the experience. We commit to giving our fear what it needs within 48 hours. And we also talk about-- this is important, we haven't touched on this yet, so I'm glad you asked-- we also talk about balancing fear alchemy work with joy. So any day that you are going to do some of this fear alchemy work, like if you're going to make it a daily practice to feel your fear, you also need to make a daily practice of finding joy in your every day, because this is heavy stuff.

[00:49:51] This is heavy stuff. So whatever joy looks like for you. For me, it's like drinking coffee and looking at the bird feeder,

[00:49:57] A variety of things, but making sure that [00:50:00] you are bringing joy into your day anytime that you're working with fear is really important.

[00:50:07] Samantha Young: I love that. And that's really important too. Just in the last few days, I've read some internet discourse around this idea of "joy is resistance" and some people not knowing the roots of that movement or not knowing that it came from the mind of a Black woman.

[00:50:24] They're like, "I just don't think joy is enough anymore." And I was sitting with that because I sometimes feel like that too, where, if I'm cultivating joy in my life, there will sometimes still be the moments with a voice in my head that's saying, "This isn't enough," right?

[00:50:37] Like you're feeling joy, but you're not doing enough. Just feeling joy is not enough. And I respond. I'm like, "I agree that this is not enough on its own, just partying your way through whatever's happening." Yeah, sure, cause that's just another form of avoidance. But it has felt to me more like a video game health bar, where I'm like, if I've been doing too much of the [00:51:00] fear and now I've got to get back into the joy.

[00:51:02] Brittany Wittig: Yes.

[00:51:03] Samantha Young: And then not letting the joy get too far into avoidance or escaping what I'm feeling. So I definitely love that you brought that up. And I love that's something you remind people to do too, because that would be my concern: guiding people through all of this work and sending them out the door okay, basically. Equipped and okay.

Grief & Fear

[00:51:21] Samantha Young: I imagine there's probably some sort of an adjustment period if you start doing this work regularly, too.

[00:51:26] Brittany Wittig: Yep. Definitely. There's a period that most people experience, that I certainly experienced, when you really start acknowledging fear as a major part of your life, because you're a human, and that's true for all of us. You can go through a period where it feels very sad. There's a grief associated with that, where it feels sad that has to be part of your life, especially if you spent a lot of your life avoiding fear. Looking at the reality of it, there's going to be some grief there, for sure. I love that you brought that up, because [00:52:00] I do to acknowledge that for people when they do this work, that you will likely feel some grief around having to do this work. Yep.

[00:52:08] That's real. And yes, like you said, I think it is so important to balance it. Just like fear has two polarities-- think of it like this. If you're doing fear alchemy work, you're working with your fear, these really intense emotions, then that has to have balance. You need to bring in the polarity of that. Otherwise you're just going to drag yourself down into the depths. You have to balance that with light, play, joy, the, yeah the fear work itself requires balance.

[00:52:43] Samantha Young: Yeah, absolutely. I noticed it recently when, for me it was like when the LA fires started happening, because I had already been like-- I'm from Long Beach, which is like the very bottom tip of Los Angeles County, it's its own little world down there. It wasn't near any of the fires or anything like [00:53:00] that but still, it was just this culmination of all last year, I was feeling really homesick. I've just been homesick. Like I just miss LA and there was a whole Kendrick Lamar thing and I was like, I wanted to be in LA so bad for that. And then the fire started happening and I was just a mess. I was just randomly crying for two weeks, and part of it was I was like, okay, I'm feeling my grief because I know it's important to feel that and not avoid that.

[00:53:23] So I was just like, letting myself feel that grief, to see the place that I love on fire and all the loss. But then there was a grief under that grief that... it was almost angry. I was like, "I'm so mad that this is the grief I have to feel in my lifetime." Like, it was anger, which is a type of expression of grief for me. Like, usually comes out as anger. But I was mad.

[00:53:45] And it was so weird because I had nobody to be mad at either. It's just oh, that anger somewhere, and recognizing that as a type of grief, but it was because it was one of my fears, right? Growing up in California, fire is like a part of life, but it's one of those things where it doesn't happen to you until it happens to you [00:54:00] or it happens to a place that you love and you watch something burn down and you're like, oh my gosh, fire's even more real than it ever was before. And that was a fear for me. I didn't even know I had this fear of, maybe I can never go home. Like maybe I could never live in California again. Maybe it's just never going to be hospitable for me. That's just like a recent fear that I had to face. I didn't even realize was a fear until I was facing until I was facing it, basically.

[00:54:26] Brittany Wittig: Sure. Absolutely. Wow. I love. Thank you for sharing that. That's a powerful example of exactly what you described, like the layers of grief that come along and hit. Oh, and here's where capitalism comes in again.

[00:54:41] Samantha Young: Yeah.

Confronting Fear Through Disasters

[00:54:41] Brittany Wittig: We've been fed this capitalist story that we're supposed to have a happily ever after where nothing ever hurts and nothing's ever scary, and if you're good enough, if you're productive enough, then you get that reality. We've been fed that. [00:55:00] And so there is a layer to this, as you lean in and feel your fear, your grief, there is a layer of, "this isn't the way it's supposed to be," and grieving the reality: that story doesn't exist.

[00:55:13] It's not real. It's a lie. That's another layer of grief that comes up for sure.

[00:55:19] Samantha Young: Yeah, absolutely. It's so true. I was thinking about this a lot because, L. A., it's on fire, and we know that there's rich people there, and that's whatever, but it's not that anybody deserves to have the house burned down. Nobody deserves that. I was thinking about, there's a certain promise of safety that comes along with affluence in capitalism. If you have money, you're safe. If you live in the Pacific Palisades, one of the most wealthy neighborhoods, you're safe, right? You live somewhere where everyone's got money, so therefore all the services should be available to you. Like, you're protected.

[00:55:53] This idea that money protects you, basically. Capitalism has told us, in no uncertain terms has told [00:56:00] us: more money equals more protection. And I think to see that happen, it was very rattling. It was for me personally, just because I don't know, maybe it's just like a capitalist thing that I've witnessed so much in growing up around all that type of affluence.

[00:56:14] I've had that thought. I'm like, oh gosh, it would be crazy if the Hollywood Hill caught on fire, but that would never happen because they have so much money. They spend so much time and effort on preventing fires in that area that I was like, no, it couldn't happen, they're all protected by their money, but that's just not true. There's so many layers of that. Even the things that capitalism has told us would promise us safety. Even that's not there.

[00:56:40] Brittany Wittig: First of all, I can relate to that. I used to live in LA for a long time and lived in Santa Monica. And I know exactly what you mean about that feeling of it wouldn't happen up there, or...

[00:56:48] Samantha Young: It's not going to happen to them.

[00:56:50] Brittany Wittig: And there was this layer for me and my experience of, this fear came up for me of, "Oh, no one's safe." No one's [00:57:00] safe. And what's funny about that is that, yeah, this isn't a safe world, but really internalizing that and feeling that was a big thing for me. It was a big thing, those fires. So I can really relate to that. And I bet other people had that experience too.

[00:57:18] Samantha Young: And I think it's one example of probably something that many people are going through. Cause it is a distinctly American delusion that we have that we're perfectly safe here.

[00:57:27] Brittany Wittig: Yes, totally.

[00:57:29] Samantha Young: And that safety has been upheld by colonialism for centuries.

[00:57:35] I haven't told anybody this, but it's relevant here. In the weeks after the fires, I was on YouTube and YouTube recommended me one of those camcorder, firsthand accounts of 9/11. And I realized in that moment, that happened when I was like seven. I don't really remember a lot. So I just clicked on it out of curiosity, and I was watching this like firsthand, somebody on a building somewhere, like with a camcorder who was recording the things happening that [00:58:00] day. For me, I was struck by seeing firsthand reactions as it's happening, the fear. I was like, Oh my gosh. Very real fear.

[00:58:07] And then I realized on a different level, part of the reason why this was such a big thing for our country is because it shattered that illusion of safety that so many Americans have had. Before then, the last example that we possibly could have had of a random attack was like, I don't know, Pearl Harbor?

[00:58:22] Brittany Wittig: Yeah.

[00:58:22] Samantha Young: It was during wartime, so it wasn't entirely unexpected.

[00:58:25] There's the collective illusion shattering that I just keep seeing happening over and over again. And my husband was like, worried about me. He's like, "Why are you watching that? Like, are you okay?" Cause he knew I was grieving, he'd seen me crying about the fires and stuff. Like, he knew I was not doing okay. And I was like, "I promise this isn't like anything you need to worry about. I'm just like, connecting with fear right now." And he was like, "Okay, that doesn't make me feel any better."

[00:58:49] Brittany Wittig: Oh my gosh. I love that you used this example and brought this up because there is a real power in what you're describing. There is a real power [00:59:00] in-- when it feels right and when you feel drawn to it.

[00:59:04] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[00:59:05] Brittany Wittig: There is a power in leaning in to your fear in that way. And it's a fine line.

[00:59:13] Samantha Young: I don't recommend this to anybody. I was in a very specific place to be doing that.

[00:59:17] Brittany Wittig: You don't want to go into the rabbit hole of doom scrolling. But there is a certain sensation that sometimes will come up where you may feel called. When you begin this work, and when you get into this work, you may feel the sensation of, "I feel like I want to go a little deeper with this," and that sometimes the thing to do is to watch or take in something that is allowing you to lean into that fear a little bit more, which is what you were doing there. It can actually be quite healthy in helping you to feel it and move it through you-- again, though, using discernment around that.

[00:59:59] Samantha Young: It's meant to be [01:00:00] temporary. I did it for a couple days.

[01:00:01] Brittany Wittig: Exactly.

[01:00:02] Samantha Young: And then, there was a YouTube algorithm too, which is part of it. It kept recommending me things. So then I was watching like, accounts of the tsunami in Japan that happened in like 2011. Cause there was a lot of people who filmed that. Then I watched-- oh my god, it was the Dale Earnhardt crash. I don't know why, but that I watched that because again, it was something that happened when I was a child and I knew that it happened. I was like, oh, some NASCAR driver died, but didn't see the reality of it. I didn't, and something about the real-time reactions.

[01:00:27] Brittany Wittig: Yes.

[01:00:28] Samantha Young: I only did it for a few days and then I was like, okay, I definitely need to stop doing this. But yeah, there was just something about it. I don't know what it was, but I think it was just that I was feeling such fear around the shattering of safety. And even though I knew logically that safety was an illusion, when your body has to continually feel it and see it over and over again, you're like, fuck. No, but really. It is truly an illusion.

[01:00:50] Brittany Wittig: Yeah. And you were leaning into feeling that and that's very powerful. It's very powerful. Especially when you do it with the awareness where [01:01:00] you're able to say, okay, now I did that and I'm done.

[01:01:03] Samantha Young: I'm not going to keep watching those.

[01:01:04] Brittany Wittig: Yeah.

[01:01:05] Samantha Young: I don't ever want to watch those again. But it was just something about... almost feeling a sense of camaraderie with the people in those, through time, who are also feeling the floor being pulled out from under you, essentially.

[01:01:17] Brittany Wittig: Yes. Yes. Definitely.

[01:01:19] Samantha Young: My husband was like, why are you doing this? I'm like, I don't know. I feel like I'm in a time machine right now. I'm just connecting to these people from the past, and you gotta just let me do it.

[01:01:29] Brittany Wittig: Yes. Oh my gosh. Oh, it's so powerful. I love that. And I also do something like that, occasionally when I feel called, and I think it can be very powerful. And again you're deprogramming yourself when you do that. Because even your husband, his concern is totally reasonable, but it comes from a society where we're conditioned to avoid everything that feels bad and scary. And you're deprogramming by saying, you know what, I'm going to lean in when it feels right.

[01:01:59] Samantha Young: Yeah, it [01:02:00] definitely shifted my relationship to fear. I think that was probably around the time that I emailed you, I was like, I need to talk to you about this on my podcast.

[01:02:08] Brittany Wittig: I love that.

[01:02:09] Samantha Young: It just, yeah, seems really important right now. I want people to work with their fear because you're going to need to be in touch with that to build the world that we want.

[01:02:19] Brittany Wittig: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Because there's going to be a lot of scary steps. Yeah. It's not easy.

Wrapping Up With Brittany

[01:02:26] Samantha Young: So your workshops are mostly virtual, but you'd like to do them more online. How often are you doing them?

[01:02:32] Brittany Wittig: I just taught one last week, actually. Up to now, I mostly do them in private group programs. That's mostly where I've done them. Hopefully, fingers crossed, I'll be doing some in person in the next six months. We'll see. I've got some feelers out to make that happen.

[01:02:46] But for now, like if someone's listening and they really want to dig into this, I have a pre-recorded workshop, donation based, so no one gets turned away for lack of funds. If you don't have money [01:03:00] for this, you just enter zero dollars, you can get it.

[01:03:02] It's my basic standard workshop, Alchemizing Fear. That's available right now. You just register and you get a recording of it. So if someone's listening and they want to join in right now that would be the way to do it. Otherwise, I always announce when I'm going to be teaching one either on my Instagram or on my email list.

[01:03:20] Samantha Young: Nice. Nice. Yeah, and I'll have all your information in the show notes, so people can reach you. But yeah, thank you for doing this with me. I really do think your work is so important and I love that you do it. I love that our paths crossed so that we could talk about it, cause I'm getting more into-- shame alchemy is the thing that I'm working with right now, specifically with like business owners, and part of the routes I've had to go down when planning this out was like with fear, I was like, there's something here with this too. It plays into shame.

[01:03:51] Brittany Wittig: Oh, yeah.

[01:03:51] Samantha Young: Yeah. They're similar, but different.

[01:03:54] Brittany Wittig: Oh, definitely. Thank you so much for having me. I love what you're doing with this [01:04:00] podcast, and I so appreciate you having me here to talk about this, because I do feel so strongly that this is so important, so the more this message gets out for people, the better. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Outro

[01:04:14] Samantha Young: The more people hear this message, the better. I do agree with that, and you know what? Let's proselytize a little bit. Maybe send this conversation to somebody who you know wants to have a better relationship with their fear or who maybe has over-identified with their fear and is aware of that and wants to change it.

[01:04:37] I learned so much in this conversation, and it helped me move through even some of my own fears that I hadn't wanted to look at yet. It gave me a framework for how to start addressing them and communicating with them and building a relationship with those fears. So this conversation is worth hundreds of dollars to me, and I'm so blessed to share it with you.[01:05:00]

[01:05:00] Brittany, like I said before, is a wellspring of wisdom, and I so appreciate her sharing not just what she does with us, but why she does it, and sharing with us the type of fears that she's had to address in her life. So I hope through this you do gain some strength.

[01:05:22] Like Brittany said, we have to find joy. I don't need to tell you that. You've heard that from a lot of people. It's not a platitude. It's not a falsehood that we need to find joy, but I also want you to find some... hardiness, some strength within yourself. Yes, resilience, but that word comes with a lot of baggage.

[01:05:43] But I want you to be able to locate some hardiness within yourself, and the way that you do that is by having deep roots. Strong branches have deep roots. This means getting rooted in yourself. This means having a stronger relationship with yourself and these quote-unquote [01:06:00] "negative" emotions, such as fear-- shame, guilt, grief, all of those other emotions, but especially fear. It's a wonderful place to start and I hope that you do take some of Brittany's advice with you and maybe even start putting that into practice today or in the next 48 hours. Let me know how it goes.

[01:06:22] And like I said in the beginning, if you have some free time next week, please join us for the Business Magick summit. Ticket link will be in the show notes. It's free to join. If you don't want to get on Facebook to watch it, or you cannot attend live sign up anyway, you'll get all of the recordings sent to you from all of the speakers, including my talk.

[01:06:45] If you are hearing this prior to March 31st, there is still time to book a year ahead Financial Astrology reading with me to look at 2025. I am not doing these again for the rest of the [01:07:00] year. Once we get to April, so if you want to look ahead, see what's going on, maybe you're planning something like a move, or you're getting married, you're getting divorced, you're having a baby, you're changing jobs, anything that's going to affect your finances in any way this year, I'd love to talk about it with you, look over your chart, go over things from an anti-capitalist perspective, and figure out what the best move is or find out what the vibes are. Find out if it's supportive for you or not.

[01:07:31] Other than that, I appreciate you being here. Please take care of yourselves, take care of each other. Remember that fear can be your friend, and I will talk to you next time.