this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2025
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Most of the inaction I bear has been due to fear. Fear of reprimand and fear of violence in particular.

I'm reading a lot of lefty stuff (old posts, old articles, hoping I can make my way to books) and it seems like my biggest hurdle to becoming a proper leftist will be removing myself of these fears, if I ever want to do anything productive.

But fuck, fear is just so prevalent in my life. It could be my trauma, my privilege or literally anything else I'm not aware of. Whatever the cause, I don't like it, it's made me a worse person, and I wanna get rid of it.

Seeing as most of you are good about this, I want to hear about how you stopped letting fear and (social/physical) self-preservation control you.

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[–] Alaskaball@hexbear.net 21 points 5 months ago

I've had a 'Feet first into hell' or a 'Fuck it, we ball' mentality since like my second year of high school. It sort of developed from initially getting dragged into the drama, debate, and forensics (oration) club and getting thrown in the deep end of the field of debate and eventually developing my skills at spontaneous commentary oration (glorified bullshitting) and through just years of having to do public speaking I've gotten over being an introvert wallflower. On the physical side, I've been run down into abject physical misery several times and had to push through to keep going. That gave me a sort of brain shut-off switch thats like running on an automated machine to to as its told such as jumping off towers or out plane doors, zipping straight down wire lines in almost-freefall, letting myself get drowned like a rat in a metal cage, etc. I guess this isn't very helpful advice now that I think of jt.