Do you experience fear or anxiety in your life? What is causing them, where do they come from? Here are some toughts and suggestions how to recognize them and how to cope with them using the Human Design System.

Fears

The World – The Outside

Just in the recent few years there was and is so much going on. I guess I do not have to bring any of the examples and I therefore leave it up to your individual imagination and situation. Outside triggers that influence a Human Being. Triggers that do something to a Human Being. Yet, why are some people really scared and why there are others that seem not to be scared at all? One explantion could be found in the individual Human Design of a person.

I was very much influenced by the outside world, by the news, by messages from family and friends, by my work and colleagues. I always had this feeling that someone else is pulling me or pushing me and the news paralyzed me, occupied my brain and my thoughts. Now let me introduce you to the Human Design side and my take on the information.

Fear

Fear is a primal response, one that is instinctive and often beyond reason or understanding. When faced with sudden threat, our bodies react to fear by going into protection mode — what some refer to as “fight or flight” — by releasing adrenaline and increasing heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rate. This deep and ancient fear goes back to a time before we were human, and these physical responses have aided us in fighting what threatened us, or in running away.

But as we evolved, so did other types of fear — more subtle and more lingering, such as mental anxiety over futility or chaos. These fears don’t trigger an immediate bodily response, but rather may lurk at the edges of our thoughts during the day and lead to sleepless nights.

Whether we experience fear as an immediate threat or a lingering concern, it is an unpleasant feeling. Certainly fear can be useful, warning us of a threat to our survival. But fear can also take over our lives in a way that seems to have no useful purpose, robbing us of our focus and peace of mind, and leading to feelings of helplessness.

Such unpleasant feelings can make us believe we must be doing something wrong, or fear wouldn’t be so overwhelming. In my humble opinion no human being is free of fear, fear is simply part of the human process. And these fears sit – unsing the Human Design System – in our three Awareness Centers: the Spleen (Survival Instincts), the Solar Plexus (Emotional Center) and the Ajna (Mind). So let’s take a closer look at these three centers and their inherent fears.

Awareness Centers

The Spleen, Ajna and Solar Plexus are the three Centers holding fears that are of the body, of the mind, or emotional, and for each there are specific approaches to recognizing and managing these fears. The following is an overview of the fears residing in these centers. The extent of what you might experience is very much dependent on the definition or openness of your individual chart. The centers can be open/undefined or defined, the gates can be activated or not activated, conscious or unconscious or both. There are so many individual variations that this article can only be an overview. If you are interested in finding out more, I invite and welcome you to get in contact with me. OK, enough now, let’s jump to the first center.

Fears of the Spleen

The Spleen is one of our three Awareness Centers. The fears of the Spleen are felt in the body, typically as your fight, flight, freeze, or faun reactions. This is the Center of body consciousness including health and well-being, the immune system, fear, values, and spontaneity.

The most basic survival fears come out of the Splenic Center. The Spleen is our most ancient Awareness Center and it holds our deepest fears about the uncertainty of the nature of the world. Fears of death, past and future are some of the fears that reside in the Splenic Center. These fears are a driving force that can be harnessed for increased insight, awareness, and ability to heal. Each gate (the “numbers” in the triangle representing the Spleen in the Rave Chart) has its own fear connected to it.

Gate 48: Depth | Fear: Inadequacy

You experience the fear that you don’t know enough or have the ability to come up with the right solution in the moment and this can lead you to not trusting the true depth of your knowledge. You may struggle wanting to obtain more skills or thinking that if you just had a certain level of mastery in explaining your depth, you would be better off.

Gate 57: Intuitive Insight | Fear: The Future

You experience fear of what the future will bring, and if you will be safe secure, and provided for. This can hold you back from listening to your intuition and taking decisive action in the moment.

Gate 44: Alertness | Fear: The Past

You experience the fear of repeating past patterns that were challenging and that you will not be able to survive as a result of lack of money, food, or shelter if this past baggage catches up to you. You may sense that you don’t have the willpower to act on your instinctive awareness in a way that will ensure your survival.

Gate 50: Values | Fear: Responsibility

You experience fear of taking responsibility for another person in a physical and material sense, and this can result in the avoidance of having children, getting married, or staying close to family. You may also struggle with taking too much responsibility for taking care of others that you are not meant to.

Gate 32: Continuity | Fear: Failure

You experience a fear of failure that holds you back from doing what you want to do, and feel unsupported, fearing there are not enough resources for everyone or other professionals that are at the same caliber as you who can support your business goals. This scarcity-based fear can come from a lack of access to consistency in your drive or ambition.

Gate 28: The Game Player | Fear: Death/Life with No Purpose

You experience the fear that life has no purpose unless you take risks and death without discovering what gives life meaning and makes the struggle worth it, beyond survival. You may feel pressure to take unnecessary risks resulting in exhaustion or resistance as you look for clues to what makes life worthwhile.

​​Gate 18: Correction | Fear: Authority

You experience fear that those in authority, such as leaders, parents, or teachers, thinking they may not have your best interests in mind and they may use their influence or power to harm you. Because of this you are analyzing everything and may challenge when authority tells you how things should be. This analyzing and correcting of things can become a fear of being judged by others and result in paralysis from pressure to do all things perfectly since you can find fault in yourself and others.

Fears of the Ajna

The Ajna is the next Awareness Center and is a playground for us to experience viewpoints, analysis, reasoning, insights, opinions, and overall mental processing.

These are the fears of the mind, which manifest as anxiety over certain things, such as challenge, rejection and chaos. These are often illusory and groundless fears created by the mind, where in reality there is nothing to fear.

Gate 47: Realization, Fear: Futility

You experience the fear that life is oppressive, futile, pointless or unfulfilling. You may struggle to make sense of past experiences and you may have mental anxiety in the form of confusion around them.

Gate 24: Rationalization, Fear: Ignorance

You experience the fear that you will never know the answer, be able to explain your inner knowing, or that the inspiration you seek will never arrive and you may have mental anxiety around resolving the mysteries of live.

Gate 4: Answers, Fear: Chaos

You experience the fear of continual chaos in your life, and lack of order. You have mental anxiety around the need to both find answers and provide the answers others are looking for and find yourself full of doubts and you may have mental anxiety when you aren’t finding solutions.

Gate 11: Ideas, Fear: Darkness

You experience the fear of the sense of emptiness that comes from not having new, stimulating ideas or visions to ponder and explore you may have mental anxiety around not being able to share something new and exciting with others.

Gate 43: Insight, Fear: Rejection

You experience fear that others will reject you for your unique ideas and perspectives and you may have mental anxiety that you are strange, or freakish, and your inner truth and knowing won’t be understood by others.

Gate 17: Opinion, Fear: Challenge

You experience fear that your strong opinions lack enough detail and will be challenged by others and you may have mental anxiety around this that prevents you from sharing your opinions.

Fears of the Solar Plexus

The Solar Plexus is the last of our three Awareness Centers, as well as a Motor Center and the fears within it manifest as nervousness. This is the Center of social awareness and relational awareness.

Solar Plexus fears are powerful as they move in waves — they may disappear in the up wave just to return in the down wave. These are fears where molehills turn into mountains or mountains into molehills. In the moment, these fears cannot be trusted, but in the long run they may prove to be the most reliable. Typical Solar Plexus fears include a nervousness about inadequacy, intimacy, and fate.

Gate 36: Crisis | Fear: Inadequacy

You experience nervousness that you are inadequate and unable to fulfill your expectations for yourself, as well as feel fear around vulnerability and inexperience. You may struggle with the desire to find an experience in which to release your emotions. You can feel like you are in the midst of personal crisis without an appropriate outlet for this energy.

Gate 22: Openness | Fear: Silence

You experience nervousness that others won’t listen to you, the right people aren’t around to converse with, or that there is nothing worthwhile to listen to and provide intellectual growth. You may struggle with the desire to speak in a way that articulates and empowers others with the depth of your emotional spirit.

Gate 37: Friendship | Fear: Tradition

You experience nervousness about taking on the traditional roles in life and fear that not maintaining traditions will result in the erosion and destruction of your family or community. You may struggle with the need to find those with the resources for your tribe so that you can bargain with them and distribute the resources to your community.

Gate 6: Friction | Fear: Intimacy

You experience nervousness around revealing who you really are and bonding with others intimately. You may struggle with the desire to be comfortable with deep intimacy and sexual bonding with a mate without the ability to break down the barriers necessary.

Gate 49: Principles | Fear: Nature

You experience nervousness around unpredictability and the consequences of that uncertainty and that your principles will be rejected by your family or community. You may struggle with fully understanding what is needed by your tribe to survive and thrive.

Gate 55: Spirit | Fear: Emptiness

You experience nervousness around not knowing what to be passionate about or a lack of passion in life, making it an empty emotional experience. You may struggle with melancholy combined with the inability to perceive your moods and spirit for yourself. ​ ​

Gate 30: Feelings | Fear: Fate

You experience nervousness around what may or may not happen and the uncertainty of an experiences outcomes. You may struggle with the pressure to chase after fantasies and deep desires, and creating expectations around those dreams.

Why can it be important to understand where your fears are coming from in your Human Design? So that you can discern between a fear response and what your inner Authority is telling you is correct for you. Without an understanding of the fears most likely to show up for us, or the voice of our logical reasoning talking us out of our Authority response, we are likely to take actions that aren’t going to help us live out out our highest expression… or miss out on those that are!

What to do?

As you might guess there is no straight answer. Your individual chart might reveal these aspects.

Out of my own experience with the Human Design System, analyzing my chart again and again (oh yeah, I am still learning news every day in the details), experiencing the information in my daily life with myself, my family and other people I find more and more truth and pureness in it.

With the knowledge of this information I am not straight away able to not fall into “fear traps”. I do have fears and yet I realize these fears and can find out where they come from and what are the triggers. Even though I have these fears I can allow them to be there and still they do not occupy my mind all the time. This feels quite relaxing and gives me brain capacity to find solutions.

Is it the “one and only tool” for that? No, it is not. It helps and supports me tremendously in identifying the root cause of my fear and gives me hints on how to cope with the fear. And I do use other techniques as Psych-K, Meditation, my NLP knowledge, my work and life experience and breathing techniques.

Human Design is a system that really helped me to find out more about myself and to start my de-conditioning process.

I want to close this article with a quote from Ra Uru Hu, the Human Design System’s founder and messenger.

All these differnt forms of awareness and the way in which they manifest as fears, all of them are of benefit for us. They’re not there to hinder or to be detriments.

Ra Uru Hu