My Day with J.T. Foxx: A Journey into Fear and Nurturing

It Was An Interesting Day!

Scrolling through Instagram I saw an advertising with the headline “Female Speakers Wanted.” I have spent the majority of my career in a small office space, sitting face to face with just one other person. My work is not seen by the masses. It is experienced in intimate dyads. I want to venture out into the world and share what I have learned, so I thought lets give this a try.   

I expected it to be a day of another trying to sell me their product, as are most meetings that take place inside a hotel conference space. I really had no idea who JT Foxx was. I was interested in learning about an area that I know little about.

It was an interesting day.

The Surprise: We Had A Lot in Common

The more I listened and held myself as open to hearing the messages, I realized that this multimillionaire and I had a lot more in common that I ever would have expected.

JT Foxx Had a Hard Childhood

For those who don’t know who JT Foxx is, he is a self-made man who is regarded as the best business coach in the world. He does not spend a lot of time talking about how he got to where he got, but there is enough to understand what drives him. I would typically use the word motivate, but what he spoke of was more than motivation. What made him successful in the business world was his concentrated determination.

The words that stuck with me the most was the fuel to his engine. He did not want to be like his parents. He, like most of us, had a hard childhood. It is the powerful avoidance of insecurity that seems to drive him. In his effort to not be insecure, he focused everything he had to learn everything he could about business. At one point in time he had five different business coaches pushing him, testing him, challenging him and helping him do what he needed to do in order to not feel as he did as a child.

This is the part that I can relate to.

A Personal Story: The Birth of "Fred"

When I was three years old my father and sisters and I were watching the movie Jason and the Argonauts (1963). I don’t remember any of the details like the plot, all I remember was the frightening, oddly, stop-motioned moving skeletons. They looked real and not real at the same time. There were hundreds of them, crawling out of temples like rabid ants, with their swords in hand, ready to kill. It scared me something awful. I clearly remember what it felt like. Hot and burning, like some type of acid or electrical fire, raging inside of me. I ran from the living room, up the stairs, yelling in my very little voice, “I’m a’scared, I’m a’scared, I’m a’fred, I’m a’fred”.

My two older sisters, chasing me, yelling back, “ha ha, you’re a FRED, you’re a FRED.” They were laughing at me not being able to speak well, not because I was terrified. After all, I was safe in my house and the weird skeletons were imaginary things on the TV screen, and not able to hurt me. They did not know how scared I was – making it all so much worse. I stopped running up the stairs, and looked down at them, arms on my hips, full of defiance, or indignation, or something much purer and younger than that, “That’s right I am a FRED.”  My fear, which changed to anger, was the creation story of a nickname. From that moment on, I was not known as Christine, but as Fred. I insisted on it. There are those who still, to this day, call me Fred or Freddy and I answer. It’s a name of mine, but it is also so much more than that. Only now, in my experienced and more mature 54-year-old self, can I see that this was a declaration. Perhaps one of the most accurate statements that has encapsulated my life.

I hate being scared.

The Pursuit of Understanding Fear

Where JT Foxx dedicated his life to finding financial security, I dedicated my life to understanding everything I possibly could about human fear. It is all that I have thought about, really, since I was 3. What is it and more importantly, what to do to stop feeling it.

At this point there is not a version of human fear that I have not witnessed or experienced. Reading thousands of peer reviewed articles, hundreds of books, working with thousands of people, participated in thousands of hours of trainings, as well as learning how to understand my own fears, I have learned one important thing. Nurturing is the only real way out.

What Is Nurturing?

What is nurturing? Nurturing is a lot like human nutritional needs. It is a lot of things that meet the energy, mineral and vitamin needs of a human body and brain. But instead of protein, carbohydrates, and fats

Nurturing, fundamentally, is about fulfilling the relational needs of humans. It is akin to lifelong nutrition. Just as food includes various components that satisfy the energy, mineral, and vitamin requirements of our bodies and brains, nurturing provides what we need to feel secure in our bodies and minds.

Nurturing is a forgotten art, language, and concept in a world that fears it, which I refer to as true misogyny. Adequate and complete nurturing, particularly in a world unconsciously dominated by psychopathic tendencies, is often seen as wrong, bad, odd, strange, or weird, rendering it not only invisible but also opposed.

A Call to Action: Break the Cycle

I am here to help people break the cycle of relational deprivation. I am here to assist people in understanding their fears and, more importantly, how to nurture them so that the messages within the fears can relax and ultimately vanish.

Join me in the most revolutionary act possible: learn to nurture yourself and those around you in ways that are congruent with our species. The components for nurturing exist. Allow me to demonstrate the recipes you can follow.

Learning to Add Nurturing to Your Practice

Take a look at my current course offerings on dissociation, mindfulness, and securefulness on the Courses page of my website.