Moon Child Bracelet

Hello and good morning, my friends! I hope you've all had a wonderful weekend. I've loved seeing everyone's responses to our previous Spotlight releases, and I can assure you that we have another special one for you today.

First, though, I'd like to dive into something all of us have experienced – maybe only as children, or perhaps still to this day: the fear of the dark.

For the longest time growing up, I would fall asleep with the TV on to comfort me from whatever lurked in the dark, ominous corners of my bedroom. Then, within more recent years, I adopted the new tactic of having a light-up air freshener so I had a splash of light without illuminating my entire room. You see – I was trying to conquer my fear of the dark by slowly easing my way out of having a crutch, the sources of light.

I can happily admit that I now sleep with an eye mask to keep out the light completely! Talk about progress, huh?

But that doesn't mean I've conquered my fear of the dark. It sounds childish to admit, "yeah, please leave the lights on – I'm scared of the dark," but that's only because society isolated it to a fear only children struggle with.

The Manifestation of Nyctophobia in Real Adult Life

Nyctophobia: the extreme fear of night or darkness that can cause intense symptoms of anxiety and depression

Your fear of the dark may not be debilitating; however, it can place itself in different areas of your life. For example, I can sleep without the lights on, but I will start to panic if I'm stuck outside when it's cloudy, and there's no moonlight or artificial light to be found.

Fearing the night or darkness comes from the fear of not being able to see what's around you.

Being in the dark is not confined to physical situations. In fact, read the previous sentence once more.

Metaphorically speaking, doesn't it get frustrating not to know what's happening around us or what will happen?

Think about it. Couldn't the fear of the dark be comparable to the fear of the unknown?

Now, I don't mean to discount the fear of the dark for adults. It's real – trust me, I still experience it, too.

However, I would like to draw your attention to how nyctophobia can manifest itself in our lives by spreading into other areas—specifically, anxiety about the future.

When we feel that we're left out of things, we're in the dark, right? That fear can grow into something too tangible for us to handle by having a night light, unfortunately.

However, we can relinquish our anxiety by acknowledging that things are out of our control – and admitting that's okay.

The more you stay away from a feared object or situation, such as refusing to go to the black basement at all costs, the more likely you are to maintain [your] phobia. – Elizabeth Bacharach

The longer we avoid facing our fears, the longer they have control over us. But you can make conscious steps to release its hold on you.

Moving Past Fear

How can we overcome a fear of something that has yet to happen? It seems impossible, but nothing is impossible. Most fears we can confront, like a fear of spiders or heights, but the unknown is a little trickier to face.

It comes down to relinquishing control.

The reason most of us fear the unknown is because we have no control over what happens next. We're creatures of habit – we like to know what we're going to be involved in next. So it's a natural desire to have our hands on whatever could affect us.

Thus, we must understand that we won't always have control over everything. Life is full of unpredictability, and there's no doubt that anxiety will arise in certain situations. Anxiety becomes more prevalent in our mental health, depending on how we perceive, interpret, and respond to uncertain situations.

Questions starting with "what if" take root in our minds and divert our thoughts to the negative, fear-inducing ideas that introduce stress over a previously innocent situation.

Once we perceive that the situation is out of our control, interpret it as an okay occurrence (meaning: "I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm at peace with it"), then we can respond in a more positive light, instead of drowning in our fear of the unknown.

Little steps are necessary to a big finale. It takes time to move past fear, but it can make significant changes earlier than we might expect.

This brings me to our Spotlight strap today – Moon Child by artist Christine Gulick!

Here's a note from the artist:

This idea literally came to me in a dream and started as a foil print before I decided to turn it into a Zox strap instead. This strap is going to have a different, deeper meaning to each person, and I’m excited to see what it means to those individuals!