How to manage my fear

[LastBreath]

I am fearful to open myself up to the possibility of something bad happening.

Fear itself attracts negative experience. Fear is a choice in perception, a chosen perspective, which shoehorns all subsequent experience into that chosen frame. If we truly want to see things that scare us, it will be given to us.

I think that's incorrect to say that the fear is a "choice". It sounds to me that the OP was conditioned to fear the paranormal through films and media that portrayed it in a fearful way, and not through conscious choice. I think that's like saying a rape victim who chose to be traumatized. I have fears that I really don't like having, fears that I didn't consciously choose but which developed after certain experiences. To say that I could suddenly overcome these fears through a sheer act of will at a moments choice is so unrealistic, unlikely and impractical that I wonder if you've actually given this any serious thought, or if you just read it on some website and ran with it. How is the OP going to overcome a lifetime of conditioning in a moments choice? I bet that if our film makers and story tellers portrayed the paranormal in a highly spirited, positive and loving manner that OP wouldn't be afraid of it. OP said himself that he has never experienced anything paranormal, so where did the idea that ghosts and the paranormal are scary come from then? Just look at any movie that deals with the subject and the answer is pretty obvious that this is cultural conditioning, not conscious choice like you imply.

This is a concept I see all the time in the New Age community, that everything that ever happens to you was a choice and your responsibility. But I think sometimes peoples idea of spirituality places way too much emphasis on individual responsibility while ignoring environmental factors and the fact that we live in a large community of other beings that influence each other. I think somewhere there has to be a middle ground between individual responsibility and responsibility for the community as a whole.