How can I be more in my purpose and accept my fears?

Hello and thank you for asking a question here on BetterHelp, and this is a wonderful question! I'm sorry the relationship you were in ended, it sounds like you really liked her but she wasn't fully committed. It's very heartbreaking when this happens, but it can also help us recognize changes that are needed to be made in us. We will often look back at ourselves in a relationship and realize we were in a bad place at that time, it isn't something to look back on with regret. Instead it needs to be looked at as something to motivate yourself to be a better you. It sounds like that's what you're looking to do today and I think that's awesome.

One of the best things you can do now before we talk about finding your purpose, is to ask yourself why you were losing yourself in your last relationship and why you were so needy. What is it you were trying to get from your partner that you weren't getting? What happened to you to where you were losing yourself in this relationship and growing attached so quickly? Brainstorming and journaling your answers to these questions will be wonderful for you. It will help you recognize a lot of things about yourself as well as recognize areas that you need to make changes in.

Beyond that, I also want you to find the silver lining in this relationship. This can often be a hard thing to do, especially when the relationship ended recently and we are still in the mourning process. But the benefit of finding the silver lining is that it helps you look back on this relationship with a sense of gratitude instead of a sense of resentment. I would encourage you to try and list five things you learned from this relationship that you were glad you learned that you will take with you into the future to become a better you. 

Now let's talk about facing your fears. The first thing that has to be done is identifying them. A great way to do this is through understanding when you are reacting to these fears. Fear is the great driving force of anxiety, so whenever you feel yourself getting anxious or nervous, just ask yourself, "what is it I'm afraid of right now and why?" Doing this will help you better identify what that fear is. From here I would encourage you to ask yourself, "is this fear possible or is it probable?"

When a fear is only possible and not probable, then we need to recognize it and remind ourselves of it. Let me give you an example - I live close to an international airport and I have airplanes flying over my home regularly. It is technically possible that one of those planes could malfunction and fall out of the sky and hit my home. However I know this is extremely unlikely, but if I start to fixate on it, asking myself what I would do in a situation like that, what would I do to protect my family, how would I warn myself that this is happening, do I need to update my insurance at all etc. the more I do this the more this fear will turn from possible to probable in my mind. This means my brain has taken some thing that is never going to happen, convinced me that it's going to happen and is now causing me to emotionally react to it. It sounds so silly when you think about it, but our brain is extremely powerful and can take fears and extrapolate them to the point where they are debilitating to our ability to function. But of course we don't want that to happen, instead we want to take away the power that this fear has over you. This happens when you are able to identify the fear and take away its power by reminding yourself that it isn't going to happen.  But let's say your fear is probable instead of possible. This is when you have to become prepared, let me give you another example. I used to have a fear when I started driving that I was going to pop a tire and be stuck on the side of the road not knowing how to change it. So what I did is I practice changing a tire in the driveway, the fear was now instantly gone. I prepared for a fear that was probable, therefore taking away the power that fear had over me because I was now prepared in case it ever happened. In summary, recognize your fear and identify it then take away its power.

Finally on to discovering what your purpose is. If you were sitting in front of me in a counseling session right now, I would ask you these two questions, "who are the people you have always looked up to and why? What is it you have always dreamed of doing, I know you have thought about it before so try to answer that question in under five seconds." Having answers to these questions will help narrow what it is you want to do.

This next part is the most important, once you have identified what it is you are interested in doing, you need to find somebody who works in that field and offer to take them out for coffee. You're going to want to ask them what it's like to work in the field they are in, whether or not they would suggest it to you, then you're going to ask them what are the biggest mistakes they made that you can avoid. Doing this will save you so much trouble and heartache.  It is drastically easier to learn for mother people's mistakes than to have to make them on your own. When we sit down with others who are working in a field we are interested in we will often learn that we have romanticized that position, when in reality it's not that great. It is better to find that out now then to find out after several years of education and pursuing a career you don't even like. 

I hope you were able to find something in here that helps and I wish you the best of luck!