holosophy

So I still fear a lot.
Yes, and since you are now more aware of this than ever before, you dislike yourself a lot.
Shouldn’t the awareness produce the opposite effect - shouldn’t I be pleased with increased awareness, and therefore happier with myself?
That could be the case (though I would not say “should”!)
Then why aren’t I?
Because as the awareness increases it feels to you that you are making no headway, you then tend to despair, and convince yourself that, far from making headway, you are worse than ever.
That’s true, but as the mistakes pile up and the lessons go by unheeded, I end up eating too much, drinking too much, and generally get totally disheartened by the whole process. It just seems too difficult, too mountainous a task - I feel I’m on a very steep and very slippery slope.
You confuse awareness with caring. Most of what you believe to be your increased awareness is simply your increased caring - and most of your actual increased awareness is focused on your fear, thus attracting more of what you fear. Additionally, you believe that as you become more aware you should care more - so you do! True awareness leads directly to love. By this means you can easily identify whether what you are experiencing is genuine increased awareness, or simply an increased focus on the detail of fear.
   Tell me more.
Awareness and love go hand in hand. With true awareness comes love, and vice versa. The problem, as you might call it, with caring, is that whilst you believe that your caring renders you a more aware person, the opposite is true. Whilst you believe that more caring renders you a more evolved person, the opposite is true. And especially, whilst you believe that caring makes you a more responsible person, the opposite is true - caring makes you a less responsible and more dependant person. I say again, in the sense that you interpret it - cease to care.  Work hard to cease to care. As you do so you will find out much about love, and if you work very hard at it you may just find true love - i.e. you will justly be offered the opportunity of truly loving.
I think I started to find independence and self responsibility at one time, then it slipped away again…
True, you designed it thus.
   Why on earth did I do that?
You believed that you were in danger of becoming too selfish, and that you had to find a way to pass on your increased awareness to others, to help them along the way - “use it or lose it” syndrome, which in this context was true. Fear stepped in and told you you were not worthy of such a position, and you bowed to the fear and scuttled the awareness.
  And it’s taken me this long to come full circle?
Yes. And you had to “up the ante” this time. It could be likened to the perpetual student who goes from course to course with ever increasing levels of difficulty, to avoid having to take the knowledge gained thus far and do something with it.
But there’s nothing wrong with increased knowledge, is there?
Nothing at all, though often the most direct route is to “get out there and pass it on”, in so doing much can be learned - especially about oneself and ones fears.
Have I not done that with this business?
You have learnt much about yourself and others, especially regarding relationships and sexuality, which can be incorporated into your next phase. You did not, however, feel the fear of teaching “and do it anyway” - you chose instead to feel the fear of failure, and “did it anyway”.
Oh!
It is vitally important now that you do not judge yourself harshly, rather that you respond by acknowledging the positive side of fear, and embrace it, thus you have very much to offer.
Fear has a positive side?
Very much so, it’s called love! Fear sheds the clearest light on our most personal issues, enabling us to identify them, look them in the eye, and embrace them. In that moment fear is transmuted to love. The clarity which can accompany fear can show you far more about yourself than the euphoria which may surround “love” - though that shows that what is being experienced is but an aspect of love. True love doesn’t simply illuminate everything - it is everything.