Crossing the Bridges: Fighting my Fear
What am I so afraid of?
This is the question that has haunted me for most of my life. Unlike many of my fellow Americans who can point to this thing or that which they live in fear of, I fear a number of intangibles.
Since this is my more personal blog posting, let me get personal here. I have been in and out of therapy for most of my life. My parents divorced when I was 5, and this caused me to have any number of issues for which I have sought therapy over the last three decades. I suffer from depression, and I currently use meditation and exercise to manage it, but have used medication and psychotherapy in the past.
Please note – I do NOT blame my parents for my issues. Since I, and I alone am responsible for how I feel, it is up to me to cope with and work on what this amounts to. I have numerous tools to employ for this purpose, so it’s up to me to employ them.
The result is that I identified some time ago that one of the great motivators and demotivators of my life has been fear. Fear of totally intangible things, most specifically failure, success, acceptance and abandonment.
I have addressed fear a lot in my other blog posts, because fear is a tool frequently employed to control people. Fear of semi-tangible things, like death, terrorism, taxes, eternal damnation and financial ruin have become the weapons of our societal leaders, whether government, corporate or religious, and that’s above and beyond individual matters.
Fear is an instinct. Way, way back when we were living off the land as hunter/gatherers, fear was what kept us alive. You didn’t face off against a nine-foot tall bear or a pack of wolves or a pride of lions. But when we started to settle into communities and created cities and the like, we somehow transferred our fears to less tangible, more squirrelly matters. Suddenly we became afraid for our security not from animal predators, but from those we deemed more powerful than us, many of whom we gave control of our wellbeing over to, whether real or perceived. Or our fear was given over to abstract ideas whose meaning differs from person to person.
I have come to believe that, by-and-large, we are a disempowered people. We live in a society that casts blame rather than takes accountability, constantly looks outside of ourselves for validation, and gives away control to others for our care and wellbeing. We let society tell us that we need to lose weight, make more money, and live up to expected norms rather than seeking and doing things that make us individually happy and bring us joy. We struggle to fit in, and then continue to question why we are struggling.
For the last five years I have worked to be empowered, and shared my process. While a great many things have changed for me in that time, there is still more I want to do. But I find no matter how much I fight it, I still struggle with the same point. Fear. Fear continues to slow my growth, and keeps me from breaking my bad habits and going where I really want to in this life.
What am I so afraid of? Logically, I KNOW that failure, success, acceptance and abandonment are abstract concepts. I KNOW that I alone can take control of my feelings, and find ways to obliterate my fear. I KNOW that I can manifest the things I want, because I have done it before. So what do I remain afraid of, so that I only ever seem to be able to get so far, and no further?
Realistically, it all comes down to the same thing. Suffering. I am afraid that I will be miserable, and I will suffer. If I fail, I could be miserable in my failure, and I will suffer. If I succeed, I could alienate loved ones with my success, and I will suffer. If I show that I am not who people think I am, then I will cease to be accepted, and I will be miserable and suffer alone. If I am abandoned by all of my readers, my friends and loved ones, I will suffer in misery. All point to the same outcome – I am afraid of suffering.
Of course, I also know that the fear of suffering is in all probability worse than the suffering itself could be. Paulo Coelho, in The Alchemist, says, “Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”
We have all experienced this. I have been worried that something was going to be awful, and I got all worked up about what was going to happen, and I had trouble eating and sleeping and concentrating. Then, when the thing I feared actually happened, it paled in comparison to what I had worked it up to be in my head. The fear of suffering was far, far worse than the suffering.
So this is what I need to work on. I need to stop being afraid that if I fail, succeed, lose acceptance or get abandoned I will suffer terribly. I need to let go of this fear, find a means to replace it, and to take bold, inspired actions to make my dreams my realities.
I already have the tools. Meditation and exercise, writing and reading. I need to use the tools more thoroughly, act more intentionally and not just resist the fear, but overcome it. I need to come up with a mantra that will overwhelm my fear, and assist me in living this life as I most want to.
I have my usual quotes. The Litany Against Fear from Dune, multiple Yodaisms, Buddhist sayings, and a few others. But it’s time to blend them into a mantra I FEEL and memorize, and repeat over and over.
The fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. I gain more than I lose when I act upon my dreams. Fear is the mind killer, and I am not afraid. Do or Do Not. Remember that there is no spoon.
Let’s see what I can do with this. Thank you for crossing the bridges between my worlds with me!
This is the eighth entry of my personal journey, the Crossing the Bridges series. My collectively published writing can be found here.
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