Fear – Reactive Response
What are you afraid of? Is there something in your life that scares you to the point that it paralyzes you? Do you have fears?
I haven’t taken a poll or ever read any studies that are conclusive, but I would bet that most people, if not all people, have some fears. In fact, I think that some have fears so bad that it affects their finances, their relationships, even their health. I suppose that hospitals are filled with people whose symptoms began as side effects of fear.
Fear is an ugly thing that manifests itself in many ways. It usually is silent though, and almost always private. It’s not one of those things that too many people ever want to admit to. Unless someone is playing the sympathy-give-me-attention card, usually people keep quiet about what frightens them, probably because they are too afraid they’d be ridiculed if they were to share.
There may be an argument and there could even be a pretty solid case made for the benefits that some fears offer. For instance: when fears cause a person to be extra cautious, or when fears trigger protective instincts, like how I think most people would be if a grizzly bear were chasing them. Fears in these cases are actually a good thing.
The kind of fears that I would like to talk about are the fears that keep you from moving forward in your life, fears that paralyze you, keep you procrastinating, keep you worried, preoccupied, and frozen.
I’m sure you have seen that kind of fear. Perhaps you are even plagued with that kind of fear yourself. I know I have been. I know first hand how fear can paralyze you and cause you to sabotage any success you might enjoy. I’ve experienced myself the horrible stop-dead-in-your-tracks kind of fear that froze any progress and kept me from moving forward with any real positive action.
I have felt deeply the fear of failure, where I was afraid to fail, afraid that I would not succeed. I could come up with every reason in the book of why not to do something, and why I couldn’t or shouldn’t get started with something because it was going to fail. If I didn’t see a clear path towards success I’d not take a step forward – no way, no how! Logically, I would lay out all the reasons – they made perfect sense, and most of them were actually dead-on correct.
Then there’s the fear of success which is that you are afraid that you’ll have to change too much in order to do the things success requires, afraid you’ll have to be a different person, afraid you aren’t good enough, smart enough, constant enough to handle the flow success will exact of you. So instead of moving forward you don’t move at all.
If you have ever experienced such fear you know exactly what I am talking about. It’s the kind of feeling that makes you want to crawl up into the fetal position in the corner. Alright that might be bit dramatic, but the fear that paralyzes is the most awful fear of all – second to the fear that sabotages.
What is a fear that sabotages? It’s really quite psychological. In fact all fear is tremendously psychological. It’s all in your head. I’m not a psychiatrist but I do know first hand fear can get a person really twisted up inside.
It goes like this: first you think you are not good enough to accomplish a certain thing, but you really want to, so you set out to accomplish it. You break past all the small fears by shear willpower thinking the small fears are just dumb little nuisances you created in your head (which by the way is exactly where they come from). But after a few steps towards your goal your fears really start to grab harder – why, you might actually pull this thing off, you might actually succeed. Your fears pull on the brakes. And instead of taking steps forward towards the accomplishment of your goal your fears now cause you to start back peddling. You might as well give up – you’re in self sabotage mode now! How dare you think you can accomplish the thing that you desired! What were you thinking? Fear won – you lost; back to square one. And that’s just it, back at square one is your comfort zone, no fears live there, so that’s where you’re apt to stay – stuck, frozen!
Does any of this sound familiar? If it does than you’ve made a horrible friend – fear.
Is there a way out? Let me answer with a resounding yes, ABSOLUTELY. But before we go any further I want to give you a better description and definition of this horrible monster that keeps you paralyzed.
What is fear? Is it an emotion? Is it some psychological phenomenon? I think most people understand what it is on the surface. Heck, if a grizzly were chasing you, instinctively you’d know what fear was. But what is it in terms of what we are talking about?
Fear is reactive. Reactive in the sense that you are responding to “what is.” “What is” is the “existing reality.” It acts a certain way which causes you to be afraid and fear is how you respond to it. Here, I’ll say that a different way. Something happens in your existing reality, or you see something, or hear something that triggers your fear, it pushes your fear button, and you react to it accordingly – you scream, you cry, you run away, you freeze, etc.. Fear is a response to the “seen” substance or circumstance, the “what is” or “existing reality” – fear is the reactive response to it.
Fear is also the reactive response to the “what could be.” Many people react with fear to things that haven’t even happened yet. I call this crossing the bridge before you get to the bridge.
One day I was telling a friend that I couldn’t do a certain thing, I followed it with all the reasons why the certain thing wouldn’t work. My friend told me to stop being the man who needed a jack. I must have given her a weird look, because she immediately began to tell me a story.
It was dark and rainy and a man got a flat tire. He opened the trunk to get the jack out to change the tire and found that he had no jack. He looked up the hill from where he was stranded and saw an old farm house, and wondered to himself if anyone was home. As he walked toward the home he spoke to himself under his breath, “ I’ll bet nobody is home, and even if they are it’s the middle of the night and it’s raining and they would possibly want to lend a jack to a total stranger.” His conversation worsened as he neared the farm house. When he got to the door he knocked on the door. A few minutes later a kind old man opened the door, at that the man who needed a jack punched the kind old man in the gut and shouted, “I don’t need your darn jack anyways!” and huffed off.
Don’t be the man who needed a jack! Sound advice. But all too many times we cross bridges long before we ever get to the bridge, and then react in fear to the thing that hasn’t even happened yet. Kind of crazy huh? Like I said, fear is all in your head.
I could share example after example about how fear has caused people to do destructive things in their lives. Like I said earlier I have experienced fear first hand. Let me tell you, fear is not right kind of friend to have. There is however something that can banish fear forever. A true friend that can liberate you from the paralyzing effects of fear. In an upcoming blog post I will tell you of this better friend.
 Today, your assignment is to write a list of the things that you are afraid of.A few things will come quickly – write them down. Then sit and think deeper.What are you afraid of? What fears do you really have, maybe even hidden. List them all.In a future blog post I will tell you what you can do with this list. For today, just list as many as you can think of.NOTE: don’t dwell on them. That’s not good. Just list them, fold the paper up and put it to the side for future reference. But please don’t rehash, relive, or put yourself through the emotions of your fears again. |
To your creations,
Michael Claridge
