Shining a Light on Fear
What are you afraid of? Are you now (or have you ever been) so afraid of something that it kept you awake at night? During that fearful time, would you describe yourself as “happy”?
I’m assuming that most of you answered “no” to the last question. When we are very fearful, it’s difficult to be happy. Unfortunately, fear is a common occurrence, so if we want to maximize our happiness, it’s a subject we need to talk about.
As I mentioned last week, in the U.S. we just had a major election which has caused a myriad of emotions for many folks, including fear. With the election over, perhaps fear has subsided for some, but it has undoubtedly increased for others. Sadly, fear can be contagious, so even those who aren’t afraid can “catch” it from their family, friends, and the media.
If you find yourself in a place of fear… about anything, not just an unnerving election, what can you do?
My post last week about how to be happy when your candidate loses also applies to fear, so you can continue to use those ideas this week, too. But there’s more we can do where fear is concerned, so let’s explore that, shall we?
Name Your Fears
Let’s go back to my first question now: What are you afraid of?
You might be afraid of many things at the moment, but let’s focus on just one. What feels the most looming, the most dangerous, the most scary to you?
We’ll use this one thing that you want to focus on right now to (hopefully) help you deal with that fear better. If you want to repeat the exercise I’ll share in a minute with other fears, you can do so by addressing each of your fears, one at a time.
Begin by writing down your fear at the top of a blank piece of paper. You can write an entire sentence, a short title, or a single word. What you write isn’t all that important except that it needs to immediately bring to mind whatever your fear is.
Exploring Your Fear
Now that you have a singular focus, it’s time to begin exploring what this fear means to you.
Underneath the name of the fear, answer as many of the following questions you can about this fear:
Why is this so fearful to me?
What do I expect to lose if what I fear comes to fruition?
Have I had similar fears in the past? If so, what were the circumstances surrounding it?
Why does this fear feel so large right now?
Depending on the issue, some of these questions will be easier to answer than others. Also, there may be a certain relevancy about some of them more than the others. (For example, if your fear stems from who won the election, your answer to the “why now” question might be “because the election news is so fresh in my mind.”)
As an alternative to answering the questions I posed, you could instead journal or freewrite about your fear. Simply write down everything that pops into your head about this fear. If your mind wanders, it’s OK to write about whatever else comes up because those “unrelated” thoughts might be surprisingly relevant to your fear.
Learning About Your Fear
When you’ve accumulated enough material, either from freewriting or from answering the questions above, begin to think about ways to mitigate the fear. Again, you can freewrite if you choose, or use these questions to help you formulate ideas:
How likely is what I fear to come to fruition?
Has anyone I know or read about navigated this type of fear before me? If so, how did they navigate it?
If I knew for certain that what I fear will come to fruition, how would I prepare for that inevitability?
If someone had a magic wand and could eliminate the root of my fear, what would they be making disappear?
What might I lose if this scary thing came to fruition?
What might I gain if this scary thing came to fruition?
Now read what you’ve written. What jumps out at you? What might you need to explore further? Did you learn anything surprising about your fear?
There are no right or wrong answers here. The goal is to explore your fear and to see what you can learn about it.
I’m hopeful that some of you might have found that writing about your fear led you to be less afraid of it. That can happen because by exploring you’ve allowed your subconscious thoughts to bubble to the surface. An issue with fear can be that we refuse to even look at what we are so scared of, but once we do, we are surprised to find that it’s not nearly as scary as we imagined.
You may have also discovered that what you initially thought was the cause of your fear was actually something else. Those who care for dying people, for instance, have found that most people are not as afraid of death itself as they are of the process of dying.
Alternatively, you may have discovered that your fear wasn’t as all-encompassing as you originally thought. For example, if you wrote that you are afraid of heights, after exploring the subject you might find that you’re not afraid of all heights, but only heights over (say) three stories.
Putting your fear in the proper perspective and uncovering the real issue that lies below the surface can help alleviate much of the emotion surrounding it.
Find Ways to Mitigate Your Fear
Without knowing what your specific fear is, I can’t say much about how you might mitigate it, but you are intelligent and resourceful1 and you have all the knowledge, wisdom, and resources you need to discover how to deal with your fear.
You might want to discuss your fear and/or your mitigation strategies with a friend, someone else who has managed a similar fear, or a professional. Whatever course you take, realize that you can find help to mitigate your fear either within yourself or from others you trust.
With regard to getting help from experts, let me reach back to my example about people not being afraid of death itself as much as they are about the process of dying. Hospice caregivers deal with this fear all the time and they have found ways to help the dying by addressing their actual fears rather than a nebulous “I’m afraid of dying” fear.
If someone is afraid of the pain of dying, doctors prescribe medications that alleviate as much pain as possible. If a dying person is afraid to die because they worry about leaving their family, their loved ones can help by assuring them that they will be fine. If a dying person feels they have unfinished business, the hospice professionals will attempt to engage the right person(s) to help them “finish” this business.
In other words, we must be specific about what we are afraid of in order to find ways to deal with and mitigate whatever is scary for us. Until we truly understand what we are fearful of, we’ll have difficulty calming ourself and difficulty finding ways to practically deal with whatever we fear the most.
Face Your Fears
The point I want to leave you with this week is that understanding your fear is a substantial part of making it less scary.
What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it. — Jiddu Krishnamurti
Fear is a lot like the monster that we thought was hiding under our bed when we were kids. Turning on the light proved that there was nothing to fear. All we are doing with our exploration is turning on the light.
You don’t think so? Well, all of my readers are intelligent and resourceful so you must be also! :)