Recognizing Fear

Fear is something that I've always thought about. When I was younger, it was easier to recognize what I was afraid of, the list inclded, but was not limited to: a green monster I thought lived in Loafer Mountain overshadowing the canyon I grew up in, Malifiscent (spelling?) from Sleeping Beauty, getting lost, being stolen from my family, and riding on carousels. All very easy to recognize. When I was a child, I was full of life and imagination and dreams. I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up and that was a rockstar named Hot Pink who worked with animals on the side and in her spare time was discovering the cre for all the world's maladies. I wanted world peace and my favorite song to sing was Michael Jackson's, "Heal the World". I lived in a canyon between two mountains and so my imagination was extreme. I would spend my days exploring the mountains and creating worlds to live in and come dinner time, I would go home and eat and then dream about those worlds come the night time. The next day I would do it all over again.



I don't know when it happened, or the events that led up to it happening in the first place, but eventually my imagination became less and less inspiring and more and more logical, therefore not imagination at all. Somewhere along the line of childhood to now, I grew up and there is nothing wrong with that, what is wrong is that along with the disappearance of my imagination, went my dreams and I stuck with what I knew I could do and stopped attempting what I couldn't do and wasn't sure I could do and I stopped trying. When it came time to learn new things, beit in school, work, church, any aspect of my life, I would become anxious and self-conscious and afraid. I can recall having many discussions relating to fear over the last 10 years with variou people. At the conclusion of these discussions, I would always be asked the same question, "What is it you are afraid of?" And I would always answer the same answer, "Nothing" because I didn't know what I was afraid of and that scared me. Eventually I started to explain away my fear by using various examples of times when I did something that would intimidate other's... but intimidation and fear are two different beasts.

Becoming a grown up is hard to do, well, it's not hard to do because it happens naturally, but it's hard to adapt to. Life becomes more difficult and complicated and, more often than not the people who come and go in your life leave you with a confused aftertaste, and the relationships with the people who you love and rely on, the most, get tested and change and become beautifully different, but you know they'll never be what they once were even though you are always hoping for 'what once was'. And you, you are trying to adapt and come out unscathed. What's wrong with admitting you are scared in the first place? I used to think that fear was weak, but it isn't. What was weak was my inability to understand that fear existed in my life and to figure out what that fear was and overcome it. Instead I hid and stopped trying.

I have a tremendous fear of failing so I don't try. Instead I settle for substandard and allow that to become my life. So, when substandard becaome your life, you become disgusted with yourself that you don't dare to achieve more, and you tell yourself that you couldn't acheive more or something greater even if you tried because you're not good enough. Fear morphs into inability which morphs into disappointment which is discouraging. My fear, that I wouldn't recognize, turned in to my not daring to try anything because I "knew" I couldn't do it, and from that came disappointment that my life was not turning out the way I remembered hoping it would and that's discouraging which would lead to my fear of trying different things. I know this is all horribly confusing, so let me for-instance an example for you. The easiest example for me will be to relate it to why I stay in relationships that aren't healthy for me and why I am not able to cut the cord when I recognize that they are going no where but bad. If you've read any of the previous posts, you know the type of relationships that I've been in and they are pretty scary and went from bad to worse. I stayed in these relationships because I was afraid of the alternative. Part of my fear of the alternative was that I didn't know what that alternative was. Whenever I would allow myself to have the tiniest bit of insight and recognize that I deserve better, I still wouldn't go after "better" because "better" wouldn't want me so why try? And so, I would stay with what I had and what I had was bad and the fact that I was staying with it was discouraging, so the next time "bad" came along I would go along with it because I was afraid to try something different.

You've heard the saying, "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" well, maybe fear and insanity are cousins. The ironic thing about all of this is that, Fear, the thing I was trying the hardest to not allow in to my life, was the thing itself that was leading my life. You can't fix what you don't know is broken, and if it is you that is broken, you aren't going to get fixed without recognizing that something is wrong and fear is wrong, it is horribly wrong to do to yourself, but it can be fixed, you just have to try something different.

What I know about myself: I am afraid of failure so I don't try, which is a form of failing. Knowing this means it can be fixed. I will succeed at fixing my fear because I am no longer afraid of success. I can achieve anything that I set out to do, maybe not right away, but eventually and only if I don't give up because I'm afraid to try it again. Fear is a construct of my own mind, it is not the defining factor of who I am and courage is found by understanding this. In 2010, I will no longer allow fear to define who I am, I am not fear, I am courage and strength. The beauty of these words is that they are not too brave for how I feel because I believe every single one of them.