Fear Has It’s Place, Let’s be Clear About That
A friend and colleague recently posted on her blog about the past year. I wanted to “respond” here, since it’s a universal topic you’re likely familiar with. Let’s call this friend Susie. Susie has had a lot going on between a health scare, a teenager who opted to play a scary sport and, like many, a new stage in life to navigate. Retirement comes with unexpected twists and turns. In her post, she identified fear as the unexpected word that shaped a better part of the last twelve months.
While I deeply appreciate her candor and willingness to share, I also want to gently nudge back. Very gently. Fear is a funny thing; it’s one of those shapeshifting, multicolored feelings. Most of us find ourselves learning how to navigate fear with “on the job” training.
Fear has us, amongst other things, frequently doing downright silly stuff as this article so wonderfully reminds us. It is also a common theme in therapy. No one gets away without experiencing it at some point in our lives.
What Does FEAR Stand For
One quick reminder could be that FEAR often stands in for False Evidence Appearing Real. This makes for a nice, fun blog piece and quick quip when you’re looking for the speedy reply. It even has the advantage of being accurate. A great deal of time we are looking at ‘false evidence’ and believing it to be very real.
What is ‘false evidence’, you ask? False evidence can be described as part of the internal dialogue. “They looked at me that way because they hate me…,” totally unaware the funny look is because the person in question had a pebble in their shoe. Or we get too caught up in our own minds to see clearly.
Important Reminder
Newsflash; not everything we think is real. Our brains are one big idea and thought producing machines but not all the product is worthy of our time and attention. False Evidence has a way of getting us twisted, if we’re not careful.
I would also suggest that while fear can be a miserable feeling, it can also be helpful in providing us some guardrails for what we don’t want. For example, think about the fear of a traffic ticket that helps you stay in the speed limit.
When fear begins to shape our everyday experiences and colors our perception, we have started down a not so helpful path. The sad part is, we are trying to help ourselves. The sadder part is that in the end, we have made our own situation much worse.
No Loopy-de-Loop
Susie found herself in a loop where the driving forces are legit, making the false evidence not so false. Can your kid get hurt participating in a sport where injuries are common, even under the best conditions? Yes. Is our healthcare system so broken that it often takes months to get the care you need? Four months to six months to see a specialist is no longer uncommon.
Reality Check
For the record, I’m not knocking the healthcare providers here, they are doing the best they can with the extremely limited resources they are working with. And I don’t know about you, but waiting that long for just about anything can feel awful, not to mention when it’s our bodies we are talking about.
And here’s where the nudge I spoke about earlier comes in; while the timing is unfortunate, the reality is the fear was real. The fear may have even played a bit of a helpful role. Sound crazy? Hear me out. Like the speeding ticket we try to avoid, fearing for our bank accounts and the hassle, the fear which shaped a better part of her year likely also played a role in keeping Susie focused on what needs to be done.
Squirrel Mind
Most of us have reasonably short attention spans. We don’t want to follow through with going to the doctor, think about the worst case or spend our limited resources on getting protective gear for that not so benign sport for our kid but we do get it. (That same gear will need to be replaced after a crash or because your kid hit a growth spurt 2 months after you purchased the first round of gear, but we still get it.)
Add to that the emotional energy that gets sucked up in living life on the edge. Staying in a near constant state of, “what if…” is exhausting. “What if my kid gets badly hurt?” “What if my medical needs are more than insurance will cover?” “What if my insurance opts to delay my care further?” “What if the sky really does fall in? What would that mean?”
No Chicken Little Here
The sky is not likely to fall anytime too soon. But are the other concerns well within bounds to consider? You bet. These are the very forces which shape most of our lives. Have you noticed the unplanned for, seemingly random experiences that come our way? Truly, the only way forward is through our fear and anxiety.
Keep moving while giving ourselves space and grace to ride out what is here already. Stay focused even when it feels a bit foolish to put the fear on the side for a moment. To deny how afraid we are is to deny the love and support we’re surrounded by. Fear is OK as long as you know when it’s time to put it down. If this is you, now is that time. And, if you’re someone who has put fear up front, allowed it more of a leading role than you wanted it to have, it’s OK to move it off to the side.
Looking for help navigating your own fear? I’m here. Give a shout when you’re ready.
