‘Hold my beer and watch this.’”
I am relatively certain that fear made it impossible for me to feel normal or to feel like I fit in with the rest of the kids my age. I know fear played a role in keeping me from doing many things I wanted to do. I also believe it kept me from making friends I wanted to make—I had a small number of friends growing up—and from attempting to do some of the things I would have liked to do. I did try out for sports, but I didn’t do well thanks to my lack of ability in certain sports. Some of my coaches detested me due to the erratic behavior caused by my drinking and drugging.
I was told in sixth grade that I should make a career of singing, but I didn’t pursue it, or any of the other performing arts, thanks to my fear of being labeled in a derogatory way. After all, I began taking ballet at the age of eleven, and others told me during the following years that I should make a career of that, too. That was enough ammunition for those who knew about my dancing, without me adding to the mix. Fear convinced me to avoid this field of endeavor.
Fear changed the way I felt about myself, as well as how I felt about the people around me. I had it in my fearful mind that teachers were out to cause me trouble when they were really trying to help me learn. Any authority figure was cause for alarm: police, teachers, doctors, and adults in general drove my fear to great heights. Although I see now how irrational my fear was, it caused me great pain while I was growing up, and continued into my adult life. In fact, when I finally got into recovery I discovered that I had to find a way to deal with it. Running was no longer an option if I wanted to live a full and normal life.
Fear drove the choices I made, and those choices led to consequences. Since I made most of my choices based on fear, most of my consequences were of a negative nature. I even came to believe that consequences were always a negative thing, as in “If you do that you will suffer the consequences.” I thought that I always had to suffer through consequences. My thinking has changed in this area thanks to what I have learned in recovery, but for most of my life I did my best to lessen the impact of consequences rather than simply do things that would bring positive consequences into my life.
A More Positive Look at Fear
Fear is part of life. In fact, life might be boring without it. However, fear can also disrupt my life in many ways. I can let it stop me from doing things I want to do, make me do things I don’t want to do, and generally wreak havoc in my day-to-day life. Fear can also cost me friendships through my not pursuing them or by causing me or the other person to end the relationship. Yes, fear can be an enemy, an often inevitable and invisible enemy.
I think anyone would agree that fear is a part of life and that it isn’t going to leave us anytime soon—probably never, and “never is a long time,” as my dad likes to say. If fear isn’t going to go away, the question becomes “How can I live with the fear that slithers through me from day to day?” The best answer, as usual, is simple. It is simple to say, yet difficult to do—at least at first—although it does get easier with practice. The answer is to deal with it head-on.
Like anything else, fear isn’t something that can be dealt with without some effort. Just as we have to learn to deal with new challenges, we can learn to deal with fear in either positive or negative ways, ways that either help or harm us. If we choose to deal with the fear instead of just reacting to it, we can learn to use it. If we choose to take positive action when fear shows its ugly head instead of hiding from it, we can make genuine progress. The key to dealing with fear in a positive manner is first to recognize it for what it is. I must understand that I am feeling fear, rather than simply let my emotions drive me. If I don’t acknowledge the fear, I may never get a grip on the matter.
In Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inaugural address, given on March 4, 1933, he mentioned fear. Most people are familiar with the quotation, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” However, that is only a portion of a sentence, which is only part of his speech. One might argue that it is taken out of context. I won’t argue that point here. I would like to look at the entire sentence, though. Here it is: “So first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
Now that says something. Not that the shorter quote doesn’t; it does, just not as much. I have done some thinking on the shorter version of the quote and have brought meaning from it into my life, because, when it comes to fear, I think I should be afraid of letting it run my life. I’ve spent far too much of my life living in fear—letting my anxieties dictate what I could or couldn’t do, what I should or shouldn’t do, whom I should befriend and whom I should avoid, or at least not befriend, what kind of job I should have. I’ve stayed in a job I didn’t like because fear told me I’d never find another one, let alone a better one. For many years I didn’t look to see if there might be a better job, because fear told me I had to quit one job before I could look for another one, and I believed that conniving, life-wrecking fear. Looking back, I think I chose to believe that particular fear because it seemed easier than not believing it. It seemed easier to stay in a rut than to take a critical look at why I was staying in the rut.
When I finally began looking at fear instead of just retreating from it, I began to see just how much I let fear run my life. I had to allow fear to take the lead. It couldn’t do so without my consent. While most of the time I didn’t consciously give my consent, I didn’t exactly protest its control, either; I simply reacted to life, and to fear. When I did protest, I usually did so while “the committee” discussed it in my mind, instead of my discussing it with a trusted friend. A friend might be able to shed some light on the matter, which could help me see things as they really are instead of through the unfocused and blurred lens of fear. Fear likes to keep me in the dark recesses of my own mind where I can’t see my options; however, when fear is exposed to the spotlight of truth, it usually begins to fade, shrink, or disappear altogether. The truth about fear is that it’s just as afraid of me as I am of it, but we’ll discuss that a little bit later.
Let’s look at the second half of the quotation from FDR: “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” To me, that is a wonderful definition of what fear really is. FDR’s understanding of fear is not what the dictionary says exactly, but it captures the meaning of fear for me today. Another way to look at it is to define it in this way: “fear: [a] nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” If that doesn’t describe fear, I don’t know what does. Fear is often nameless, and nearly always unreasoning. It’s usually unjustified, though I like to justify it because it seems like fear can provide me with an easy way out. Fear can quickly paralyze my efforts to convert retreat or hiding into advance or taking necessary action, whether I justify it or not. The question then becomes “How do I deal with this menace?” The answer, again, is simple, but not so easy.
I must face my fears head-on.
I used to believe that overcoming fear meant that I was supposed to be fearless, that I was supposed to find a way not to feel afraid. This is just plain wrong. “Don’t be afraid” is misguided advice. It can’t be done. If I wait until I stop feeling fear, I’ll never do anything. I’ve found that I can’t make fear leave by thinking or wishing it away—no matter how hard I try. To rid myself of fear I must walk through it, repeatedly walk through it. I don’t remember ever being told this directly. Instead, I learned it by doing. My sponsor repeatedly pushed me through “walls of fear” until I concluded that fear is overcome not through willpower or wishing it away, but through courageous action.
Courageous action is something I’ve also had to redefine, because my definition of courage used to be “the absence of fear.” I thought that in order to be courageous, I had to rid myself of fear. My experience and subsequent research have led me to a new understanding of what courage is and what it is not. Courage is not the absence
