Let's take a closer look at fear

I was not in favour of doing a seasonally themed newsletter this year. Lila was talking about the Halloween newsletter for Relationship Ready and I heard her say the word “scary.” Immediately the word “FEAR” ran through my mind. It reminded me how often someone has said to me “I am frightened that…..”, “I am afraid…..”, “I feel so scared about……”, or “And then I feel fear…….” And I am reminded of two things.

Thing one: How many people struggle with fear. Are stopped or restricted by fear. How many of us have no answer to the feeling and the influence of fear. The influence and power of fear is strong in people’s lives and very few people I speak to have an idea how to handle it. It is common to hear that people feel powerless and stumped in the face of fear.

 Thing two: How little understanding there is about what fear is and what it is telling us. This thing, the absence of a better understanding of what fear is, is the overlooked answer to thing one. Without this understanding, our options are limited: cower in the face of our fear or steel ourselves and try and power through. I struggle with these options because there is no understanding of appreciation of what is going on when we are scared. What is fear telling us?

 So, I thought, let’s get behind the scenes and the special effects and draw back the curtain on fear.

 When I ask people what fear is, I get all sorts of varied answers. When I ask myself what fear is and I dig through to the very base of it, fear is a feeling. I only know I am scared because I feel it. At its root, that is what it is. However, seeing that fear is a feeling is not useful unless we know what feelings are and what feelings are telling us.

 From my perspective, feelings are the emotional and sensorial experience of thought. Whatever your experience of fear is, you can only have it when you have a fearful thought. The last time I went on a roller coaster, the fear started when I got in line. That is when I started thinking about the ride. The feeling was part emotion and part physical. It lasted until we came off the first bend and I saw how terrified my daughter was. In that instance the fear vanished. When I was focussed on helping my daughter, I had no fear experience because I had no fearful thought. In fact, something funny came to mind and we both ended up laughing and joking for the second half of the ride. When her mind shifted from terror to humour her fear vanished too.

 You might mistake this story as a guide to eliminating fear by distracting yourself. That would miss the point. If we try to avoid unpleasant feelings, we miss the vital role they can play for us. Our feelings are like a temperature gauge for our mind. They are the only objective measure of our level of clarity. Uncomfortable feelings are how we feel our loss of clarity and their intensity tell us the degree to which our mind is blowing things out of proportion. Fear tells us we are in a reactive state. The strength of the fear tells us just how reactive that state is. Fear does not tell us about the outside world, it is an invaluable measure of the clarity and sanity with which we are seeing the world around us.

 We might have challenges, problems, and dangers to face. The clarity of mind with which we see them and meet them makes a huge difference. If we are willing to consider that a feeling of fear means we are seeing things in a reactive, rather than a clear and balanced, way, the question changes from “how do I deal with fear and the things I am frightened of?” to “why would I worry what I am thinking when I am frightened?” That is a radically different question with potentially radically different results. Instead of being stumped by the reactive and frightening view of things that we see and feel in fearful states, all of a sudden, the feeling tells us it is a view of things we don’t need to worry about. The realty of “I am frightened that…..”, “I am afraid…..”, “I feel so scared about……”, or “And then I feel fear…….” becomes “I am feeling fear and it is good to know when my mind has a useful view of things and when it is more reactive and things are blown out of proportion in a scary way.” All of a sudden, the fear that used to be intimidating and overwhelming becomes an invaluable indicator of the unavoidable fluctuations in our clarity of mind. Interpreted as information about the outside world it is challenging, as information about our inside world can be so helpful.

Aaron Turner