How To Work With Fear
Georgia O’Keeffe famously stated "I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I've never let it keep me from a single thing that I wanted to do."
And Georgia wasn’t alone. Fear is a universal experience. Well all get scared. Even the people with the “No Fear” stickers on their cars.
Fear of losing someone we love. Fear or not being accepted or respected. Fear of dying. Fear of failure. Fear of humiliation. Fear of not achieving our goals. The list goes on.
Most of us experience that fear frequently.
So, if fear is somewhat inevitable, how do we work with fear? Especially in real time when we’re experiencing it!
Most of us grow up trying to avoid or ignore fear. And we certainly don’t admit that we’re scared to anyone else for fear of ridicule.
But as we get older, we start to see the fallacy in this approach. Keeping the fear bottled up inside only makes it stronger. Conversely, telling someone when we’re afraid seems to make the fear dissipate. Makes it lose some of it’s potency.
I think there are two phases of working with fear.
Dealing with it in the moment.
Understanding the causes and conditions of fear so we are better equipped to work with it when it shows up again.
Working with fear in the moment requires us to let go of our old childish approach of resistance and avoidance. Instead, I try to take two actions when I get scared. 1) Bring mindfulness to my fear. I start by being mindful of my body and noticing where the fear is felt. Is it in my chest, or is my throat tight, are my jaws clenched, does my stomach have butterflies, etc?
After I locate the sensation in my body, I breathe into that space. Over and over for a few minutes, allowing my body to relax. Allowing my muscles to release their grip on this tension.
After I locate the fear in my body and breath into it, I try to follow the advice of the famous Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh and open up to the fear by saying, “Hello, Old Friend. I know you.” By greeting and welcoming the emotion instead of resisting it, my body relaxes and I can breathe and I have a much better chance at getting to the root of what the fear is really about.
So what’s the cause of these fears? How can we work with them at the root level? Well, this get’s a little harder and requires more work on our part. In order to see where our fears stem from, we have to cultivate a strong sense of self-awareness. That can come from sitting in meditation for a while, letting the mind settle down and taking a good look at what we’re really scared of. It can come from a writing or journaling practice where we practice some honest self-appraisal. Both of these things combined can help accelerate a working sense of self-awareness.
Once we start asking ourselves “What is this really about?” we find ourselves being afraid of not getting something we want, or being afraid of getting something we don’t want.
The buddhist refer to this as craving and aversion and when I find myself in either of these states, I’m not accepting reality. I’ve stopped working with life on life’s terms and am now holding on tightly to the way I want things to happen. Like a two year old.
When I find myself in this situation, I am creating my own suffering. No one is doing this to me. I manufactured it…which is good news, because that means I’m not a victim and can do something about it!
And the thing that I can do is to let go. To surrender. To realize at a deep level that I’m upset because I’m not getting what I want. When I understand that and quit stomping around like an entitled child, a sense of peace starts to come over me.
And that peace is worth more to me than what I thought I wanted in the first place.
