Most psychiatric issues or neurosis begin here. Just four little letters, but this can be a monster in our minds. Questions like; what will they think? Is this world safe? Will God judge me? How can anyone love me? Who can i trust? And on, and on, and on.
I have seen fear keep people in very unhealthy relationships. I have seen fear keep people far away from freedom and joy. I have seen it both slowly and quickly destroy self-love, self-esteem, and self-care. It is the great enemy to mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being, and it is such a pervasive force. It shows up in the therapy space so often.
Almost all anxiety disorders begin with affirming a false and irrational fear. For instance, even though someone has locked the front door, they check it again because initially, fear dicatates they do so. Then, before too long, they are checking it five times before bed, then ten, then twenty times throughout the day, until this ritual has become a disabling form of OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder). A more common example is the person who is so self-conscious of what others think of him or her, that they filter all their actions and speech through, what they perceive, are other people's lenses. Basically, they fear being themselves. and the internalized message is simply, I'm not acceptable as I am. How about the person so scared of spiders that they no longer can take a walk in the woods or spend time in their beloved garden for fear of being bitten? It is easy to see, in those who suffer from specific phobias, how their freedom to move about in the world is devastatingly limited.
I recently had a client, a man in his 60's, who came to see me after an incident in his home, in which he pulled out a gun and scared his wife. She said that although he never threatened her directly, she worried that in his state of mind an accident could have occurred, or that he might have hurt himself. She wanted the guns out of the house. They had been married for 46 years. I asked the man if this was a reasonable request his wife was making, and could he understand her fear based on his actions. While he said he could understand, he told me flatly, as his wife sobbed deeply, that he would rather give up the marriage of 46 years than be separated from his guns. He went on to tell me that he kept a gun in every room in the house; every room.
It was at this point that I asked him why he felt the need to own so many guns and keep one always within arm's reach. Did he live in a dangerous part of town? Had his home or his neighbor's been broken into several times? Had he been the victim of violent crimes in the past? No, was his answer to all these questions and several more. In his 60 plus years of living, nothing like this had ever happened to him. However, the story he had told himself, or the one that had been told to him (through parents, society, peers, etc.), was that this world was very dangerous, and he needed to be on guard at all times.
I will tell you that although this man was in his 60's, he looked much older, and his anxieties (which were not substance induced or health related, as I assessed for this) caused him to both constantly tremble and startle at the slightest provocation. His life of fear had physical manifestations. His life of fear had mental consequences. He lived daily in a irrational and false sense of danger which made his loving marriage of 46 years disposable when it stood in the way of protecting himself from all these perceived threats.
This is just one example, and maybe it is on the more severe side, but fear so often disconnects us from reality. Occasionally, someone's fears come from a past trauma, and thusly are more understandable, but usually the person who fears snakes has never in their life even seen a snake much less been bitten by one. Yet they live in fear that despite their thousands of days upon this earth, today will be the day that they are attacked by a snake. again, fear is usually irrational and false.
What gives these fears more validity and how they become more toxic in our lives is when we don't challenge them. It is when we agree with the part of our mind sending us the faulty information, and then create and enforce the irrational pathway in our mind. Over time, the irrational becomes rational. We presume we need to wash our hands 30 times in a given hour. We think that people who hold a different belief system, skin color or sexual orientation are in some way threatening to our way of life. We become convinced (in the case of panic disorder) that we are having a heart attack or are being looked at by everyone, as our mind sends misinformation which can be crippling. In these cases and countless others, fear is in the driver's seat, and our rational self has been kicked out of the car.
Let me return for a minute to those who have experienced traumas which make them fearful of certain situations or circumstances. While this is indeed understandable, and psychologically is often manifested as PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) or in the 'startle response', the danger in not confronting and battling this fear is of no less consequence than for those with strictly irrational-based fear paradigms. For instance, the iraq war veteran who has returned home safely from the battlefield, but then takes cover in the bushes after a car backfires, is having his quality of life and mental health negatively impacted by unfounded fear.
The same can be said for the sexual abuse survivor, whose trauma still impacts their ability to feel safe in their own home; even in their own skin. Intimate touch from one's partner can still shows up as a violation, or cause such dissociation, that they are unable to enjoy the pleasure of such intimacy. They can also sabotage any chance at relationships because they falsely deem them as all being unsafe. The paranoia can cause untreated survivors to live in constant distress even though their abuser is dead or they are now an adult capable of defending themselves against unwarranted advances. Again, the once real fear is now a false specter which is cruelly dictating behavior. These survivors deserve more and it is in therapy we work to reclaim that which is still being stolen from them.
My focus is on optimum mental health for people. The posture of fear is one of hyper-vigilance, a clenched jaw, a tight body, an unclear mind, poor decision making, and so many other deleterious results. As my friend ned was talking about today, fear is the antithesis to love. For love of oneself and others promotes peace, joy, self-care, and mental well-being.
FDR had it right 99.9999% of the time when he said, "there is nothing to fear but fear itself." There are only a few times in life when fear is actually an appropriate response. The rest of the time, fear not only doesn't serve us but it, in fact, harms us. My encouragment is find out what you fear and move it out of your life with great haste. The freedom, joy, and love will flow more abundantly into your life, and your anxieties will melt away. If you can't do this on your own, seek a therapist, mentor, pastor, or elder you can trust to help you with this work. It is invaluable.
