There's not much we can do about fear. Not really. It is
uncomfortable; that is true. Too much of it is certainly not a good
thing, but not enough of it in situations where it is warranted can be
deadly and dangerous to our well-being.
In
fear we have evolved a remarkable adaptive mechanism. It's not been
that long since we crouched in the damp or arid confines of wherever we
found shelter, with our little sputtering fires and our nearly tamed
pack of dogs not far out of the ring of shadows and light. We lived in a
constant state of hyper vigilance; or at least, most of our forebears
who were small and had to contend with much larger carnivores did. Our
adrenalized danger signals and systems of retreat or attack were finely
tuned to the dangers of our surroundings.
When we needed to, when
the huge teeth and claws of the larger meat-eaters glinted too close to
us in our little packs, our bodies were well-equipped for the
split-second decision to escape or fight for our lives and for the lives
of our children. Immediately our adrenal system dumped a kind of speed
into our electrical and cardio systems and our pulses raced to prepare
us for battle or to run, our breathing became shallow and our blood
supply was altered: more to the huge muscle masses that would help us
run or fight, less to the rest of us. Often this resulted in instant
elimination, the lighter the better. Our higher brain functions took
second place to muscle and more primitive memory parts of the brain. We
could kill if we had to. We could save ourselves even when our
pack-members were being eaten. Perhaps their shrieks spurred on our
body's powerfully self preserving mechanism. Sometimes in the end, we
got away. Sometimes in the end, we had more food for the cold months.
It's
been a blink of an evolutionary eye since we lived in that world. Some
of us still do, although now it is more often others of our own species
that we fight or flee from, often it is the machines of war and
massacre. The adrenalized mechanism of survival is put to good use even
now. We hear the stories of mothers or fathers lifting cars off the
crushed bodies of their children. We see films and reports of people who
respond heroically in crises: the 12 year old girl I read about who
lived on a small island about to be inundated by a tsunami who ran to
ring the community bell to warn the community and in doing so saved the
entire small population of her hometown.
Fear is a good thing. It
isn't often considered to be. But it has its drawbacks as well. The
powerful system that it uses to let us know of its presence, of the
presence of what has been interpreted as danger, is as well-developed
and speedily put into action in an executive whose most dangerous act
all day is to cross the street before and after he goes to work, as in a
tribal family in Kashmir that has to contend with the sudden incursions
and withdrawals of a number of armies that use them as fodder for their
deadly acts of war.
Even in peaceful communities with low level
conflict and social pressures instead of life and death events that
happen on a regular basis, fear is ever present... in fact, how it makes
itself known in those situations may even become more recognizable, for
the nature of the fear is less tangible and easily minimized when
compared with what we remember collectively and deeply.
In recent
years we have seen the rise of the somewhat misleading term "anxiety
attack" although the "attack" part of the term may, in fact, be a very
accurate descriptor of how the event of a sudden panic or anxiety event
feels to its victim. Someone walks through the aisle of a grocery store
and suddenly feels a need to move more quickly and breaks into a sweat.
The lips are numb. Balance feels off and fear of collapsing occurs along
with a heart beat that feels like it might pound through the rib cage.
Nausea sets in as well as blurred vision. The more that person becomes
aware of the terror being felt, the feeling that something is WRONG, the
worse it gets. The shopping cart gets left in the aisle, after an
urgent trip to the rest room. When he or she then manages to get to the
local emergency room, the doctor says everything is normal; "your vitals
are heightened, but there is nothing wrong"... and then that question
comes: "Have you been under any stress lately?"
While this may
sound like an extreme example, it is not an unusual one. Many people
live with the debilitating effects of these kinds of "attacks" for many
years, and much of the literature about the treatment of such events is
not very optimistic about treatment, at least from a pharmacological
angle; in fact, medicating such events is often seen as a reinforcement
to the "attacks" over the long term as opposed to a good way to
ameliorate them.
And perhaps these are extreme examples of how
fear can become a stumbling block in our lives as opposed to something
we can keep in an appropriate perspective and use instead of being used
by. In my work with grieving people and those who have terminal or
life-threatening, life-changing illness the occurrence of anxiety and
panic events was so common that I made discussions of it routine as
opposed to waiting until it presented itself. For one thing, some people
who had such events were reticent to report them.
In grief,
especially, the mourners often experienced such things as a medical
event entirely and were mystified when nothing besides an elevated blood
pressure or pulse could be found. They might have been afraid they too
were about to succumb to the terminal illness from which their loved one
died. So I came prepared with education and normalization, as well as
breathing exercises and a number of other informal, self-initiated,
bio-feedback interventions to pull out of my bag of tricks... and they
were invariably welcomed and used.
Still, when we talk about how
fear motivates us, how we move because of it in our lives, we are
generally not talking about dramatic examples. For those of us whose
most dangerous act might be more in the realm of crossing a busy street,
flying cross country in a jumbo jet, giving a presentation at our place
of business, sitting down with a supervisor to review topics of
conflict, or making and presenting a holiday dinner for a group of
extended family fear does not seem to amount to what our forbears
experienced in their little groups on the savannah.
But I would
like to suggest that the level of fear in our lives may, in fact, be
completely relative. It may, even in our comparatively safe world,
occupy as much of our functioning, our complex systems of motivation and
search for meaning and satisfaction, as it did in our more dangerous
pasts. To minimize its role may be a potentially serious misjudgment.
This is a frightening world. The things that threaten us may seem
distant and less graspable than the way being confronted by a grizzly
bear outside the door of our stone shelter did, but they can often
symbolize life and death in as frightening a way. Financial and business
troubles, the prospects and lives of our children as the economy
continues to fail to grant them the kinds of opportunities we had,
threats from various parts of a society that is full of inner, if not
outer, unrest and lack of sureness about health and wellness and
security in our housing can feel as threatening to us as that bear felt
to our ancestors... if less obviously a direct and immediate threat to
our body's ability to go on.
We live in a world where fear is less
an event-to-event possibility of extremes. It is stretched and smeared
out over time as a collective constant that we keep informed about
through news mediums and various community information systems. It is
layered over the more personal fears we carry from experiences that
inform our lives and are remnants of the wounds and traumas all of us
carry. These are the wounds and traumas that exist as parts of the
building blocks of our individuation and how we educate and transform
and build the communication that occurs between our genetic codes and
our nervous system. We can manage this more nebulous fear as a good
teacher of what to avoid that delivered us into similarly threatening
situations in our pasts. It can push us through patterns of social
functioning and disappointment successfully by reminding us, consciously
and not, what we did that delivered us from fear in the past and how we
can avoid traveling the same "pathway" or "river".
But fear is an
uncomfortable teacher. And relied upon exclusively does not often
instruct us in joy or even love but more in suspicion and dependence.
Fear can be used by others who really do not have our best interests in
mind to manipulate us; others who know the buttons that can be pushed to
activate it. It is an automatic response and can be turned on purposely
to gain control and move individuals and the collective. Much of
advertising, propaganda and campaigning is adept at this use of fear
buttons: the science of the concrete replications of the cues that
demand a fear response in humans is largely ensconced in the public
relations and political campaigning fields.
But people want
something other than fear as a teacher. The discomfort of fear and its
modern sibling anxiety may in fact be a major motivator, but it is
resisted and in itself feared. In fear and anxiety we walk away from
what makes us fearful and anxious. We "double-whammy" ourselves by
feeling fearful and anxious about fear and anxiety. We want to shed it.
It hurts. We want less of it. We want to be pulled forward by something
that is attractive, by attraction itself, by what lies before us...
rather than feeling we are always walking, or running, away from what we
are afraid of, what we hope we are leaving behind.
How can we do
this? If fear is such an integrated part of who we are as people, as one
person, if it so informs our way through and into our futures, and what
we avoid and try to escape from, how can we see, create and/or
recognize the thing that is before us that might have the power to
mitigate that discomfort... might even resolve and dissolve it or
balance it out?
If fear must push us forward, can something else
more attractive, something like authentic hope or invention, be there
equally to pull us forward? To balance the yin and the yang of our
process into being who we really are and want to be and become?
In
a questionnaire I routinely give to my clients that asks questions
about their fears and the role they have in their lives and the reasons
they have sought out a coach, I ask them to imagine what their life
would be like without their fears... how would their life and their
strivings look if fear was not involved? Can they imagine their goals as
a part of something other than a fear or anxiety about where they are?
Can fear be transformed into more of a clear and transcendent reaching
into the uninvented future? And if they can do this, how will their life
look, what will they feel like as they move toward their goals?
Often
enough, people reach an awareness, sometimes for the first time when
they answer this question that their fears are instructive and
constructive. They would not lose them entirely but modify how they are
felt and the effects they have on their feelings about their goals. Even
through this modest exercise, authentic inner-driven hope already
demonstrates the power of its ability to balance the scale between
fearing and embracing the future, the plan for the future.
Just as
often, people also say without the discomfort of fear they would feel
lighter. More light. I like that: the idea that without fear, or with
fear accepted and held but not in itself feared, we can become lighter,
more like the light. How fine is that? To be able to go forward on our
journey with our new invented future but with less weight, more
illumination.
I challenge you to do the same. In a truly
frightening world in which the changes portend an even more disturbing
future, what would it be like for you to see it without fear or without
the fear of feeling fearful?
If you are successful at envisioning
this, what do you imagine would be the primary benefit of seeing your
future in this way? What fears do you imagine you will still need? How
will they serve you and how will you balance the discomfort they cause
so that they do not stop your forward motion or keep you looking
backward as you move into your potential for a more illuminated future?
In addition to being a Certified Professional Life Coach, for
over twenty-two years I've worked as a social worker in a wide variety
of fields, from psychiatric social work to adolescent counseling. I
spent eleven years as a family counselor with a hospice organization.
Coaching offers me a collaborative way to approach the issues and
problems people face. It is strengths based. I believe people have the
resources and skill to uncover their own best way to help overcome and
cope with life's quandaries, losses and growth.
These are the areas of coaching in which I can be of assistance:
~ Life Transition due to Health Changes, Self or Loved Ones
~ Family and Primary Relationship/s
~ Pre-Marital and Wedding Coaching
~ Grief and Loss
~ Creative Process for artists and writers
~ Alternative Long Term Relationships
~ Vocation and Career
~ Overcoming Patterns of Self Defeating Behavior
In
addition I have been a widely published poet and writer, photographer,
playwright, actor and director. I enjoy rustic camping, hiking and
backpacking. I am an avid swimmer, gardener and canner.
