Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Fear
by Dorothy Rowe
2
Laura describes herself as ‘very nervy, just like my mother’. She sees
danger everywhere: a gift of flowers is sure to bring out an allergic
rash; a visit from a friend leaves her worrying about the quality of her
coffee and about what a remark made by her friend actually meant.
She is frightened of all strangers, especially people in authority or from
a foreign country, and she worries constantly that she has upset her
family and friends. She hates leaving home, because she knows that
every journey will end in disaster, so she stays home and worries that
life is passing her by.
Fear helps to protect us from death and danger, but being too
afraid stops us from living life to the full. The type of people we
are, whether introvert or extravert, can define what frightens us.
This booklet can help you work out what your worst fears are,
and what you can do about them. It tells you what you have to
do to survive as a person, psychologically.
3
What is fear?
Fear is what we feel when we are unable to predict what is going to
happen, and we think that what is going to happen is likely to be bad
for us. Fear is a very useful emotion, because it helps keep us alive. If
we never felt fear, we wouldn’t be aware of danger, and so we wouldn’t
do what’s necessary to protect ourselves.
Surviving as a person means being the person that you know yourself
to be, not giving yourself up to be what someone else wants you to be.
It’s about not shrinking under the weight of humiliation or cruelty to
become an object, a nothing. It means not falling apart, or disappearing,
when overwhelmed by unexpected events.
When we are faced with a crisis that reveals a serious difference between
what we thought our life was and what it actually is, we try to survive
as a person by interpreting what has happened. We can choose to do
so in one of two ways. We may tell ourselves that the crisis is a challenge,
which we will master, and thus we become courageous. Or we may
tell ourselves that the crisis is our punishment for our wickedness, or
that we are weak and helpless and there’s nothing we can do to
protect ourselves. In this case, we increase our fear.
Clare
All her life, whenever someone told Clare she couldn’t do something,
she would prove them wrong. So, when her doctor told her that her
stomach cancer was inoperable and that she had only a short time to
live, she proved him wrong by having an operation and surviving.
Four years later, the cancer came back, and when the pain couldn’t be
controlled, Clare went into a hospice where, to her great horror, she lost
control of her bowels. She felt shamed and humiliated. Her great courage
deserted her. Then she was visited by a young woman, a Buddhist,
who told her that she should leave the matter of her bowels to the
nurses, and that, by accepting her helplessness, she would regain her
courage. This Clare did, and she lived the remainder of her life with
courage and patience.
Sean
As a sales representative, Sean drove hundreds of miles each week, often
breaking the speed limits on the motorway, but he could not bring
himself to fly. Just the thought of stepping on a plane terrified him.
He knew that the risk of dying on a motorway is far, far greater than
the risk of dying in a plane crash, but he wouldn’t question why he
couldn’t trust the pilot and the people who built or navigated the plane.
We fear death itself because we enter death alone, no matter how many
people are at our bedside, and the process of death takes us over, no
matter what we want to do. Being utterly alone and not being in control
of ourselves are our greatest fears.
How do we know?
What we fear most is the opposite of what we hold as our top priority,
which is either having a sense of achievement, organisation and control,
or being in relationship with other people.
We often reveal which are our top priority and our greatest fear in our
conversation. For example, the singer Craig David said the following:
‘I’ll religiously do a hundred press-ups and a hundred sit-ups in my
room, before I get into bed, even if I’m smashed. If I don’t do that, it’s
as if I haven’t achieved. I am a workaholic... Any time I have off I try to
use to my advantage, either writing a song or doing an extra interview.’
The artist and entertainer Rolf Harris said, on the other hand:
‘It’s still a shock if people don’t like me, because I’ve always wanted
desperately to be liked. I can still remember the debilitating insecurities
I had when I was 15. Every morning, I used to cycle down to the bus
stop and be so afraid of what the other people would say to me, and
think of me, that I used to cry. Then I’d pretend to the group waiting
for the bus that the tears were caused by cycling downhill in the wind.’
Introverts have no difficulty with this choice, because being liked is not
their top priority, but extraverts are torn between wanting to respect
themselves and their fear of being disliked, rejected and abandoned.
This was why Laura (see p. 2), who is an extravert, worried so much
about upsetting her family and friends. She was afraid of strangers,
because she expected them to dislike her for being different from
them. She was afraid of people in authority, because she was sure
they’d think she was stupid.
What an introvert fears most is not achieving their goals, losing control
and falling into chaos. This was why John (see p. 2) was so anxious. He
drove himself hard, whatever he did, and he tried to keep everything
under control. He couldn’t accept that it’s not humanly possible to keep
the whole world under control, and he certainly didn’t accept one of
the great sayings, ‘If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.’
John’s view was, ‘If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing perfectly.’
It turned out that all the other students were teenagers. I reminded Sylvia
that teenagers are totally self-absorbed and regard anyone over 20 as
ancient and uninteresting. These students didn’t dislike her. They just
weren’t interested in her. Sylvia clung to her belief, so I asked her:
‘Suppose you were alone on a space ship that was running out of
fuel. You’ve got just enough to get to one of two planets, Planet A and
Planet B. On Planet A, the people wouldn’t harm you in any way, but
they would ignore you. On Planet B, the people would notice you, but
only to be extremely unpleasant to you. Which planet would you choose?
Sylvia agreed that this was so. It was so important to her that people
related to her, she chose to believe that people hated her, even though
being hated frightened her.
8
Sylvia and Michael loved one another, and together they could have had
a happy life, but they made their lives a misery by failing to recognise
the sources of their fears and dealing sensibly with them.
This way of thinking goes back to our earliest childhood, when most of
us lost the unconscious self-confidence we were born with. This is when
we were taught that we weren’t good enough as we were, and that we
had to work hard to be good. The trouble with that way of thinking is
that we can never be good enough. We can never reach perfection. If
we tell ourselves that we are good enough, we feel we are indulging in
vanity, and that shows that we aren’t good enough. So we feel guilty
for not being good enough – and guilt is fear of being punished.
John
John’s father had been a tyrant who beat his children. John learned to
avoid beatings by doing everything his father wanted, to the extremely
high standard his father expected. Even after his father was dead, John
still lived in fear of his anger. He defended himself against this fear by
keeping busy, but, when he was asleep, these defences would disappear
and the fear came through as nightmares and overwhelming dread.
9
Laura
When Laura was four, her father deserted the family. Laura came to
believe that, if she’d been really, really good, her father wouldn’t have
left. Her mother had an anxious, gloomy outlook on life. She taught
this to Laura by constantly warning her how dangerous the world was
and how treacherous people always are. Laura never questioned this
view. She felt guilty and frightened of everything.
Sean
Sean had never been loved or respected by his mother. She often
betrayed him, in all the ways adults can betray children, so he ceased
to trust her. He came to hate her so much, he wanted to kill her, but
this hate frightened him, and he refused to admit to himself that this
was how he felt. He could have learnt to overcome his fear of flying,
by consulting a psychologist who was skilled in cognitive behaviour
therapy, but to do this he’d have to examine his feelings, and this he
wouldn’t do.
Clare
Clare, too, had been given a religious education, but in adult life she
faced the demons from her childhood. Long before she became ill, she
gave up worrying about whether she was good enough and, instead,
accepted herself as she was. The standard she set herself was to be a
good friend, to enjoy life, and to be practical and sensible.
10
She worked out that her priorities were the company of friends,
music, books and art, and she made sure that these were always part
of her life. She dealt with the extravert’s fear of being disliked by saying
to herself, ‘If anyone doesn’t like me, that person is a fool, and I have no
time for fools.’ Thus, when faced with death, she could meet it and all
that it entailed with courage.
• Look after yourself. Eat food that’s good for you, exercise regularly,
get plenty of sleep and relaxation, and be moderate in your vices.
Don’t carry any health measure to extremes. If you do, it’s because
you haven’t recognised the presence of your greatest fear.
• Remember that things are resolved, one way or another, and that
everything passes. Don’t try to control everything or to force people and
things to be what they can’t be. Let people and things be themselves.
• Know that our greatest fear is fear of something that can’t happen.
No matter what happens to us, we can’t be annihilated as a person.
11
If you do all these things, then fear will present you, not with a
disaster, but with a challenge that you can master.
References
Beyond fear D. Rowe (HarperCollins)
The successful self: freeing our hidden inner strengths
D. Rowe (HarperCollins)
12 Useful organisations
Mind
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