I have experienced a great deal of joy and love in my life. Of course I have. I come from a loving family (both immediate and extended), and I have had the pleasure of meeting people both socially and professionally who have enriched my life with incredible experiences, including those rooted in love and joy. When I look back on my life, though, and contemplate the present moment, the dominant emotion I have felt, outside of love and happiness, is fear. I've equated feelings of anxiety with those of fear, even though they're distinct emotional experiences. Where a real threat triggers fear, anxiety is triggered by a perceived threat. But here's where it gets a little tricky. Fear is frequently a fundamental element of an anxiety or panic attack because the brain detects a threat, even when it isn't physically there. This perceived threat activates the body's fear response, similar to the fight-or-flight reaction experienced during actual danger. The more you fear, the more anxiety you experience, and vice versa. It is an unpleasant loop of fight-or-flight that wreaks havoc on your body and mind. The book referenced in this week's post assures me that fear is not the problem. If that's the case, what is?
"When Fear Shows Up"
At the end of last week's post, The Placebo Effect, I mentioned that I'd be using shorter texts as a bridging post between the longer books. I bought Dr. Julie Smith's Open When at the same time I bought her other book, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before, which I covered in The Perfect Nurturer. Both books are fantastic, but Open When doesn't lend itself to a single dedicated post because the book is divided into three sections, each of which is then split into separate chapters. I've been experiencing a lot of fear lately, so when I opened the book (pun not intended), I did so with a clear intention. I made a beeline for the contents page and found all the references to fear. The third section of Open When is titled When it's hard to be with your feelings, and lo and behold, there's a chapter called When fear shows up. It is perfect.
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it." (Nelson Mandela)
I knew I was going to love this chapter because Dr. Smith kicks it off with the Nelson Mandela quote above. Yes, I'm South African, but I'm also a New Zealand citizen. By the fifth sentence of the chapter, she also mentions the Māori (see quote below). I love this. The author starts each chapter with a letter to the reader, and I felt like this one was written especially for me. After her letter, Dr. Smith then provides what she calls Real-time tools to help you through whatever you're faced with. Much like she did with Why Has Nobody To Me This Before, she also ends her chapters with key takeaways, easy-to-reference bullet points that one can access at any time. With over 400 pages, Open When offers an expansive look at understanding one's emotions, managing low mood and anxiety and building resilience and confidence.
Dr. Smith’s book serves as a practical and empathetic resource for maintaining your mental health. Presented in a friendly and easy-to-understand manner, it is organised like a mental health first-aid kit that you can open when...
"We are not at the mercy of fear. We are emotional shape-shifters and have been since the dawn of time. From the sharp focus of the Samurai to the defiant war dance of the Māori, these are all acts of choosing a focus, choosing a mindset, choosing a response to even the biggest of fears."
There's a Māori term that I love. It's wahine toa, which translates to "female warrior" or "strong woman". The term carries cultural significance within a Māori context, and I refer to it now with the respect it deserves. I lay no claim to the term but acknowledge that it is an ideal that I strive for.
Dr. Smith writes that:
"Fear is not the problem. It is the signal to potential problems that might require your attention. When we see fear as something that is wrong with us, we judge it, fight it and grasp at anything that will make it disappear. We spend all of our efforts on shooting the messenger rather than working out what was being communicated and why."
So, the question is, what is being communicated to me when I'm in a state of fear and why is it happening? While writing this blog post I remembered a quote from a decidedly different doctor and it made me think.
"I've heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I've bought a big bat, I'm all ready, you see; now my troubles are going to have troubles with me." (Dr. Seuss)
I used this quote in That Funny Feeling, my post on Martha Beck's book Beyond Anxiety. It's awesome, isn't it? Not until I re-read it for this post did I make a correlation between the past and the future. The troubles that come from ahead are the anxieties that plague me, even though they have no basis in reality. The troubles that come from behind are those that lead to rumination, particularly on difficult life events that evoke the same feelings as when the event actually occurred. Because my body can't distinguish that it's not actually happening in the present moment, I am still experiencing these negative events physiologically. I am essentially basing my fear of the future on memories of past experiences. When there is a threat of a current or upcoming experience being similar to a negative past experience, I react in the same way because my body has memorised that and the same neural pathway is activated. It's both unhealthy and unpleasant, but Dr. Julie Smith presents us with an antidote, and in a word, it's courage.
"By choosing to face your fear, you are cultivating strength that reaches deeper than you imagined it could. There is a fight in you of which you are barely scratching the surface. So breathe with ease. You are striding forward, not as prey but as a predator."
My people-pleasing persona has a tough time standing up for herself sometimes. She abhors confrontation and avoids it at all costs. She has a negativity bias, too, so her thoughts often tend to catastrophise. More frequently than not, her fears have amounted to nothing, and she has lived to worry another day. All of this has not served her well, and she's desperate for a way out. I think she's ready to punch something, and it might as well be fear.
Coming Up Next Week
I have started a delightful, thought-provoking, brilliant book written by Ken Robinson called Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. I'm looking forward to writing about it next week.