Fear

I have had many discussions with both clients and others about fear. Each time, I find myself contemplating the unique origins of our fears and the steps we take, both functional and counterproductive, toward managing these fears. In session, I like to request from clients their description of what fear is and why it came to be. In one memorable discussion, a client that’s much more intelligent than I am stated fear is “an emotion based on threat and/or danger creating an aversion response”. This aversion response, he added, is “typically centered around rejection and/or failure”. In his case, failure and rejection were interchangeable, and based upon the idea of not being wanted or needed. But frankly, I wondered, how do we know? How do we comprehend what others potentially desire, ponder, or consider without definitive knowledge? We do not until we ask, which we often do not do because of fear, and instead concoct and fabricate elaborate, fictitious ideas of what we assume someone else thinks or wants or finds attractive or intelligent or appealing etc. We then fear that we may not be in alignment with this possibility of what may or may not exist. So in all actuality, we do not fear what is, but rather an assumed potential of what could be. We forget that we know only what we know and we do not know what we do not. We forget because we are too lost in the brilliant rationale of fear of the unknown.

An oxymoron which continues to restrict and fascinate me are two very common coinciding fears: fear of failure and fear of success. To fear these two together is quite common, I have found. The options of an individual are limited to balancing between the pendulum swinging between total failure and complete success, both of which I have yet to see in reality. Which begs the question: does anything life changing or exciting happen coasting at comfortable speeds, without risk or chance or vulnerability? Everyone has a “shit the bed” story. Literally and figuratively. There was a point in all of our existences wherein which we were learning to not shit in our pants. And here we are, fearing shitting in our pants. Been there, done that. Yet the majority of us have yet to dissect our definitions of failure beyond just shit. So, what does it mean to fail? Is that failure permanent? If not, does it then not constitute true failure? Does ultimate failure even exist?

What about success? If failure is so frightening then wouldn’t success be anything but scary? We can reason that our potential failure post epic success would be gravely more disappointing… After all, falling from the top floor is far more painful than falling from the first, not to mention that success has many more demands upon a person’s schedule than the limiting expectations of a deemed “failure”. If with great power comes great responsibility, it is reasonable to consider that the impending weight of responsibility’s shit on our impending power of success can appear daunting.

If we refer back to my smarter than me client, we recall that fears are simply hypotheses, occasionally with merit and often without. So if the idea of failure or success is just that, an idea, we are left with no guarantees or realities to fear. Rather we are left with possibility to fail, to succeed, or to be complacent, which one could argue is just a watered down failure. Because I do not believe in wrapping conversations in a bow, I will pose the question that if our possibilities are a plethora and nothing is guaranteed, what is standing in our way of reaching for exactly what we want, whatever that may be? And if your answer is “I don’t know”, feel free to avoid shitting the bed and use your imagination….