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.
However,
many of our fears are misplaced, or out of proportion to the
danger
we are in.
WHAT ARE WE AFRAID OF?
We
fear anything that threatens our survival. We need to survive in two
ways:
as a body, that is physically, and as a person, that is psychologically.
Death
threatens us in both ways. We try to survive as a body by staying
healthy,
avoiding illness and physical danger that could damage or kill
us.
We try to survive as a person, and overcome our fear of death, by
believing
that when we die some important part of us will continue
on.
This could mean our soul or spirit, our children, our work, or the
memory
people have of us.
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.
We
try to survive as a person by maintaining our sense of self-worth,
personal
pride, dignity and respect. All of these are threatened when
other
people don’t respect us, when they ignore or humiliate us, or
treat
us like an object to be used and abused.
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.
SO HOW DO WE CONQUER FEAR?
•
Know yourself. Know what your priorities are and what these
priorities
lead you to fear.
•
Value and accept yourself. Don’t set yourself impossible standards
and
judge yourself harshly. Don’t believe that you have to deserve
all
the good things that happen to you. Don’t believe that you
deserve
the bad things that happen to you.
•
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 recognized the presence of your greatest fear.
•
Assess dangers realistically. Understand probabilities, for example
that
you are more likely to be killed by smoking than by being
struck
by a meteorite. Understand and accept that we live in a
world
where things happen by chance.
•
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.
When
people treat us badly, when they humiliate, betray or ignore
us,
and when we discover that the world and life is not what we
thought,
we can feel that we are fragmenting and diminishing to
the
point of disappearing. But this will not and can’t happen. You’re
still
there, observing this process. It's not you who are fragmenting
and
disappearing, but some of your ideas. These are the ideas that
no
longer give an accurate picture of what is happening. You go on
existing,
but you have to change some of your ideas. This can be
painful
and confusing, but time will pass and you’ll survive.
If
you do all these things, then fear will present you, not with a
disaster,
but with a challenge that you can master.
