Fear- An introduction

“Maybe ever’body in the whole Damn world is scared of each other.”

From Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who triumphs over it.”

Nelson Mandela

Have you ever had one of those rare moments of self realisation? Where something obvious to everyone else, finally becomes obvious to you?  I had one of those moments in relation to fear.

Sometimes these crystal clear moments do not leave you happy, but that does not mean they can not be valuable.  Knowing something is different to acting upon it.

The specific realisation I refer to came along after a particularly traumatic experience that left me reduced and lost.  I realised that most of what I had done or avoided in my life was because of fear.  Fear, it seems,  has been my most constant companion.  This realisation came along when I finally worked out that despite my fear and avoidance of difficult things, bad things happened anyway.

The more highly evolved among us will point out that fear is necessary to realise our potential.  They may even use pithy proverbs like “Kites rise best against the wind” or “Gold is only refined in fire” to illustrate their point.  These people are of course right, if lacking a little empathy for the less robust amongst us, of which I include myself.

Fear of failure

Most of us will recognise the notion of ‘fear of failure’.  We see something difficult but valuable and procrastinate about engaging with it in case we fail.  What you may not realise is that this fear of failure, when allowed to ‘flex its muscles’ into the area of complete avoidance, is actually related to perfectionism.  

We all know of the atypical perfectionist, who when faced with something challenging, dedicates every waking moment to not only overcoming it, but being the best at it.  Usually this is not because they have a great vision that has to get out.  Mostly it is because they will do anything not to be thought a failure.  They fear judgement.

A maladaptive perfectionist on the other hand, approaches the problem differently.  Rather than put all that effort into a challenge and potentially fail, they decide rather logically, that if they dont try, then they can’t fail or be thought a failure.  They accept the premise that less than their best is easier to live with than failure. They too fear judgement.

Both approaches, whilst having different outcomes, are motivated by fear.  Both approaches leave us the lesser.  The perfectionist may have the fruits of success, but they have spent so much time trying to appear perfect, that their lives are cold and empty.  Many of their friends have moved on because they are sick of being second best and waiting for quality time.  The maladaptive among us are left with no success and smaller lives because we didn’t even try.  Either way, fear has won.

Fear of success

I am not an expert on the fear of success.  Essentially though, what you need to know is that this involves a strong link to low self esteem.  The inner voice will be saying something like “Who are you to think you can do that?” or “You don’t deserve success!”.  It is hard not to believe the voice in our heads when they are so convincing.

One of the key traits of fear of success is self-sabotage.  The theory goes that people with a fear of success will make sub-conscious choices to ruin their chances of winning because in their mind, they either don’t deserve success or will be found out as a result of it.  They are afraid of the changes that success may bring.

Fear: An example

When I was a younger man, I played with the notion of a career in acting.  I did my research on studying the skill, and after deciding that gaining a place in NIDA was unrealistic, I searched for private colleges.

I found a good college with a solid reputation that would cost $400 for the first semester (It was the mid 1980s).  After building up my courage, I rang admissions for an interview and was guaranteed a place.  The only problem was that I was literally broke. 

Whether you are a religious person or not does not take away from the relevance of this story, but you need to know that I am.  I prayed earnestly that if this was God’s will, then I would find a way to get the money and tithe an appropriate amount to the church. Sounds like bargaining I know.

Out of the relative blue,the next day an unexpected cheque for $440 turned up in my letter box.  Whether this was from God, the universe pushing me in a particular direction or pure coincidence is up for debate, but my twenty year old brain saw it as a sign.

This is where fear comes into it again.  I don’t remember what the excuse was, maybe I’ve shut it out as too painful, but in the end I chickened out. I used the money on something else. Fear made the decision for me.  Rather than seeing the fear as evidence that I was doing something valuable, I ran and hid from it.

An example with the lot.

This example has everything.  Fear of success, fear of failure, low self esteem and self sabotage.  From my perspective these days, I can see that the uncertain nature of earning a salary in acting does not gel well with my need for security and certainty. I’m pretty sure I don’t like a critic either. I could add that I probably wouldn’t have been that good anyway, but then I’d be rightly accused of either false modesty or low self esteem. Either way I missed the opportunity because of fear.

My problem with fear then, is that I let it grow too far out of control.  Like a prolific weed in the garden, it has covered everything else.  I have avoided opportunity for as long as I can remember to avoid the pain of failure. Ironically this decision has had the opposite effect because depression and poor mental health feed on fear like a V8 does on petrol.

When we ruminate, catastrophise, procrastinate and avoid important or valuable situations, then we are letting fear be in control.  Yes, a little fear is a valuable thing to get us moving, but not too much fear.  There needs to be a balance so that when a potentially valuable opportunity presents itself, we are able to tell the fear to shut up.

How we do that is a post for another day.

Links

Redefining success » The Good The Bad and The Unrelated

Mandela ! Our deepest fear . – YouTube