fear – When Life Gives You Lemons

Befriending your Fears

Call it synchronicity or call it fate, but this week my reading, conversations and viewing have all reinforced the idea of embracing fear, or as Susan Jeffers put it, to ‘Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway’. It started with a great book: OK, Let’s Do Your Stupid Idea. Freyne’s memoir contains a great many stupid ideas that he and his companions acted upon, but crazy though most of them were, one could not help but think that they were part of a life that was lived.

Most of us, in pursuing a more sensible and safe path, often wonder if it is living at all. Though I would not recommend some of Freyne’s more reckless adventures, there is a balance to be struck between allowing our fears to narrow our lives and finding the liberation in overcoming them.

The logic of fear

There is a reason that we feel fear. It is one of our best defences against injury and death. Fear may arise from a direct experience or, as explained by Elizabeth Phelps, through ‘social interaction’. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/learning-to-fear Our fear response is likely to be equal regardless of whether it is learned as a result of our own experience or from others.

What is interesting here is that we can acquire fears without questioning whether they are well founded or not. Take snakes, for example. Most snakes in Europe are neither venomous nor dangerous to people, yet I confess to being afraid of all of them. Since I an unable to distinguish between the dangerous and benign ones, this is probably a valid position. (In case you ever need to know, venomous snakes tend to have triangular heads and non-venomous round.)

**Even looking at this makes me queasy!** Image: Alfonso Castro on Unsplash

As an adult, I’m embarrassed to say, I was terrified of talking to official people on the phone. This is something that I learned from my mother. I understand why. While a mother at home with young children, one seldom interacts with anyone more demanding than the postman and it is easy to lose confidence. Unfortunately, official people still need to be spoken to and my husband, never one to shilly-shally, decided that exposure therapy was the way to go.

Facing our fears

So, every time a query needed to be made about the gas bill or the car’s MOT came due, guess who had to make the call? I squirmed and tried to get out of it to no avail. The call was made. No-one died and now, I am happy to talk to anyone.

Certain, deep rooted fears need to be tackled sensitively and slowly. Throwing someone afraid of water into the deep end of a swimming pool is unlikely to work, whereas getting them to join you in a paddling pool on a hot day might start them in the right direction. If it is a true phobia, untangling the source of the fear may also be necessary – sometimes with the help of a good therapist.

Doing it anyway

For most of us though, simply surviving a situation that triggers a fear response can give us the courage to overcome it. Though not claustrophobic, I am not a fan of small, enclosed spaces. When my younger son and husband disappeared down the ‘key hole’ on a caving expedition in Africa, I was given the option of joining them or waiting above with my other son until they returned. The latter seemed much worse and my reluctant older son felt the same way. We went ahead. Let’s say, calling the trip ‘caving’ was a little misleading. This was full-on potholing. There were bats and climbs and commando crawling through the mountain’s granite intestines. At one point, my battery pack caused me to get stuck. The shrill screams of my youngest (who had managed to get dust in his eyes) somehow dislodged me and gave me sufficient adrenaline to finish the course.

**Not me, but you get the picture** Image: Jason Gardner on Unsplash

Upon reaching daylight, I have never felt so exhilarated. My eldest declared he was no longer claustrophobic and I wondered in that moment if I had become more so! Though having had time to recover, few small, enclosed spaces fill me with dread. Which is good, because yesterday, I spent the better part of an hour in an MRI scanner.

In one episode of the wonderful series, Magic for Humans, magician Justin Willman talks of a recurring nightmare of turning up to perform and discovering he is naked. The cure? He takes a show to a nudist camp. There are ways, it seems, of overcoming even the most outlandish fears safely.

Fear of failure

If there was one fear that causes more pain and suffering and diminishment of life, it is surely this one. Over decades of teaching, my goal, above all others, is to give my pupils confidence in themselves and their abilities. Without it, students panic, lose focus and sometimes even fail exams they are more than qualified to succeed in. Fear of failure in life is costly.

There are ways to allay our fears, of course. Preparation is often our best ally -after all, we have practised the task many times. Quieting our minds is another. I was most impressed by my young student whose ‘meditation practice’ before exams is to breathe whilst counting backwards from 1,000 in sevens. (He’s a maths boffin.) He knows from experience that when he is overcome with anxiety, his mind fizzles into confusion – muddling his answers. So now, when he feels that rising dread, he has a system that works for him.

A third technique, is to reduce the pressure of expectation. When we write with the goal of being a prize winning author, or paint with the quality of one of the masters as our aim, we are likely to be disappointed. If we do it with the pleasure of the activity in mind and an open view of what might result, we can enjoy the process and perhaps initiate something good.

**Just playing!**
Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

My friend was given an art journal. She was instructed to play and explore and give no mind to the result. For those of us working in creative realms, the blank page can feel like the enemy. Taking away any sense of expectation allows us to be more creative not less. The giver of the journal refers to this form of art as ‘playing with colour’. I love that.

Fear of failure, fear of shame

The most stifling and life-diminishing fear of all is that of failure resulting in shame. If we are not careful, it can thwart our lives entirely, preventing us from trying again or even trying at all. Brene Brown has researched, written and talked about this subject extensively and it is far too large a subject to discuss in a paragraph. To give you a taster, here is her TED Talk on Vulnerability.

Not such a stupid idea

Without advocating a reckless disregard for your safety, I would certainly encourage you to take some risks. They may work out; they may not. What of it? When we push our boundaries, we grow. And our failures are often our most helpful training tool. Try to take on something you fear this week – you may find that fear is your friend after all.

Things that go Bump in the Night

My Halloween display with cheery origami bats Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

I have a confession to make. Halloween is my favourite festival. It is slightly anarchic; involves dressing up and offers unlimited sweeties. What’s not to like? In addition, you can have all this fun without stressing over gifts or cards or special meals. In other words, it’s perfect!

When I was a little girl, I remember donning a costume to go to the Caledonian Society’s Halloween party. There was bobbing for apples and other games and I’m sure they snuck in a little Scottish country dancing. Which is fair enough, because Halloween is really a Celtic tradition.

Origins

Though there are festivals to celebrate the dead throughout the world and across all cultures, ours is based on the Celtic festival of Samhain, which marked summer’s end and the beginning of the New Year. Like Beltane, it’s summer twin, this period is seen as a liminal one, where the barriers between our world and that of the spirits is thinnest and for this brief window, the dead might travel back home.

For those who had enemies who had died, this might lead to an unpleasant interaction, so it was best to disguise oneself by donning a costume. For the majority though, such visitations were not seen as some terrible, fearful haunting, but an opportunity to welcome back loved ones. Places were set at table and food laid out; candles lit to guide them home. Children and the poor would venture abroad to receive soul cakes. These treats were given in exchange for prayers for the departed. This practice continues in some churches, though for most of us it has transformed into the American tradition of trick-or -treating.

A tradition transformed by affluence. Image: Haley Phelps on Unsplash

Facing our fears

Halloween is a bizarre mixture of what scares us and the joyous recklessness of a party. We watch terrifying horror movies and decorate our homes with creatures that in real life appal. We dress in costumes pretending to be skeletons or phantoms or witches. We scare each other witless with terrifying, ghostly tales. (Though, interestingly, ghost stories were most popular at Christmas during Victorian times. I always thought the Victorians a bit strange.)

This simulation of danger and facing death is, for me, the most important aspect of Halloween. I’ve spent days puzzling over the question. What is Halloween for exactly? And the only satisfactory answer I could come up with is what the Stoics were talking about millennia ago. Epictetus said:

I cannot escape death, but at least I can escape the fear of it.
Epictetus

For our ancient ancestors, the advent of winter must have been a terrifying time: cold, short, dark days with little food except what you have stored from harvest. Seeing the coming spring would have been more hope than certainty, which is perhaps why Halloween is also a time when people try to predict the future. It would be nice to know.

Yet, for all this, they made it a time of celebration. Communities came together and stood by bonfires in a sort of defiant act against the encroaching darkness. Our own fears have a very different feel – yet we are united in our mortality. So I suggest that like our ancestors, we embrace our fears, mock them even and live our lives with joy. It is the only way to navigate the dark.

Happy Halloween!

Moonlight on pumpkins, Boston Image: Greg Costello-McFeat

Fighting Shadows

One of the hardest things to deal with when coping with MS is the constant fear of deterioration that hangs above at all hours of the day and night (especially night). They are inchoate fears: some concerned with physical decline; some with mental losses and some with the impact these will have on relationships.

When I was diagnosed with cancer in January 2018, the fear of my imminent demise was added (or at least a slow and painful one in the future). If the MS diagnosis had felt like a death sentence, this was one that brought my execution date forward by several years.

Everything I had felt and was dealing with up to this point was magnified ten-fold and all the work I had done to cope was suddenly stretched to breaking point. I was delighted that I had the practice of yoga and meditation in place, but I was not sure that it was enough to manage this.

The fog of uncertainly Photo by Ankhesenamun on Unsplash

Intimations of mortality

We all know that we will die and accept, to some degree, our mortality. When it gets up close and personal; however, most of us tend to wobble a bit. In my case, my coping strategy was not so much to resolve my fear of dying, but to embrace it. In some ways the pressure of this fear was just too much and I dealt with it by imagining, at some level, that I was already dead. No, I did not build a coffin and climb in – though I did something similar psychologically.

I became someone who observed life, enjoyed much of it, although I didn’t really think of it as real. The Buddhist idea of life being a dream made absolute sense and I deliberately chose to sleep-walk through it. (Most people sleep-walk too, yet, they are not conscious of the choice.) If life isn’t real, my faulty reasoning went, then it cannot hurt me. I can disengage from relationships and avoid the pain of losing those I love.

My diagnosis gave me a 75% survival rate increasing to 80% with all sorts of revolting therapies. This sounds good until you turn it into rations. A 3:4 or 4:5 isn’t bad. A one in four or five chance of dying isn’t great either.

So, I had to get my head around this. Six months of intense treatments followed: surgery, chemotherapy and lastly radiotherapy. The chemotherapy part was so revolting that I told my husband that I would never go through it again under any circumstances.

After all this, I would just have to wait and see if it worked. My MS was blessedly inactive. Having a very compromised immune system is a great way to keep MS in check. Mine was barely functioning.

The poison cure Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Salvation

Salvation came, strangely enough, in a novel. It was a good if not great one (The Immortalists). The twin themes were that you cannot live your life in fear. Doing so is likely to make that fear come true. (Think of the advice to never look at a tree when skiing, or you will probably plough into it.) The second was the old chestnut, so easily said, but so hard to follow, that life must be lived in the present without concern for the future or compromised by the past.

In my ‘Eureka!’ moment, I realised that rather than ‘playing dead’, I should play at living. If time is short, then I should suck the very marrow out of life while I can. To do this, I need to be fearless. If I die tomorrow, next year, or in a decade, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I live now.

I also came to the slightly scary realisation that my negative attitude might actually be contributing to my demise. In a sort of reverse placebo effect, my belief that life was effectively over, might well make this happen.

My MS had begun to make itself apparent at a period of extreme distress in my life. At times, life felt an unbearable burden, and perhaps my body took this as an instruction to dismantle itself. My cancer occurred after a year of anxiety caused by the possibility that my nephew, my mother and my husband might have the disease. The irony, of course, is that the only person who did have cancer was me. All the stress cannot have helped me. Nor did it in anyway benefit anyone else.

A change of perspective

Despite the fact that I will never be well, I can attempt to live well. I have revised the hope that I will live to see my granddaughter reach five to seeing her graduation and even marriage. And why not? If this is not possible, it’s not, but why deprive myself of the pleasure of anticipation?

This was really what the Buddha was about (I think) when saying life was a dream. We are caught up so completely in our perception of life that we forget that it is only that – our perception and not the reality.

It is time to stop fighting the shadows and step into the light. The shadows will always be there, but if we face the sun, they will fall behind us.