Fear Of The Known  |  Unlimited Self Esteem

FEAR OF THE KNOWN
– LIVING BUDDHISM (Women’s Issue)

Written by Amy Schor Ferris, professional screenwriter and a novelist

Fear.
In Webster’s Dictionary, it is defined as an unpleasant feeling of apprehension or distress caused by the presence or anticipation of danger.

In the Thesaurus, the word fear is synonymous with terror, dread, horror, fright, panic, alarm, trepidation and apprehension.

Fear.
Some people wake up with it, some folks go to bed with it, and some of us even carry it around like a handbag – clutching it, holding on to it with every fiber in our being. We are afraid of being abandoned, being disappointed, being left behind, being dismissed, being discarded, being successful, being a failure, being defeated and being forgotten. We’re afraid of being loved, being hated, being recognized, being looked over, being found out, being happy, being depressed. We’re afraid of life, and we’re afraid of death.

Fear.
We push it down, suppress it, ignore it, transfer it, obliterate it, annihilate it, repeat it, and dismiss it. We give it power, control, time and energy. It keeps us knotted in a ball and our stomachs churning - we become tense and angry, resentful and bitter. It works its way through our bodies like a tapeworm – slipping and sliding through our systems and when it hits a nerve, the nerve – whoa – paralysis. And then what? We try to get rid of the fear. We’re afraid someone’s going to leave us, so we pick up the phone and start calling incessantly. We’re afraid someone won’t like us or love us, so we do everything humanly possible to get that persons attention. We’re afraid we’re not good enough or worthy enough, so we manipulate or strategize how we can be needed or wanted. We’re afraid of failure, so we sabotage every opportunity. We’re afraid of our own opinions, so we lie. We’re afraid of being powerful, so we make ourselves small. We’re afraid of being found out, so we keep ourselves at a distance.

Oh, the list is long.

One way we deal with fear is by making it the very foundation of our lives – in other words, our jumping off point. It becomes the place where we make decisions, make choices, and take action.

While most human beings – at least the ones I know – have a garden variety of fears, I will use one of my very own ‘personal, favorite’ experiences as an example. For many years, more than I care to divulge, I dated men who were absolutely toxic. By toxic I mean self-involved, arrogant, insecure, and abusive men. And the more they didn’t want me, oh, the more I wanted them. If they didn’t call, I would call them – incessantly I might add - making up excuses as to why I needed to speak with them. If they didn’t show me affection, well, then, I would shower them with affection. Not to mention buying them gifts that ranged from small and cute, to expensive and extravagant. All the while, my insides were desperately churning away. As I write this, the image that comes to mind is a hamster wheel. It was as if I was trying to keep up with the fears that were overpowering and overwhelming me, and all I kept doing was taking what I thought was the appropriate action, making the appropriate causes to have a good healthy loving relationship. But what I was really doing was making causes and taking action to get rid of the fear. And so, it would just perpetuate, a different man, but exactly the same experience. And like every bad horror movie, the boogeyman fear monster would come back and be bigger and more frightening then the previous time.

A friend of mine told me I needed to understand the fear - to not just know what it is, but to look it smack in the eye and understand the root of it. When I rattled off all my fears, alphabetically I might add, he said, “It’s just one fear.” So much for thinking I had it under control. The concept of getting to the root of the fear took on a visual meaning for me. My image was that of weeds, spreading carelessly throughout a beautiful garden. You can’t just deadhead weeds. They’ll grow back even more abundantly. You have to pull them out by their very roots so that they stop growing.

After a few weeks, I became completely focused. My single-minded prayer was to understand the fear, and get to the very root of it. What finally occurred to me was that I was deeply afraid of being abandoned. It was connected to a childhood trauma, one that I neatly tucked away and conveniently forgot about. As soon as I understood what the fear was, I completely and utterly understood why I made the causes I did. The action I took perfectly matched the fear I was experiencing. I was afraid of being left, so I did everything humanly possible to hold on to these men. A phrase that ran through my mind while I was chanting was ‘desperate breeds desperate’. The minute I understood my behavior, it all made sense. Then I met Ken. And I determined that I would no longer be held hostage by my fear. For two weeks every time the fear took hold of me (and trust me, I was in a head lock), I let it run through me like the flu. For example, when I felt the impulse to call because I hadn’t heard from him, I talked myself out of it. When I felt the urge to buy him a little gift, a little trinket, I bought myself something instead. I reminded myself every single day, over and over, that if he didn’t want to be with me, well then, I certainly didn’t want to be with him. Period. It took everything in my power to control my urge to try and hold onto him. After all, my behavior had become a self-destructive free fall. After two weeks of doing battle with my own personal boogeyman fear monster, it no longer had power or control over me, and just like that, the fear upped and left and quite naturally Ken took its place at the table. And he’s been sitting there every since. We’ve been married for over ten years.

What I realized, what I’ve come to understand, the minute you have the courage to look something smack in the eye – whether it be a person, a challenge, an obstacle, or even the monster boogeyman, the minute you connect with it, the minute you face it – it no longer has control over you.

In other words, you set yourself free.