Facing Our Fears

By Jacqueline Wales

We are all born with fear. It is instinctual and life-saving.

Psychologists call it the flight or fight syndrome. I don’t know for a fact, but it is my belief that for most of us, it starts in the birth canal with our mother screaming, moaning, and yelling, her body contracting in waves of tension as we push our way downwards from the seclusion and security of our watery existence. We may not know what that noise is, but we can feel it in our bodies. It is an overwhelming desire to be set free on all fronts, and with the last push of head through the bulging vagina, we are brought into a blinding light filled existence of crashing sounds, yelling people and hands that wrap themselves around us. It is cold and we feel exposed and vulnerable. Is it any wonder that we are crying when we emerge?  Do we want to return to the safety of the womb?  The brain may not be able to sequence that thought, but our whole body may be craving it.

Fear is also a learned response. We learn to avoid certain things, we learn to pre-empt the circumstances of our life and we learn to think about the worst before it happens just in case it happens to avoid being disappointed, frustrated, rejected, abandoned, betrayed, lost, judged, criticized, ridiculed, physically abused, sexually abused, emotionally abused and any other abuses we can think of.. Our whole life has been patterned around fear. The choices we make in life are conditioned by our fears. The friends we choose, the jobs we pick, the way we raise our children, are all dominated by fear. We are environmentally conditioned to fear and learn these behaviors from our family, our teachers and the environment in which we live.

But there is another side to fear.    We fear personal growth. What Abraham Maslow in his book A Psychology of Being described as “The struggle against our own greatness.” It is the sacrifices we will have to make to move beyond the place we call our ‘comfort’ zone because we fear that many of the myths and beliefs we have about ourselves may actually be true. We may be worthless and unlovable after all. You see, fear is imagination based. We spend a lot of our time imagining the worst possible scenarios and it would seem at time to be a case of willing it to happen. We blame other for what’s not right with our life.

Blaming is counter-productive and it makes you a victim. We can be victims of circumstances, but we are not victims unless we choose to be. I’m very much about making choices that benefit me. It’s something I’ve learned over the years to do. I was a victim of other people’s unhappiness, frustration and depressions, and allowed it to create my own. I was physically, mentally and sexually abused growing up, so there were many reasons why I would adopt the attitude that I was a worthless human being.  I clung to that notion for a very long time. I had hundreds of excuses to keep me safe, but eventually I grew tired of hearing them. I wanted something different. I just didn’t know what that looked like. I only knew that I had to have the courage to stand up for myself. I could no longer neglect my own needs.

Women are gifted caretakers, often to the detriment of their own well-being. But if we are to live a fulfilling life we have to learn how to step into our greatness, get past our fears and find a better way of living with the feelings, thoughts and learned behaviors that cripple us.  We can no longer blame others for what is not right with our lives.

Having the courage to say ENOUGH and to start creating the life you want is incredibly exciting no matter how old you are. So where are you caught in your fears?  What would you do differently if you were to confront you fears and choose to do something different. Don’t wait for tomorrow. Start exploring the possibilities today. Be Fearless: See Where It Gets You.

Jacqueline Wales is the author of The Fearless Factor: Thriving Beyond the Jungle of Life and When The Crow Sings, a novel. She is also the founder and CEO of Fearless Fifties LLC dedicated to helping women in midlife find solutions to the challenge of transition.  For further information and to pick up your complimentary introduction to the 10 Healthy Habits of Fun, Fearless People go to www.fearlessfifties.com She is also an inspirational speaker and host of Fearlessly Speaking on AchieveRadio.com