Fear Comes Standard

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face….You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.
___Eleanor Roosevelt

It’s not the absence of fear, it’s the decisions we make when we show up to it that makes all the difference.

I don’t know for a fact, but it is my belief that for most of us, fear starts in the birth canal. There is a primitive force at work here, and whatever emotions the mother is feeling, the child will feel as well.

Most children are welcomed into the world eagerly and with great love. The trauma of our birth is forgotten in a rush of love, warmth and caring, cherished for being the lives of our parents. I would love to say that was the case for me, but the circumstances were not conducive. In my mother’s eyes, a birth was not something she welcomed. She had already delivered two children before me, and neither one of them was wanted. The first was the result of youthful lust with no father she could claim. The second was equally unfortunate--she was raped. After her second daughter was born, my mother hoped she would never have any more, but she was out of luck. I was the first of three after she married my father. The second and third were boys, the last being severely retarded because she tried to give herself an abortion and failed. There was no rush of maternal love at any of her births.

Early in my transition to health, I was greatly influenced by the works of Clarissa Pinkola Estes, noted psychologist and the author of Women Who Run With the Wolves. For the first time, I was presented with the idea that we choose our parents. At that time, I wondered how that could possibly be. Why would I choose to come into a family that was completely chaotic, violent and abusive? I chose a challenging path. My mind was a generational tar pit of anger, self-hate, depression, sadness and grief. Oh, yes, we do inherit the sins of the fathers and the mothers. I grew up with chaos. I learned to re-create that in my own life.
The road to a powerful future is truly a rocky past.
But as my transition continued, I began to see the lesson in this. I believe that the main purpose of life is to learn. We learn about who we are, how our world functions, and what is our place in it. So why wouldn’t we choose parents where we would learn the biggest lessons of all. In my case, I had to learn compassion, forgiveness and self-esteem. These have been my biggest lessons so far in my life. No doubt I will continue to learn others, like patience. That was never one of my strong suits.

It is not enough to understand what we ought to be, unless we know what we are; and we do not understand what we are, unless we understand what we ought to be.
____T.S. Eliot

Let yourself have the freedom of letting go and you will allow great things to enter.

I’ve learned how to overcome the odds, using my intelligence, humor, determination, strength, indomitable spirit and wonderful creativity to move beyond the circumstances of my birth and environment, and have indeed learned to ask for MORE and received it.

We are exquisite creatures whose potential receptivity to all forms of energy is highly developed. If we can feel physical pain, we can also feel emotional pain, no matter how young. A recent article in the New York Times Supplement section analyzed at length whether fetuses can feel pain. After several experiments, it was suggested they can, and it is now standard practice for doctors to anesthetize babies in utero if there is any surgery to be performed.

During the birthing process, the mother’s body contracts in waves of tension as the child pushes its way downwards from the seclusion and security of its watery existence. The child can hear sounds, even if she may not know what that is, she can feel the tightening and the terror as a woman pushes it from her body. With the last push of head through the bulging vagina, the child is brought into a blinding, light-filled existence of crashing sounds, yelling people and hands that wrap themselves around it. There is a sudden feeling of being exposed and vulnerable, and yes, scared. Is it any wonder that it cries when it emerges? Does it want to return to the safety of the womb? The brain may not be able to express that thought, but the whole body is craving it.

Fear is learned through life experiences.

In 1920, Dr. John B. Watson performed a psychological experiment on a nine-month-old child, training him to be afraid of furry white objects. Little Albert‚ was presented with various objects that he was not afraid of, and his responses were recorded. Later, he was presented with them again only this time some of them were accompanied by a loud sound that frightened the boy. Dr. Watson’s work would eventually lead the boy toward a fear of rats, Santa Claus and a man with white hair (presumably the doctor!). John Watson was also a proponent of rigid training for children including toilet training from three months and limiting physical touch from children! Today, we would say the man was psychotic, but he was one of the most revered child psychologists of his day. Benjamin Spock was a former acolyte of the man, but was the first to refute his methodology. Instead, he created his own. My generation raised our children on Spock, but I’m not so sure he was on the ball with this either. There is no such thing as perfect child-rearing. In fact, D.W. Winnicott gave the best blessing of all in parenting, when he wrote about The Good Enough Mother. This was the greatest relief to me as I struggled to find my place as a mother to my children.

Now, anyone growing up in an abusive home knows this firsthand. When Father is a violent drunk, children learn to run for cover at the sound of his car approaching the driveway. Some children wet their pants at the sound of an angry voice, so deep is their fear reaction. I used to duck every time someone raised his or her hand quickly. Having grown up in poverty, money discussion can make a grown woman’s stomach turn flips for fear of financial insecurity. I watched my mother’s despair on a daily basis in my household growing up. These are all conditioned responses to negative behavior.

Taking an honest look at our lives, we can see that our choices have been influenced by fear much more often than by ambition for good results or our true desires. In fact, you may see a pattern of fear that will amaze you. But don’t slam this book shut just yet—we will look at this together and gradually. My clients insist that uncovering this pattern is essential is changing our ways. As one told me recently, “I’m afraid to really be who I want to be because I will hurt someone, or fail them in some way. I say yes when I mean no, and I get so mad at myself and hate them for putting me in this place. I know that all I need to do is stop considering them first, and put me up there, but it’s hard.”

It is hard, but we must start to put ourselves first. By learning how to love ourselves, we learn how to love others more, and to allow them to figure things out for themselves. We can’t fix anyone, nor should we try. It’s hard enough changing ourselves, without trying to change or fix someone else. When I eventually woke up to the fact that anything that went wrong in my very long marriage was not always about ME, it was a very liberating time. I reached a place where I could say to my husband with absolute conviction “This is not about me, this is about you,” and he would accept the possibilities.

As long as we put ourselves first as the culprit in whatever the circumstances are, you deny the other people in your life responsibility for their part in it.

I find that it is not the circumstances in which we are placed, but the spirit in which we face them, that constitutes our comfort.
____Elizabeth T. King

You are not responsible for the lives of others unless you are a doctor saving lives, or a nurse entrusted to keep lives safe. We are each responsible for our own lives.

For for information on getting past the fears, doubts and anxieties in your transformation process go to www.fearlessfifties.com and pick up The 10 Secrets To Taking Fear Out of YOur Life.