Understanding Your Fears
By Sarah M. Ostrander

Have you ever been resentful of someone who had an outstretched ego? Have you ever wanted to smack someone who seemed to have a ready answer for anything? Have you ever lived in fear of living or intimidated by someone who was more self confident than you, better looking? Most of this article will be my sharing some experiences that have helped me grow up and live more successfully. My wish is for someone to read this and find a point of identification to go beyond just the struggle. This isn’t easy at times when you’re juggling life along with mental health concerns and "everything else."

When you live in rebellion all the time, as I once did, everywhere you go, you can seem like an accident waiting to happen. You literally are just that, always at odds with someone, picking an argument whenever you turn around, resenting someone telling you what to do. Rebellion used to be my ready response to life. When I was a teenager, mother would tell me to pick up my clothes on the floor. My first response to her was, "why?" I’d tell her that they had been there all week, why do something with them now? An argument followed and out of the house I would storm. Living this way day after day, week after week, for many years took its toll. There were consequences.

 

Fear played a big part in my rebelliousness. I did not know it at the time, but fear dogged my whole life. I’d get you before you got me. I cannot refer to any part of my life without going back to my childhood and looking at the way the seeds of living fearfully were sown into my life. Both of my parents were very fearful of life and living. I never heard them admit this, but in looking back, I can see it. My parents used alcohol and violence to cope with their lives. They taught me well. Never tell anyone what happens in the home, never talk about your feelings, deny and build walls to construct defenses to explain things away. There were many more false messages that I believed. They were my family, they would not lie to me.

All through life, I pointed my finger at my parents. If it wasn’t for them, I’d be all right. If they left me alone, I would be all right. My mother yelled at me a lot even when she didn’t need to. If she didn’t yell so much, I would be all right. Yelling back at her was the way I handled it. More consequences, more problems, it just did not work. When I finally got connected to services several years later, I learned that I was full of fear-based anger. This began a long journey of finding out about how fear and anger played a big part in my rebelliousness. This work is tricky and difficult, but the real key is that I learned that it is worth every effort for me.

Over the days I learned an expression, "everywhere you go, there you are." In being the accident waiting to happen, I had to stop and say to myself, "wait, what’s going on here?" I’m reacting to people out in the wider parts of life the way I did to my parents. Many years and miles are in between but I am still stuck in old habits and patterns of responding to life. Fear can do terrible things to people in such deceptive ways. If we don’t understand habits and patterns that affect us, they can cause damage in our lives.

Good mental health work has helped me to understand what happened to me as a child. I now understand how that carried through to my life as an adult. I learned what I can keep, what to get rid of and what is good to modify to use today. Some stuff will work and some stuff will not work. It’s good to zero in on what works for you.

Little by little I understand how fears have kept me locked up and bound up within my own self. We make others believe what we believe without realizing it. If what I believe is a lie, what am I getting you to believe? Consequently we are all deceived. When I humble myself to learn something different and realize that I don’t know how to live, it can make a change in my daily life.

So many injustices I have done to so many. I must learn that this is true the other way around; injustices have been done to me for so long. We do things to one another under the cloak of a "belief system." It can be very difficult to undo what we have constructed for a long time as our "truths." Some skilled people who have experience and wisdom have helped me to sort this out. Not every counselor or therapist can do this, not every consumer is willing to put the work and effort into doing this. I have been really blessed in having had some valuable individuals to jump-start this process for me. Along the way, they have presented themselves in such competent ways. Thank you from the core of my heart. I will be grateful forever to these people who have such wisdom in their own lives and are willing to share it with others.

The journey is not over. It is not a done deal. I believe that others on the path will find that the journey is not over until it is over, at the ending of one’s life. In working on this daily, I do not expect that I have this down "pat" right now. Little by little, small increments of change begin to happen. I can look over a period of time and see how I am reacting differently to life and its daily challenges and opportunities.

Fear does not play a large part in pushing my buttons as it once did. I am grateful to be able to say this. I am also grateful to be able to say that life is a little easier today as a direct result of my learning something different. I am no longer an accident waiting to happen, at least not as often as I once was. Thank you to a few folks who have sown the seeds of change and the watering and nurturing that was given them along the way.

For anyone who is at a deeper struggling point right now, don’t lose heart. Stay in the process. Do not give up or give in. That is the easiest thing to do. The easiest thing to do is to take the path of least resistance doing the least amount of work to get the most benefit. Well, my experience is that for something to be worth having and keeping, the struggle is going to be there, be a friend to it.

From one friend to another, stay committed to your continued success, no matter how small . . . it’s yours.