Response to Fear
by Mary Cook, M.A., R.A.S.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with any emotion, including fear, however it’s important to evaluate whether our responses to fear are helpful or hurtful. When there is realistic danger, fear signals us to protect ourselves from harm, whether physical, mental or emotional. Fear of the progressive disease of addiction and its consequences can propel us into recovery.
The fear of harming our children because of parenting deficiencies can motivate us to take a parenting class or begin counseling. When we are afraid we might hurt ourselves, we can ask others to help us not act out. Fear of losing a loved one to terminal illness can cause us to draw closer and demonstrate deeper caring.
We don’t always respond to fear in healthy, constructive ways however. Real danger to some people prompts overly aggressive and provocative behaviors, which cause greater harm.
Fear in addiction often triggers the use of more or stronger drugs. The fear of harming our children commonly leads to abandonment of those children to protect them from us, or demands to the children to deny their pain and fear so that we can pretend there isn’t a problem. Some of us have phobias about death and dying that prevent us from visiting loved ones when they most need our support. Sometimes we are more afraid to love and be loved than we are to hurt and be hurt.
People’s thresholds for tolerating fear can be high or low, and responses vary widely depending on prior influences and role models, especially in childhood. How significant others around us responded to fear, trauma, danger and loss have a tremendous impact in shaping our own responses. If we grew up with chronic chaos, crises or abuse and the family demonstrated acceptance of these behaviors and discouraged, denied or punished any exhibition of pain, fear or anxiety, this defensive response can become ingrained in us as a survival tool.
This is an example of high tolerance for fear. Homes with domestic violence model unhealthy aggression and unhealthy passivity. Healthy assertiveness does not develop in this environment because assertiveness arises out of self-awareness, honesty, accountability, personal responsibility and healthy boundaries. These traits are not tolerated in sick families because they would threaten the family’s defensive system and this system holds the only tools they own.
Low tolerance for fear is commonly indicated by chronic anxiety, debilitating depression, lowered ability to experience pleasure, phobias and psychosomatic complaints.
We may become overly fearful in response to mild reminders of past events that caused fear. Parents can be irrationally fearful of a child’s risk of being molested at a certain age because they haven’t healed from their own molestation at that age. We may attempt to control others or our environment as a response to fear of loss of internal control of emotions.
In active addiction, fear is generally responded to defensively and offensively. We may deny, drug, avoid, or minimize it, or we may act out against it through harming ourselves or others. Fear is a common precursor to violence. Fear of losing a job, security, self-esteem, pride, power or love for instance, can drive some people to take desperately destructive measures.
Fear of deeply examining painful past issues in recovery can keep us emotionally immature. We must be far more fearful of the disease of addiction and all that it represents, than we are of committing wholeheartedly to our recovery. Addictive disease and its common companions of violence, prostitution, and other criminal behavior, incarceration, insanity, disease and death are all truly terrifying. It is also typical for addicts to have a history of equally frightening experiences prior to their using. Many recovering addicts who were not afraid to face bullets in their disease, are terribly afraid to face their feelings in recovery.
And yet feelings are what addicts use over. We need to re-experience them in order to heal and grow beyond old beliefs and behaviors. If we haven’t had healthy role models from which to learn ways to address fear, we must seek them out in recovery.
Fear increases and our effective emotional management decreases when we respond defensively and offensively to fear. Whether we have a high or low tolerance to fear, we must ask ourselves if our responses help or hurt our recovery today. If our objective is to kill or diminish fear, we will fail trying to fool ourselves. If our objective is to examine it thoroughly in order to understand it, we will arrive at a positive, constructive solution.
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About the Author
Mary Cook is the author of “Grace Lost and Found: From Addictions and Compulsions to Satisfaction and Serenity”, available from Amazon.com.
Mary has 37 years of clinical practice and 29 years of university teaching experience. She is available for telephone and office counseling, guided meditation, and speaking engagements.
Connect with her at: http:// WWW.MARYCOOKMA.COM
Her Facebook page is: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mary-Cook/166903606690909
