I’m not sure that this is the book I need to read.
This book is all about convincing people they need to listen to and understand their fears. Whereas I think I do that too much.
Maybe I’m just listening to the wrong fears. Maybe this book can help me reset my barometer for measuring fear. My “fear-o-meter.”
Being a sheltered person with anxiety, I think I have become focused on the wrong kinds of fears. I doubt I would last very long in a dangerous situation.
If this book teaches me nothing else, maybe it should teach me that the things I am usually afraid of aren’t usually the things I should be afraid of.
Fear has a purpose. It has a place. And anxiety takes fear and puts it where it doesn’t belong.
Many examples evoked by this book involve people who suppressed their fears, ignored their intuition, and refused to see the signals. I have no doubt that I would be such a person. I do not feel equipped to navigate a dangerous situation.
But that’s not what I wanted to read about.
It is an interesting read, though. Maybe I could still learn something of value.
One thing the book points out is that we often worry more about dangers that are extremely unlikely to befall us (such as a hijacked airplane or terrorist attack) than about the things that happen every day (car accidents, domestic abuse).
Fear plays sleight of hand with us. It attracts us toward one hand and then attacks us with the other. We are attracted to the “flashy” and “exotic” fears, and we ignore the everyday and mundane ones.
But when you have anxiety, many things get flagged as “dangerous” that shouldn’t be. It affects your judgment and your habits. It makes you seek comfort and control. It makes your life a delicate balancing act, a fragile equation that gets thrown into chaos with the introduction of each new variable.
I’m afraid to talk to girls.
Why am I afraid to talk to girls?
What is the most likely worst-case scenario?
She doesn’t like me?
Underneath most of my anxiety is a fear of failure, rejection, and loss of control.
But to be afraid of those things is to be afraid of life, of reality.
Because this is reality: I am going to fail; I am going to be rejected; I am not going to be able to control everything. These are things that happen to everybody. I am not special. I have no godlike powers that I can exert over the universe to prevent these things. The only thing I can do is build a fortress and hide within it until I die.
But even if I did hide away in my Fortress of Solitude, I can’t prevent the changes from coming. Change is a force of nature. You can fight against it, but you are destined to lose. Change will overtake you. The more violently you fight against it, the more violent the change.
You can avoid the inevitable for a little while by pulling yourself away from it, but eventually something lets go, and you are hurled at each other like a rubber band. Yes, a rubber band can sting, but it would have hurt a lot less if I took the hit earlier.
It takes a lot of energy to fight against change. And for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The energy you spend is going somewhere. And eventually you simply won’t have enough to fight it, so you have no choice but to let the change happen.
Sometimes I look at myself as someone who exists within a small bubble of security. Like the shields around the Enterprise. Sometimes the outside world closes in, causing the bubble to shrink. Sometimes I feel suffocated, requiring the bubble to expand. The bigger your bubble, the more enriching your life can be, simply because you have more room.
So it’s not really about abandoning security for the sake of risk. It’s not either/or. It’s about allowing yourself to grow, allowing your bubble to expand. I don’t have to abandon all safety just to talk to a girl. I haven’t lost anything just because a job interview didn’t go well. It’s not about what I’m willing to give up; it’s about what I’m willing to allow in.
As someone with anxiety, it’s hard to allow anything new into my life. I don’t believe I can handle the uncertainty. But I can take small, incremental steps. Steps that push against the bubble without breaking it.
Maybe someday I’ll come to realize that my bubble isn’t as fragile as I fear it is.
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