Thoughts on Fear

August 18, 2019

For almost the past month, I’ve been struggling to write about fear – how this one word has served to be an overwhelmingly crippling emotion, derailing every goal and ambition I can imagine and even some I’ve yet to fathom. Each time I put pen to paper or sit down in front of my computer screen, fingers lingering against the letters, it’s like all the words and thoughts I have on the subject vanish. Fear materializes as an idea consuming monster with an appetite for any and all forms of productivity. I see it as zombified Pacman, chomping away on the best of plans, the sweetest of intentions. Or Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors, feasting away on the blood sweat and tears of my imagination’s greatest concepts.

I set out to execute a plan. I detail the steps. I consider the research, templates, the whole layout of what I intend to cover. Then it starts.

Knots fill my stomach. My pulse races. My palms sweat. My breathing is heavy, staggering. My mind spins in a million different directions. I’m immensely overwhelmed with the instinct to run, to flee from the danger. I’m in the tight clutch of fear. It’s crippling. It dominates my thoughts, controls my decision-making, or lack thereof, causes me to doubt any and everything. And worse than that fear convinces me that I’ll never be good enough, smart enough, prepared enough, authentic enough, compassionate enough, or strong enough. It convinces me that I’m inherently lacking and incapable of overcoming.

Simply put, fear wreaks havoc on you as a person. If left unchecked, it grows into a prolonged cycle of self-sabotage, negative self-talk, and the inaccurate belief that failure is the end of progress. Like everything that you do will be perfect the very first time. Let’s not forget when fear is loaded with thoughts of how other people perceive you, how others respond to you, and that their beliefs of what you should or could be doing exacerbate an already conflict-filled situation.

At some point for me, the fear turns to anger and that anger becomes fuel to soldier through the doubts and feelings of not being enough. Sometimes that shit works. Sometimes it doesn’t.