Spiritual people dislike war terms, but they are often useful to me in dealing with fear. They are simple and familiar and people understand them. I think of it as a war within me, an unending, lifelong conflict between me and the person I want to be. The more useful analogy, I think, is really to a guerrilla struggle, because it is not played out on a big battlefield with a single decisive conflict, it is a smaller, less dramatic, incremental, daily and pervasive conflict, a hit-and-run sort of thing. In our culture, therapists and doctors like to proscribe medications, and they surely work, I was on them for 30 years. I slept better than and went about my business. They are good for many people.
They were not good for me, as I simply lived around the fear, hid it in people, money, animals and other places. I suppose I ought to be grateful for my divorce, for the recession, for the collapse of the publishing industry as I knew it, and for the resulting breakdown that really gave me no choice in my mind but to deal with it. I recall thinking that I was fighting for my life, that whatever happened, my life wasn’t going to end that way, it wasn’t the end of my story. I also decided to share this struggle, mostly on my blog. People ask for more details about what happened to me, but I don’t think so. That’s not necessary for me to share.
I am learning that dealing with fear works best on a small, not a grand scale, a series of small battles, not a big one. Medicine worked for me for a long time, but it kept me from seeing my life or dealing with my problems. Therapy was helpful, and even more so, spiritual counseling. It has been in meditation that I have finally seen how my mind works, where the wounds are, and how powerful a grip fear has on the soul when it is embedded there early on.
Some small thing I will share in my many small battles:
– Fear is a gift, always. Every racing heart, every awful thought, every discouraged heart is a gift that teaches me, challenges me, defines me and helps me grow.
– Disrupt fear. Fear is a pattern a rhythm, a tradition, a habit, the way we learned to think, usually from our parents or when we were young, from siblings, relatives, thousands of things. It is mostly a response to trauma, psychological or biological. Changing patterns is important. When fear strikes, I get up. Take a photo, sing a song, make love, take a walk, post a message. Fear is confused by different patterns. Patterns can change, even when fear does not.
– Slow down. Fear is fast, always. Slow the mind. Meditate. Drink a glass of water. Take deep breaths. Think sweet thoughts. Fear is confused by a slower mind. Like a big army, it doesn’t change the way it works. I can change the way I work with it.
– Distract fear. Read a mystery. Listen to a CD. Call a friend. See a movie. Paint something, write a poem. Fear needs one’s full attention for fuel. It can be starved a bit by distraction. Our world is full of distractions, use them.
– Starve fear. Fear is hungry and in our country there is plenty of fuel. Doctors spread fear and so do lawyers and politicians and journalists and forecasters and friends and neighbors and corporations and insurers and bureaucrats and producers. There are few institutions in or world that make money offering safety and comfort and so fear is everywhere. We are porous, we absorb it. Think of how many people you know who watch cable news or other media who are angry and fearful. Or who have doctors who make them feel good, not bad. What does the news really do for us in our time? Inform us, or frighten and enrage us? For me, every interaction with peddlers of fear and anger must be considered, weighed, understood, even when the universe around me is moving in a different direction.
This is called awakening.
– Confuse fear. This is a battleground of the mind, and the mind is my friend as well as my enemy. Fear begins with images of trauma and danger – past, present, future. Our weapons are other images. When fear comes up in me, I think of Maria. Or of the meaning of my life. Or of books I want to write, of the dogs and animals, of my ambitions for myself, of my creative spark. I feel fear shift then, get confused, perhaps unnerved by these new and different images. It blurs, weakens. If I think of them often, they enter my consciousness too.
– Crowd fear. Fear fills the space it is in. Meditation is the most effective way for me to plant other ideas, other thoughts, to crowd fear out. It is not the only thing. Meditation is not a woo-woo thing, it is a powerful, even disturbing tool and for me, needs to be applied knowledgeably and thoughtfully. Because I can’t always control what comes up there.
So a conflict of small changes, different thoughts, new habits and traditions. Like the old guerilla fighters – Mao, Ho Chi Minh – always preached. Fear wins when we surrender to it. We win by surviving and transcending it, small battles, important battles, every day. Be small and swift, be agile and determined. Be patient and brave. There is strength in that, and strength is the great enemy of fear.