I am not a fan of danger. Or fear.
Some people are exhilarated by danger. It energizes them. Pushes them on to bigger and better things.
These are the people who go to Haunted Houses and horror movies.
For fun.
I am not one of those people.
Me? I just get scared. Immobilized.
I know I am supposed to be all brave and girl power and strong and Wonder Woman-y. But sometimes I am just – scared.
Things I am currently I am scared of include:
- Being dependent on others – that would be soteriophobia
- Failure – atychiphobia
- Heights (always afraid of those) – acrophobia
- Moving or making changes – tropophobia
- Growing old – gerontophobia
- Poverty – peniaphobia (which sounds dirty, but isn’t)
- Weakness – asthenophobia
I am not truly afraid of these things to phobia level. But I worry about them.
They do not currently feel as un-scary as I would like them to feel. I miss the days of having some sense of what the future is supposed to hold. It feels so wide open…like a cliff I am going to fall off of.
Maybe I need to add some sort of philosophical agoraphobia (that would be fear of open spaces) to my list.
I’d like to wear my cloak of bravery and swagger about talking trash about how awesome I am and how undamaged I am and how FINE everything is. But as much as things are currently fine (and they really are – don’t YOU start getting scared) – I don’t feel a tremendous amount of confidence that the other shoe isn’t about to drop making all that fineness crumble in a tiny pile of rubble.
Scared of shoes. There’s definitely something not right about THAT!
The problem isn’t really the fear itself – but the fact that I am not comfortable with living in it.
Maybe it is true that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Fearaphobia. Yeah, that’s what I have.
I wish I could harness all that nervous fear energy and channel it into something amazing. But how does that work exactly?
How do you get comfortable with fear and make it work for you instead of against you? I really would like to know.
Keep swimmin' 
If I may take your list of fears in order…
Fear of being dependent on others:
There’s a big difference between accepting help from others and being dependent. Don’t confuse the two.
Failure: Reframe… it can be the best lessons in life.
Heights: Step away from the edge!
Moving/ Change: Welcome it! Is it fun? Not initially, but often it’s the anticipation of it that is worse than actual change. Think of it as an adventure.
Growing old: Consider the alternative.
Poverty: With your intellectual resources I truly doubt this will plague you. There’s a difference between having the big house, fancy car, Nordstrom card, etc. and living a simpler life. I may be the least likely you’d expect to say this, but less truly is more in the big scheme of things.
Weakness: There may be a lot of things that could be said of you… weakness wouldn’t enter into it!
This *ahem* wisdom comes from years of experience and quite a bit of ‘been there/ done that’.
Hang in!
xob
The change part would be better if I could just GET ON WITH IT. But it’s all out there as things that will/might/should/could change – with nothing concrete to dig my fingernails into. So it’s just this big roaring chasm of unknown…
I know it’s all much less scary than it appears to be. I know intellectually that it will all be good eventually (or will at least probably turn out OK and non-tragic) but it is still scaring the crap out of me.
Thanks for the wisdom…maybe wine is the answer :)
You become “Gutsy” and think about something you’ve done in your life that’s “Gutsy.” I’m sure there’s one thing, even if it’s just one small thing. Hope as a writer, you come over and share your, “My Gutsy Story.”
Kristen, we’re all scared. Even famous people are scared. We just have to move forward.
Working on gutsy :) When I get there, I’ll let you know!