I’ve been reading a couple of interesting books on fear.
Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker
Embracing Fear by Thom Rutledge.
I was looking for the first and accidentally downloaded the second thinking it was the first, and then thought I would read them both (if that makes sense).
The Gift of Fear is all about real fear, survival in response to a real threat to life /pain. Embracing Fear then looks at how to manage the every day fears / anxieties / worry / hypervigilance that we all walk around with, that aren’t in response to actual lions about to eat you and that aren’t actually helpful or useful.
As someone who has been hypervigilant for most of my life this was a really useful distinction to explore.
I found Gavin De Becker’s book at times extremely relevant, at others not. He is from the USA and so the prevalance of guns is a big issue to ordinary americans, not so if you live in the UK, but still always an interesting read. He describes how a real threat to life initiates an instinctive, intuitive response to living creatures. It doesn’t involve conscious thought. As I have been in a life or death situation myself (an armed robbery where someone was shot dead), I revisited this and recognised just what he was talking about. He emphasises that trusting one’s gut reaction is ALWAYS worthwhile. Act in the moment (to escape or avoid) and reflect on it later.
My memories of that armed robbery have never upset me, after reading the book I realise why. That I handled myself well in that situation, I was calm, protected myself appropriately and initated getting help, none of which was thought through, all instinctive. It was a real threat and I handled it well.
So that leaves me with my hypervigilance. Better to stand that down, be calm and trust my body to respond in a real emergency. Of course my chronic anxiety is so longstanding it is not going to just switch off overnight! However, reading the second book gives strategies to deal with it. Basically to explore each worry /fear to find its source.
Overnight I woke up with a really helpful strategy for me personally. This is a mixture of embarrassing and funny. Somedays I wake up fearful. If there is a specific event that day, my fear will attach itself to it, but if there is nothing, then it will rationalise itself as a feeling of dread about the state of the world. I will sometimes walk round the block with a terrible sense of fear and despair. My fearful self is of course my inner child, Sukey and the grown up me also knows this bad feeling will wear off but it is hard to push through it. This morning the image of the childhood story of Chicken Licken suddenly appeared. The little chicken that thinks that the sky is about to fall on it’s head. That is often me when I wake up in the morning as the fear and despair builds. Holding onto the thought of Chicken Licken somehow helps to downgrade that fear to something I can smile about. Small steps in the right direction.
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