What To Do About Fear.
I’ve spent the last five years studying fear in my life and the lives of my clients. But lately, I’ve begun to wonder if I’m giving fear too much play, too much airtime, and credit. Like “Yah, of course, you’re afraid, you’ve never done this before, it would be weird if you weren’t.”
I think we need to quit normalizing how often fear paralyzes or defeats us and get on with it. Fear shouldn’t defeat us - ever
Here’s what I know about fear:
We have 50 thousand-year-old brains that haven’t kept pace with the evolution of our environment. They are threat detecting machines and much of the fear we feel regards threats that are unlikely to kill us. Our brains’ job is to scare us back into safety.
Because fear feels terrible, we’ve neutered a lot of it out of our lives. We can do that now, but it creates a growing risk-aversion in us which has the unwelcome effect of atrophying our courage. Feeling weak and inadequate in the face of fear, makes us avoid it more. So we get weaker and the monster grows. I did a training on this recently, check it out here.
Also, at some level, I think many of us are ashamed we feel fear at all, so we don’t talk about it. Men are particularly prone to this. So instead, we shove it in the basement and act unafraid, which is not the same thing as acting with courage. Our nervous systems hate the fakery and bravado and reward it with more anxiety and fear.
Remember courage is the art of being afraid and choosing to do it anyway, but I wonder if I’ve gotten so focused on managing fear, that I’ve forgotten its real antidote.
Dang. If I dwelt in perfect love more, would I be so afraid?
I’m not dropping this scripture to remind you where you’re coming up short in your faith. I hate when people do that. I’m dropping it to remind us that amid all the strategy for being people of courage, dwelling in the Love of God is chief among them.
We admire people who do interesting things with their lives and think they are somehow different from us, superhuman or fearless in ways we are not.
It’s rarely true.
They just know how to manage fear.
They know it’s part of the deal.
They know it’s a signal they’re doing something worthwhile.
They know courage is built only by doing things that scare them.
And often, they know God really really well.
The first four can be trained. The last one cannot.
Nobody can train our willingness to stop and dwell in the presence of God. Only we can choose to do that: To learn his heart so well that we trust him when he leads us to do impossibly bonkers things - which is kind of his stock in trade. Think of Abraham. Moses. Joshua. Esther. Saul. David. Peter. Mary. Gideon. Mary. David. Paul.
What are we afraid of anyway?
The three primary human fears are fear of rejection, fear of unworthiness, and fear of failure. If you redefine failure and even advocate for it as I did in this training, that kind of takes care of the last one.
But rejection and unworthiness?
The possession of a deep sense of worth and belonging can only come from someone who lives outside the human condition and loves us perfectly; someone who already sucked up all the wrath and punishment that we earn on a regular basis. That’s Jesus, but if I can’t find myself holding and waiting in his presence because my mind is too jacked up, I can never sink deep into that knowing.
And I stay afraid.
Sinking deep has to be the chief answer to fear and that only comes with stillness. Here’s something I wrote ten years ago about that.
Somehow, like many people, I find it hard to believe that God is standing under my window, like Lloyd Dobbler with a boom box imploring me to notice the sweetness of the gesture and to please, please receive it.
And return it.
The love of God is the most central, crucial message for the whole of humanity. It’s the reason we exist and yet, I spend so little time dwelling in it, soaking in it until I’m saturated.
Why?
There are a lot of reasons, but really who cares? Dwelling is a discipline I can cultivate along with all the others. Of course, I’m all for good fear strategy, but maybe I’m giving it more attention than it deserves. Maybe what fear really needs is a little more “so what? now what…”
…and a lot more get still and know.
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