It’s easy to opt out of doing something because you feel afraid. Your pulse may race, you may shake, you may experience anxiety and conjure up negative thoughts and stories in your mind. When we feel afraid, it’s common to want to run away from whatever is causing us to be afraid. Unfortunately, though, we would likely miss out on many beneficial life experiences if we avoided everything that elicited fear in our minds and bodies. 

If you read my CALM posts, you know that I really like acronyms. I was once told a memorable acronym for FEAR — False Evidence Appearing Real. I love this because when we are afraid, lots of fabricated “evidence” really does start to look real. We can envision ourselves failing and suddenly we have created an entire story detailing the full spectrum of our failure. If the fear is about trying a new sport or activity, we may picture ourselves falling and getting seriously injured. If we fear flying, we may imagine the plane crashing. If we fear a social situation, we may envision being frozen around others, unable to speak, and in a corner socially isolated from those around us. Fear is a strong emotion and without considering its impact on us, it can quickly transition from an informative emotion to a controlling one.

One of the metaphors I like that describes fear’s potential to control us is one in which you imagine you are driving a bus where your emotions are your passengers, when left unchecked, you can find that they actually take over and start driving the bus themselves. What I mean by this, is, if you were to imagine your whole self as a clear-headed, centered adult driving the bus of your life, you can make rational decisions by considering a wide variety of thoughts and feelings. However, if you allow fear to grab the steering wheel and be in charge or where life takes you and what decisions you make, you are only being driven and controlled by fear. And when we let fear make decisions it is easy to miss out on activities we could really enjoy or goals and values we have for our lives. 

One thing I like to tell my son, who tends to experience fear more readily than some of his peers, is “You can feel afraid AND choose to do something anyway.” I don’t tell him to get rid of the fear or just “stop feeling afraid” because that likely wouldn’t work and it would probably feel pretty invalidating to him and his experience. What I am hoping to accomplish is to let him know he can feel his fear and have his experience, while also not letting it drive the bus. I want him to recognize he can be afraid and still move forward with his life. And I assure you, I practice this regularly for myself too. Sometimes when we just name the fear, it helps us be able to identify “Ok this is fear. This isn’t real, even though it feels real. And I don’t have to let it drive the bus.”