Is Fear Your Primary Motivator?

I remember some years ago realizing I was not doing something because I was afraid to try it.  I didn’t want to risk any negative consequences even though I knew it was absolutely essential to my mental health and well being to deal with the situation. I was afraid of change. I was afraid to speak up for myself.

Around that same time, a little voice started to make itself heard: are you making decisions based on fear?  Wow.  Did I really want to live a life where fear of the new or change kept me stuck in a place I didn’t want to be?

I went through all sorts of feelings – some were very old and actually dated back to being a small child trying to figure out how to act to not make my father angry. It was a challenging job for a kid – it was so easy to make him angry, and his reactions were rarely predictable.  It meant a lot of anxiety, waiting for the hammer to drop. I developed a skill set.  First was to not care if he loved me.  That meant sometimes I poked the crazy.  I took the consequences.   We all know how that thinking turns out.  There is a fundamental desire to feel loved, especially by your parents – so while I felt empowered in the moment, it took its toll over time.  You can’t life thinking I don’t care if anyone loves me. We want to be loved by SOME one.  Otherwise, it’s very lonely out there.

Fear is a powerful force. It’s actually one of our primary survival mechanisms. If we didn’t feel fear, we would walk up to the snarling, vicious dog and get bit.  If we couldn’t feel fear we would get into all kinds of bad situations.  It’s ironic then, that we didn’t feel fear when we popped a handful of pills a friend handed us saying, “These are cool.”  Shoot – I remember not even giving a moment’s thought to what might be in there and if it might be deadly to take them together.

The point is, fear should not be the primary feeling in making decisions in the normal course of life.  When you are sober and clear-headed, going back to primal fear as the determinant of your choices can really hold you back.  This is not to say one should be reckless, just be willing to, at times, take a leap of faith.

Maybe you’re afraid to tell your boyfriend you are miserable and want out of the relationship.  What if I never find someone else who loves me?  What if he flips out and we have a horrible scene that will make me sick to my stomach?  What if he says, “OK, I’m miserable too. I can’t stand to look at your face anymore,” and we end up feeling like the one abandoned?

Maybe you are afraid to take a new job opportunity.  Maybe the new job won’t work out?  Maybe they won’t like me?  My old job is secure. The new job will be foreign territory. I hate my current job, but at least I know they won’t fire me. I’m miserable, but I get a paycheck.

Maybe you are afraid to tell a friend you can’t spend time with her anymore because her drinking is making you uncomfortable.  Maybe you think a lot about drinking when you’re with her, and you think it’s really risky, but you feel like a jerk breaking away from her. You’ve been friends a long time. It’s putting your recovery at risk, but you are afraid she might hate you, or go over the edge, or tell your other mutual friends secrets about you that will embarrass you.

Fear isn’t a good feeling, and except in cases of survival, it is rarely a healthy thing to use as your primary motivator.  Of course, fear that you will drink again is a great motivator to get you away from bad things. That’s about survival.

It’s important to tease apart what is actually going on when fear seems to be ruling your decision.  Sometimes the risk is so well worth it, that you have to move through that fear and get to the other side.

You have to ask yourself, is fear your primary motivator in life? If it is your ruling planet, take that first leap of faith.  In most cases if you are making a good decision, you will learn that fear is natural, but it needn’t rule your life.