Welcoming the gifts of fear!
Many of us have been taught to see fear as a problem, but it’s actually an intuitive emotion that helps you orient yourself, connect with your instincts, and act and respond skillfully.
Fear helps you orient you to change and novel situations, and it focuses on the present moment and your immediate surroundings.
But if you think of the ways we talk about fear, you’ll be hard-pressed to recall anything that suggests fear might be useful or necessary.
Though all emotions are valenced into the simplistic and unhelpful categories of positive and negative, fear gets valenced so strongly that it’s normal for people to speak of it as toxic and unwanted: “There’s no need to be afraid,” “There’s nothing to fear but fear itself,” “Don’t be a coward,” or this simple slogan that became a bumper sticker: “No fear!”
But fear is a crucial emotion. Without your fear, you’re not a superhero, no. No. Without your fear, you’re unaware, unintuitive, and disoriented.
So let’s clear away the backward training we get about fear, and let’s look at fear empathically and intelligently.
FEAR: Intuition & Action
GIFTS: Curiosity ~ Intuition ~ Instinct ~ Focus ~ Clarity ~ Attentiveness ~ Readiness ~ Vigor
WHAT YOUR FEAR DOES: Fear arises to help you focus on the present moment, access your instincts and intuition, and tune in to changes in your environment.
WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE: Focus your attention on your fear and orient yourself to your surroundings. Prepare yourself, act and move consciously, and revitalize yourself with the dynamic, intuitive focus fear brings to you.
THE INTERNAL QUESTIONS: What am I sensing? What action should be taken?
The message in fear (from The Language of Emotions)
Fear helps you focus yourself, identify where you are in relation to what you’re sensing, and bring all your faculties into the present moment. Fear comes forward to give you the energy and focus you need to orient to change or novel situations.
This often means that you have to stop what you’re doing, or at least slow down. Unfortunately, most of us fight anything that tries to halt our forward movement – which means that most of us fight our fear. This is a serious mistake with serious consequences.
Fear is not cowardice
Fear is the protective mechanism inside you that knows you’re not adequately prepared for whatever is coming next. Fear stops you – not to immobilize you, but to give you the time you need to gather yourself and your resources.
Fear steps forward when you require extra skills – or time to take a breather – so that you can make it through the next moment.
If you trust your fear and take time to focus yourself, it will give you those skills.
When you ask your fear the internal question “What am I sensing?” and “What action should be taken?” your fear will help you orient yourself to what’s going on around you and make the best decision, which is entirely unique to each situation.
When your instincts are informed by your fear, you’ll have hundreds of options – and if you let it, your fear will help you choose the right one each time.
Listen to your fear
If you listen to your fear, you’ll have access to more expert information, instincts, and resources than you could ever possibly need
But not listening to fear is almost a national pastime. Even when people learn something about the true nature of fear, they often continue to reject its wisdom.
Many people have learned to thank their fears for warning them while they proceed with their fear-inducing event anyway. My observation is that this is a way to rationalize the fear away, as opposed to channeling it properly. While it’s important not to let fear stop you completely (unless you’re about to wander off a cliff!), it’s even more important to find ways to work with, and not against, the instinctive brilliance your fear brings to you.
When you can channel your fear properly, it will contribute a sense of self-preservation while it pushes you to study, prepare, and renew your understanding of courage as the capacity to live life on your own terms, rather than throw yourself headlong into fearless or dare-devilish behaviors.
In truth, each of us (whether we’re dare-devils or not) has learned to impede, reject, and ignore our fear in any number of ways. This is nothing to be ashamed of – it’s how we were raised, trained, schooled, and controlled. It’s also how we train and control ourselves – but this bad training is not a life sentence.
Connect to your fear
If you can connect consciously to your fear, its fine-tuned awareness will help you revive your instincts and your resourcefulness. Your fear will also reconnect you to your innate intuitive abilities. Your fear can give you free information and advice on any topic, because it has its finger on the pulse of the true difficulties and obstacles you face.
Fear also has another important function; it helps you know when you’re encountering true change. When you’re about to take on a new job, a new love affair, or any new direction in your life, your fear may increase. If you don’t understand fear, you may stop yourself dead in your tracks – or throw yourself fearlessly at the new thing; however, neither extreme reaction is correct.
If you can welcome your fear as a certifier of the newness you’re facing, you can slow down, focus yourself, and rely on its instincts and intuition to help you pilot your way safely and confidently into your new adventure.
Thank you, fear!
Related post: A simple way to access your fear
Bill
Thanks for this lovely reframe, Karla. And I imagine that consuming caffeine and other stimulants that activate our adrenals might make our fear emotion come up quicker and more powerfully than without it. It does for me, at least! And because of that, I wonder if people’s experience of fear is more frequent and more intense. It is for me, at the moment.
And so when my fear does come up, I can welcome it and work with it and become more present. And take necessary action. And it seems more intense to me when I’m sitting at a desk all day. Where my energy is not circulating through my body as much as when I’m moving. 🙂
Karla McLaren
Hi Bill!
Oh, interesting, your point about sitting. Fear is such an action-based emotion. I wonder if long periods of immobility might make it get a little hyperactivated or hyper-vigilant? Interesting!
And yes, when people are healing from problems with fear or anxiety, it often helps them to cut out caffeine and stimulants for a while so that their system can re-set itself.
Monique
Karla,
I was wondering about fear that is from a past stressful experience like PSTD. If that becomes activated how do you suggest addressing that, clearly it is not telling the person to take action, but just a reflex alerting them to past trauma.
Your thoughts are appreciated.
Monique
Karla
Hello Monique, good question.
I place PTSD in the area of panic rather than fear. If you have the book, PTSD is covered in the panic chapter. I’ll be posting about panic later this month, but I’ve got to first post about confusion, anxiety, jealousy, and envy!
For PTSD, the best work I’ve found is Somatic therapy, especially the Somatic Experiencing work of Peter Levine, who has trained a lot of practitioners. His website includes a directory of practitioners all over the world.
He’s also got a number of books and CDs out, plus an online course on trauma healing that’s very helpful.
Monique Gallagher
Karla,
Good distinction it is panic rather than fear.
Thank you for the referral.
warmest regards,
Monique
Bill
I just bought Peter’s audiobooks on Healing Trauma. Thanks for the rec.
Bill
Started listening to Healing Trauma. Resonating as true for me. What’s interesting is that I’m getting that trauma is not necessarily being in war. Can also be smaller things. For me, trauma has looked like me making a mistake at work and having a panic attack.
Brene Brown makes a connection between Shame symptoms and trauma symptoms. Which to me is quite telling.
These are all helpful things for me to learn about and grow from. And right now I feel stuck in depression. Time for some changes in my life, perhaps.
Karla
When I used to work with dissociated people, I noticed a lot of what I called “dissociation from dissociation,” such that people thought their dissociation didn’t count because their situation wasn’t extreme – like war or torture. But some of us are simply very sensitive, and a trip to the dentist can shoot us out of our bodies like grapefruit seeds, while seeing a huge fire might feel like “ho hum.” I’ve often said that the game of “who has it worst” is not a game you want to win. Or even play, hopefully.
I’ve found that focusing on my own trauma, whatever it is, however it was caused, is a wonderfully deepening process that helps me understand exactly who I am, what my organism is drawn to and repelled by, and how my instincts and resources arise in the face of trauma. I hope you’re also having that kind of experience, and I’m so glad you have Peter’s work!
Judy
Hi Karla,
I recently was told of your work from a therapist in my networking group. I love your informative explanations and your intuitive understanding of emotions and people’s responses. I would love to attend trainings that you do—preferably in the Detroit, MI area, but am willing to travel (depending…).
Thanks,
Judy
Karla
Hello Judy, welcome to my site!
I’ll be doing a week-long retreat at Kripalu in the Berkshires of Massachusetts in January (the 5th through the 10th). It’s a lovely place to have a vacation, a health retreat, and a workshop all in one, and I’ll be posting about it here when registration is available.
We’re making changes to this website, and I’ll soon have a dedicated page for events and appearances. Cheers!
Monique Lusse
Hi Karla, Love your work.
Question about curiosity? Is it an emotion? or is it like love, not an emotion but a state.
I think the latter, but wanted to ask you to unpack it a bit.
You list “curious” as a soft Fear and Anxiety emotion on “Your Emotional Vocabulary List”. And you list “curiosity” as a gift of fear in this post.
I don’t see how something can be both. I don’t see gifts as emotions, but like I said, I’d love to hear you unpack it a bit more.
Karla McLaren
Hi Monique,
Some of the vocabulary words could be seen as gifts and not just states. We’ll be updating these lists to include the gifts and skills as vocabulary words. I had hesitated to do this earlier, because people aren’t used to seeing emotions as central aspects of cognition and meaning-making, but since they’re my vocabulary lists, we’ll be adding my words for how and why the emotions work. I look forward to it!