A few weeks ago little league baseball season started. As I sat in the bleachers at the very first game, I was startled to watch my 8 year old son walk out of the dugout and go straight to the pitcher’s mound. Stunned, having no clue that my son was going to pitch, I watched as he confidently picked up the ball and started warming up. Seeing him standing on the mound, with all eyes on him, my stomach started churning as I pictured myself in his shoes. I felt fear and anxiety start to fill my body and I knew without a doubt that I still didn’t have enough confidence, i.e. “fear tolerance” to do what my 8 year old was doing. As the game started, I asked my husband to find me a Xanax (and possibly a vodka tonic) before again expressing how blown away I was by our 8 year old’s confidence.
After
the game, I hugged my son and asked him if he was scared being the first
pitcher of the first game of the season.
He said he was “really scared” right before he started but he knew that
the feeling would go away once he started pitching.
Wow,
he did listen! You see, over the last
year, he and I had many conversations about fear. A few months prior, all of a sudden he became
afraid to go to school. After we
addressed all of the “tangible things” that could be done, we started
discussing the nature of fear. We talked
about fear just being a feeling. And
like all feelings they come….and they go.
I told him that our thoughts are simply “made up” and sometimes our
untrue thoughts can create fear out of thin air or make the fear seem bigger
and worse than it actually is. We
decided to call fear a “bully” and agreed that no bully is prepared for you to
stand up to them. We agreed to stand up
to the fear bully whenever it came out.
Following
that discussion, my son’s fear lessened day by day. Many days my son would come home eager to
share with me how he stood up the “fear bully” and how the “fear bully” ran
away immediately.
It
all came full circle on our family trip to Jamaica. Riding back to our hotel after completing a
zip lining course through the jungle, I asked my son if he had been scared. After he shook his head “no,” I shared how absolutely
terrified I had been being snapped onto the first line but that I faced my “fear
bully” and after that, I had a total blast.
My son responded definitively, “Well Mom, past the fear is fun.”
Fear
generates thoughts that act like a scary movie totally enveloping us and making
us believe worst case and totally unlikely outcomes. We then react to these images by feeling
scared and anxious. Wanting these
uncomfortable feelings to go away ASAP, we typically back away from the fear
trigger as quickly as possible. We then
tape-off this section of our life avoiding it at all costs. We know fear, anxiety and other evils live behind
that tape and know for sure we don’t want to go there again.
However,
each fear we experience, and don’t face, simply tapes off another section of
life. Little by little, if we don’t let
ourselves to feel the fear, our lives become small. We live our lives within the confines of our
box of safety. We fail to grow or push
ourselves into new experiences. Our life
becomes dull and boring.
The
next time my fears are triggered, I am going to follow my son’s lead. I am going to step confidently right into the
fear and wait for it to pass. According
to him, “behind the fear is fun.” I
intend to find out.
“What
I learned in that moment is that when you face your fears, they aren’t as big
as you thought they were. What makes
them big is when you don’t turn around to face them head-on. The longer you avoid your fears the bigger
they grow in your mind…. Most people fail because they become paralyzed by
their fear….” Steve Harvey.