Fear Itself

When Franklin Roosevelt said this, he was referring to the rebuilding of the United States' economy during the Great Depression. It is from his inauguration speech to a country deep in economic destruction. Americans had just been through a trauma that affected every family in the country and as the economic engine of the Western world, this trauma was affecting people around the world. People were paralyzed with the fear of losing everything they owned, the fear of not being able to provide for their families and the fear that the economy would never recover. FDR was trying to reassure his people that there was a way out of this and not to BE afraid. I capitalized BE for a reason, that if you become afraid, this fear affects your entire system causing a stress response of fight, flight or freeze and once in this state, taking positive action is difficult, if not impossible.

When I first began experiencing the effects of my PTSD, I was in this place of fear. Hypervigilant, unable to shut off the responses that were based in fear. The fear of loss, the fear of being wrong, the fear of disappointing others, this cycle was manageable, but got worse as I continued adding stressors from terrible calls that were never processed, just pushed down to a place they could fester and continue to make things worse. Eventually my body had enough and told me through no uncertain terms that it was time to get some real help. That's when the fear really ramped up. I had an anxiety attack in the down time between calls at work, none of my coping strategies could even come close to letting me manage it. When I finished the shift, I went home and used the old crutch of the booze. Oh the sweet relief to not have to feel any of it. I could interact with the kids because I was drunk, I could hang out with my wife because I had some bottles of wine in me, I could visit friends and drink up the whisky. A long as I didn't look at the place in myself where I kept the nightmares. I remember trying to share some of it with friends, and the look of horror on their faces is unforgettable even through the haze of the drink. That haze is what kept me going to work, but the anxiety attacks returned when I had to sober up. The haze got programed in though, I couldn't get out of it. After a few attempts at getting some help, I was at a point of hopeless fear. What if I couldn't get out of this? Very similar to the state of the country FDR was speaking to.

I was able to find an assessment tool on the USVA's website that scored your likelihood of having PTSD and it ranked you into 3 levels with a score out of 100, anything over 75 was in the red zone, which is never good. I remember filling it out at Starbucks near my doctor's office before an appointment to find out if he could do anything for me. I scored really well! 86%, not quite as good as my marks in college, but good enough to get a reaction from my doctor! He gave me Zoloft, that replaced the booze fast because it made me fell really bad if I had anything to drink, but since it completely removed my attachment to those pesky emotions, I was good to go.

What's the point? I had to suppress the fear to start healing. I couldn't BE afraid anymore, because I couldn't really connect to my emotions. Lots of therapy got me to a point where I could partially identify the core belief that set my whole journey in motion and now , deep into round 2, I have found a more complete explanation of what I hang onto to cause me to react the way I do and it took an exploration of the things I feared to do it. I had been in fear of the fear itself, once I let go of the fear, I could see the path, I followed that path not BEing afraid, but facing the fear, feeling the fear, without identifying as it and holding it in and making it a part of me. I was feeling fear and facing it through identifying it and calling it out into the light of my awareness to deal with it. Being afraid of fear allows it to grow, to remain in that place deep within, driving interactions with the world around us, expecting those thing to show up again because we don't want them to. Feeling afraid is a different thing. It is a feeling that can be managed by facing it in inquiry, from a place of detached curiosity and even of wonder. "Wow, that really freaks me out! Why?" then wait for an answer and if it doesn't come, ask again.

This is a meditation; get the heebie jeebies out through some activity, then sit down somewhere and take some deep breaths. When you are settled in, ask the question, then listen, to the self, to the place where your ideas come from and be curious about the answer. Try to tell the mind to have a nap, sometimes that mind is like a new puppy running all over looking for something to chew, you exercised it with movement, you fed it with the breath, you told it to sit as you sat, now put it away for a minute or two in the crate. Maybe it will fall asleep and you can get on with your work, or maybe it will jump around barking and chewing on the bars. If your mind does the second bit, let it out, get up and try again later, maybe it will have a nap next time. Don't be afraid of the process, you are doing it right because you are doing it.