fear

Stepping through Fear

/ Tim / Leave a comment

Fear

Reams of paper have been used to expound on the subject of fear. The more I delve into discovering more about fear, the more material I find. It is pervasive in people’s thoughts and it subtly, and sometimes obviously, colours our actions. It changes how we feel and react to others. It causes arguments and wars. It runs the spectrum from a small anxiety about say, meeting a new person, to full blown paranoid phobias that can paralyze completely.

With all fear is the sense of a threat to me, my self, my ego and I allow it to affect me, how I feel about myself and what I do. ‘What if?’ ‘Maybe?’ My ego is always telling me that dismemberment and death is just around the corner, that everyone is trying to get me, that I will disappoint and that I can never do that! Fear is my ego saying to me: “That’s going to destroy, or belittle me in some way! Avoid it at all costs!” It doesn’t matter if it’s big or small, real or imagined, fear, once it’s in charge is felt the same way and will take charge.

So…What happens?

I stay in my tiny comfort zone. I don’t try new things. I miss out on experiences. I don’t trust others. I don’t trust myself. I don’t risk anything.

So….Nothing happens.

Live in the moment!

When I am in fear, I am not in the present, rather, I am in the future. I am think of what ‘might’ happen. I am in the realm of endless possibilities and I can allow my fears to stop me cold.

“You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection – you cannot cope with the future.”  Eckhart Tolle

I am learning that I will never be able to cover all the bases, make sure that all the contingencies are in place. I can’t know the unknown; I can’t project what will happen in the future.  My ego says to me that I dare not go and my faith tells me to go boldly forth. Yes faith. I am learning to trust my Higher Power.

When I look back on my life, I can see that my Higher Power has always been there. The fact that I am here today writing this is proof that I have always been looked after by something greater than me. If that is true: I am here today,  and I know it, then why would I think that my Higher Power is going to suddenly vanish and stop looking after me tomorrow?

I am finding it much easier to simply live in the moment: in the NOW and not in the future. I can face and cope with what I need to do right now. Spending time in the future can stop me from doing anything in the now. If I focus on tomorrow I am losing the beauty of today.

Some days I am more successful than others. I usually see when I am focused on fear and can do something about it, like looking at the task at hand, staying in the now. I don’t know if I will ever wipe fear out of my life, but I can open the door to let faith in. Ego may always be there insisting that there are threats everywhere. My Higher Power is always there too giving me the courage to step through fear and move forward, knowing that I can cope with whatever is happening now.

I am grateful.

Truth and Courage

/ Tim / 2 Comments

“Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the making of action in spite of fear, the moving out against the resistance engendered by fear into the unknown and into the future.” M. Scott Peck

Step Four asks us to make a thorough and fearless moral inventory. I took more time with this step than any other step in my recovery program. I kept telling myself I was preparing my thoughts, waiting for the right time and hoping to be inspired. What I was really doing was working on a character trait that still dogs me: procrastination. Why do today what I can put off until tomorrow? And I was afraid of what I would find. I was afraid I might find the truth of who I was. There were a lot of dark corners of my past that I had shut the door on and I was quite sure I would be opening Pandora’s Box if I looked too closely.

I had my own deadline for completing this step. I wanted to have it down and talk about it with my sponsor before I moved. As the period of time got shorter and shorter, my anxiety about the step increased. And then I started thinking that perhaps I didn’t need to do it before I moved. It could always be done later, right?

About this time I went to a meeting where the topic arose. A fellow shared that it took him two years and three days to complete his Fourth Step: two years of procrastination and three days to do the work. He talked about how his fear of what he might find froze him. When he finally sat down to write, he broke through that fear and faced himself with honesty, discovering that the task wasn’t as arduous as he thought it would be. This was the push I needed.

I got out the guide for the step that a friend suggested. I wasn’t sure what I would find but I knew that if I wanted to recover I had to trust the process. I knew it worked because I could see the results in others.  I also had examples of what happened to those who skipped this step. All it took was a couple of days of effort to work through the 59 questions  in the guide. In the end, the experience I heard at that step meeting bore true for me as well. My fear was a phantom. I knew my past. A few things I hadn’t thought about in years came up, but I realized that I never had anything to fear.

Like making that first phone call to ask for help, or walking into a meeting room for the first time, my fear diminished once I got down to doing Step Four. It wasn’t a Pandora’s Box of frightful things. Everything that was there I had placed inside. Step Four allowed me to open the box and see exactly what was in there. Now I had a better idea of who I was and what I needed to work on a better future for myself.

/ Tim / 3 Comments

“I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.” — Albert Einstein

The first time I went through Steps Six and Seven I really didn’t have the full grasp of what they meant. It was sort of: ‘I want to be a better person, so make me a better person.” And for the first time through, I was doing the best I could (and I can see now that I still hadn’t been restored to sanity). I sort of thought of these as easy steps after the tough work in Step Four and Five.  However, the first time through I was only focused on my Higher Power removing my defects of character. I really didn’t have much thought about the results: I was focused on my character defects and not on who my Higher Power had in mind for me to become.

It wasn’t until a couple of years ago in working these two steps over again that I began to grasp the significance of these ‘filler’ steps. Filler, indeed! I still struggle with the what these two steps mean for me.

I was pretty happy with who I was. I was finally getting to know who the real Tim was. I had spent so much time looking for self esteem in what others might or might not think about me and now that I had finally got to the point where I knew who I was, I also found out that I had to be willing to give it all up. This for me is the crux of Step Six and Seven: humbly asking to have my defects of character removed so that I can move forward and really become a new creation. In order to do that I have to say good-bye to the old me. It take a whole lot of trust in the program and one’s Higher Power to do that. That’s why for me it’s so easy to slip back into the old standby defects, my old behaviours. They are well known patterns.

I don’t know who the new ‘Tim’ is going to be. However, I see so many positive changes in others. Why would I think that I would be any different? If I can see that my Higher Power has always been there for me in the past, why do I think he will leave me alone now?

Steps Six and Seven are about humility on my part. And they are also about developing trust: trust in my Higher Power and trust in the process of becoming a new me. So far I’d have to say I’m impressed with what’s happening. And so who knows what the future holds. I still regularly take back my old standby defects, but it’s a process that takes time. But, as long as I am willing to give up the old me, the promise of a new me in the future holds true. We will be amazed!