Facing Fear
“Many of our fears are tissue-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them.”
—Brendan Francis
Unitarian Universalists value knowledge; we believe in facing the facts and tackling problems rationally. We might even go so far as to affirm that there is a kind of salvation of the heart and mind in knowing life as it is, in all its glory and ugliness.
The human psyche does not always cooperate, however.
What do we do when irrational—perhaps nonrational—fears seize us and send us running from the knowledge?
Most people have fears that play havoc with their reason, and I am no exception.
Personal Story
I am afraid of medical diagnoses. I am afraid, I suppose, not of death, but of dying; not of oblivion or transformation, but of suffering. My heart races at the power of bad medical news to change all of life in an instant.
My fear started in childhood with an anxious mother who worried about my repeated bouts of illness and conveyed her fear that every new round of infection meant catastrophe. I remember going to the hospital emergency room for late-night penicillin injections and descending into a veil of literal ether at a doctor’s office so that my tonsils could be removed, right then and there. Most of all, I recall oh so many trips down the endless corridor to my pediatrician’s office, which left me uneasy with doctors and my own illnesses.
I have struggled with the fear at various times and worked to overcome it. I have been more successful in some situations than others, and the methods I have used to control my fear have ranged from talking to a therapist to calling on reason to taking medication before I go to the doctor.
To my great frustration, reason seems to be my least effective tool. At the mere sight of a medical professional headed my way with a blood pressure cuff, I can drive my readings up by tens and tens of points. Doing so makes me feel foolish and impatient with myself.
This summer I came face to face with my fear again. A chronic neck problem that had not kept me from being functional in my daily life flared up and became much worse. It’s a long story, but this event turned my life plan for the next year upside down and left me with some frightening possibilities. An appointment with a physician at my internal medicine clinic proved to be worse than no help; a mixture of disbelief, patronizing attitude, and bad advice left me drained and discouraged. Fortunately, I had a consult scheduled at Johns Hopkins Department of Neurosurgery in Baltimore. The physician who had been assigned was completely unknown to me, of course, and my fear started as I wondered whether he would be one of the doctors I can communicate with or one who exacerbates all my worst impulses.
As my husband and I drove down to Baltimore that day, I realized how tired I was of my fear. I had tried everything else; perhaps it was time to try prayer. Slowly, I composed a prayer that went something like this:
Eternal God,
Lead me not to my fear,
But to my courage.
Let me listen with peaceful ears
And speak with a true voice.
Help me to know,
And to remember,
That whatever comes my way,
My hope and my strength
Are to be found in All That Is,
Are to be found in You,
Spirit of Life.
Amen.
I repeated it over and over: riding in the car, negotiating the labyrinth “city” that is the Johns Hopkins medical campus, waiting in a tiny office to see the doctor.
Amazingly it worked: I was flooded with a peaceful calm and the conviction that I could handle this the way I wanted to.
Sometime the universe seems to reward us for taking a step. The doctor turned out to be an extremely knowledgeable, respectful, and excellent communicator. He listened to me, looked at my MRI results, asked questions and listened some more, then began his explanation with these words, “Stories are the most important things. It’s true in life, and it’s true in medicine.” We had an hour of give and take, in which I had my questions answered, the ones that could be answered, anyway.
Perhaps I was just ready to give up fear, some would say, and understand that I have some control in how I respond to the uncontrollable events in life. Perhaps I was. But it really felt to me like prayer worked: it let me face my fear down, and it put me in touch with my courage and my will. It replaced my fear with peace.
That’s my story, anyway.
Prayer
Eternal God,
Lead me not to my fear,
But to my courage.
Let me listen with peaceful ears
And speak with a true voice.
Help me to know,
And to remember,
That whatever comes my way,
My hope and my strength
Are to be found in All That Is,
Are to be found in You,
Spirit of Life.
Amen.
Spiritual Practice
Meditate or write about the following:
What do I seek in place of my fear? What do I see in the place of my fear?
May the peace that is greater than any one of us, the peace of All That Is, surround us, and pervade us, and emanate from us, now and in the days to come.
- Facing Fear - November 11, 2011
- Diagnosis of Mental Illness - November 11, 2011
