We're handling our "irrational" fears all wrong
Is fear really irrational when the whole world feels unhinged?
If you’ve ever felt ashamed of your feelings of fear, I wrote this story for you. (PS - The snakes that follow are almost entirely metaphorical.)
Drain snakes
For a few years in college, I was afraid of being pranked. The very specific phobia stacked on top of the ever-present paranoia about spiked drinks and sexual assault instilled by school officials during orientation. They had planted the seed, handed us rape whistles, and encouraged us to walk around campus vigilantly aware of our classmates’ malicious intent.
I watched some guys I knew play cruel practical jokes on each other. It was dumb stuff that involved intoxication and the internet and ruined their chances of ever holding public office. I felt sympathetic to the victims of this shortsighted stupidity, and I imagined how mortified I would be to become their next target. The thought made me feel out of control and eroded my already-shaky trust in the people around me.
Even after I learned to keep my distance from the mean-spirited posse of pranksters, the possibility of being violently, publicly humiliated still felt clear and present. Fear had taken root, and it followed me to class, parties, dates, and my first job. I looked at everyone with a side-eye even when no danger existed. A voice taunted from the cheap seats of my brain, This is all an elaborate ploy. You will be humiliated at any moment. I couldn’t relax. I second-guessed every interaction, questioning the intentions of new friends and romantic interests. I replayed every moment of my life, looking for clues to solve a mystery that didn’t exist.
When I tried to explain to myself that I almost certainly was not on my own version of The Truman Show, my paranoia reminded me that that’s just what they WANTED me to think. I worked fear through my brain like a third base coach gnawing on a wad of Big League Chew. Under the pressure of mental mastication, it shifted shape and took on a thousand new forms that evaded rationalization and neutralization. Each time I thought I talked myself to safety, fear found a new inroad to send anxious shockwaves through me: Okay, pranks aren’t real, but everyone definitely still hates you. You’re a terrible person. Waitresses spit in your food.
I got stuck.
Mentally and physically exhausted from running on the fear treadmill and keeping my guard up against everything and everyone all the time, I went back to therapy. This - my third - therapist's office was a musty attic with embroidered pillows scattered across dirty wall-to-wall carpeting. She had me sit in a chair that was like a beanbag, where I shifted awkwardly and watched dust float in a sunbeam while she explained that the things I was afraid of were irrational. Each time I had a fearful ideation that began with the phrase “what if,” she declared, I was indulging in irrational thought. Her certainty in the matter was exactly like that beanbag chair, soothing at first, but increasingly uncomfortable the longer I sat in it.
I misapplied her advice and tried chastising my next panic attack. “You don’t make sense!” I cried, like the desperate next victim in a horror movie, but it didn’t stop. I berated my anxiety for being illogical, but it kept right on shaking my nerves. Not only did the fear not go away when I understood that it was baseless, now I also felt bad for being afraid in the first place. I wasn’t just scared anymore, now I was stupid too!
I tried to plead my case to the therapist but attempting to speak with conviction and poise was impossible from my prone position in the beanbag. I wasn’t irrational! If anything, she was the irrational one, didn’t she watch the news?
Wise words
“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”
-Seneca
ICYMI
Last week, I wrote about retail therapy, talking to strangers, and the time I got called out at a consignment sale.
Wanna talk about it?
I made a Slack channel! Stop by to talk about writing, fear, or whatever you like.