Dealing With Irrational Fears

If you're like me, you've surely woken up at midnight and despite not wanting it to pop up at that hour of the night, thoughts about the recent horror movie you've watched just showed up. This created some difficult emotions inside of you. You didn't like them and tried to remind yourself that 'it's all in the mind'. But then, other scary scenes seemed to pop up in your head and you ended up tossing and turning around in your bed trying to force yourself to sleep in an unconscious attempt to make this fearful emotion go away.

In case you fell asleep, bravo! But if you didn't, you were stuck there, resisting difficult emotions inside of you, offering yourself countless explanations on why you shouldn't think in a particular way. But, the fear never subsided, it was there making you uncomfortable. It was relentless, stubborn and didn't seem to go away.

I remember when I was a school-girl, I used to be afraid to go to the balcony alone at midnight for some fear of the unknown.If I would wake up thirsty at midnight and had to go to kitchen upstairs, I would hurry my way up, quickly grab a glass of water and quickly run downstairs and crawl into my bed. It went on like this for a long time. One day, as I was watching one of Sandeep Maheshwari's videos  as per my Youtube recommendations, I came across his suggestion on dealing with such irrational fears. He said, 'when you encounter this fear as you walk down the stairs, do yourself a favor! Hold your chin high and in a jiffy, turn back! Yes, TURN BACK at once, but this time, not like a coward checking if something's wrong but like a warrior, as if, if there's really something out there, you're ready for a fight.'

Well, it worked. One night, as I was heading towards my bedroom at midnight, I found myself filled with irrational fear. This time, instead of accelerating my pace, I stopped. I felt how fear felt on my body. I laughed at myself and like a warrior, I turned back at once- my chin held high and my gaze firm. Of course, there was nothing following me. But, facing fear built a kind of confidence in me and with this new found confidence, I was no longer afraid of awaking at the middle of the night.

In the book, 'Radical Acceptance', renowned psychologist and Buddhist teacher- Tara Brach discusses how embracing emotions instead of trying to push them away actually helps us in overcoming them.We know that ghosts don't exist, we know that many of our fears are irrational, but still, we might be attempting to push them away or we might be engaging in mental loops around our fears that help them bounce back stronger. Acceptance, however, can lead to change. Change happens when we turn off our mental soundtrack and face our emotions when they are raw and strong . If we watch this emotion and stay with it for sometime, we will notice that like everything else, even this fear is impermanent. Like everything else, it too has an ebb and a flow. If we stay long enough with this fear, accepting it for what it is, remembering that it is impermanent and irrational, its effect will slowly decrease and even disappear.

It's easy to turn off a disturbing thought when it has a minimal emotional charge. But sometimes, the grip of our emotions are so strong that these emotions and the thoughts associated do not simply go away in a single act of surrender. At such times, it's important to remember that, 'this too shall pass, but it could take some time and practice.' However, even when they don't abate, as we practice accepting these emotions instead of fighting them , they become much bearable. And we become able to go on with our day without having to fight a mental battle against some parts of ourselves that we fail to accept.

I still have many un-dealt fears, those that show up when the threat appears and vanish when the threat disappears. I mostly ignore dealing with them thinking- why bear this emotion when I can just get away without dealing with this threat at all.  Likewise, I know many of my friends who are either afraid of dogs,or rats. Most of my friends can't face cockroaches! 🤣 Even I could be one among those who's afraid of one of the things I just mentioned! There could be other fears, much serious, that hold us back in life, that we hide from the world, that we can't disclose to anyone!. The fears that make us afraid to get out of bed, that sabotage our relationship with ourselves and others. The next time we experience any irrational fear, we could turn off the mental battle, be brave, take a deep breath, accept our emotions, feel them, stay with them and refrain from escaping or resisting them, reminding ourselves of their impermanence and irrationality, thus opening our doors for freedom from fear.

As Rumi said centuries ago, 'The wound is the place where the light enters you.'

I wish you healing. I wish you freedom from fear. :)