Dealing with Fear
 

Gonzo posted in another thread about fear...it's so important a topic I thought it could use its own thread

Fear was always a major trigger for me.

I was always tying myself in knots over things that hadn't happened yet (and in most cases did not turn out to be as bad as I feared).

It took a while for me to change - change is a process after all - but I learned to 'live in the day'...what that means to me is doing as much as I can about a particular problem or situation...and then I let the rest go, knowing I've done all I can.

With your financial situation it's difficult to know what might help without knowing any details.

In general though, doing what I can about finances means if I have creditors and I have bills I cannot pay, I approach them as early as possible about a payment plan.

I make a budget (there are many free websites to help you do this).

I try to change my perspective from fear - 'OMG I have so many debts' - to gratitude 'I have a roof over my head, I have enough to eat, I have electricity and water, I have enough creature comforts...etc etc'

I spent my drinking years living in fear, I didn't get sober to continue living that way :a043:

I'm interested to hear what other ways people have for successfully dealing with fear?

D

For too long I interoperated fear as F everything and run.
Then after plugging the jug it was suggested grow up and face my fears which usually ended up to be minor if I paid attention.
A large part of my life is when I KISS.

BE WELL

Thank you d for picking this up.. im in no direct danger.. probably not as bad as i make everything to be in my mind.. but i cant help but to look ahead.. im early in sobriety but may be losing a big part of income and wont be able to get it back.. in that line of work anyways.. my main fear is i havent a clue what im going to do (for a new line of work) ive been doing my job for a long time and i dont have a sparkling past (criminal record) ive got myself all worked up that even if i somehow get some kinda degree it will be hard to get hired due to my record.. i know its crazy and focus on today and my recovery but urghhh!!# i cant shut off my brain.. i do try so hard to be grateful for what i still have but my whole world is flushed down the toilet.. sorry to rant and this is so long...

Fear can be a good thing and a bad thing, it can help to keep us safe.

Fear is what got me sober, ironically it also kept me drinking! .

Somehow we have to ok with the unknown and not fear it.

Fear can stop us from reaching our potential.

I think I need to address my fears...my fears are mostly based around family health and their welfare...it cripples me and I need to learn more skills in being ok when things are out of my hands.

yea thats true for me too.

I try to remind myself that lifes gonna move forward one way or another. I look back in my life too and i'm like i always made it I always pulled through some how. it always worked out somehow and if it didnt it was usually good it didnt.

Sometimes i got not much to cling too but that life will move forward. and I'm grateful for that becuase i'm like well lifes gonna move forward that means i wont be stuck in this situation forever it will change and hopefully get better too.

but yeah it can be difficult at times. and in early sobriety oh yea its hard to stop the brain from playing those horrid what if scenarios that never get ya anywhere.

Again, I don't know the details and don't have to, but there are a lot of people out there with criminal records who do OK Gonzo. :)

D

Courage is fear that has said its prayers. Fear can be a useful survival tool and is a natural gift. But the type of fear that permeates the life of the still suffering alcoholic is crippling and illogical. I was frightened of my own shadow. Almost everything brought out fear. I was even frightened of people who cared about me, though I can't think why.

I have learned I can waste an awful lot of time and energy on fear that doesn't make sense. For one thing, whatever it is I fear, is not happening at the moment. If it happens, I deal with it and the fear moves on to something else.

With my current lifestyle I can fear falling off the boat. If I fall off the boat, I no longer fear falling off, I battle to survive and I now fear drowning.

A fear of heights was once removed from me. I dreaded going up the mast. I went to this meditation group, just to see what it was all about, and during meditation A voice told me "there is nothing to fear". A week or two later I had to climb the mast several times. I realised I had lost my fear of heights. Prayer and meditation seem to be a great help in overcoming those irrational fears.

Wow great thread. Fear what a topic. It can mean so many different things to people.
I associate fear of things to happen by acting or not acting in an appropriate way. As if I have control through my actions. In the vast majority of situations I have no control. I wish things would just work out the way I want them to. The fear is when they don't work out that way. Which is often because i can not control these things.
So the fear of outcomes is real and irrational. I know this is not rational but similar to drinking i keep posioning myself with more fear. This has detrimental effects in health mental and physical. So why do I feed off fear even in sobriety? A question I really don't feel qualified enough to answer. Maybe someone else can.

I think a lot of us ingrained a fear response simply because it led to drinking...we don't need that response anymore :)

D

That's a great way to live life Dee.

Great post overall but that part really stands out.

I always tried to think back on that line from Dune, "fear is the mind killer."

Unfortunately, too often I'd say it without living it. I would (and still do) let anxiety freeze my mind into inaction, making small decisions and routine tasks harder to accomplish. Even with emails for work, my automatic assumption would be that the content is negative, critical, or inflammatory and therefore I didn't want to open them. At my low point I'd wait a week before answering emails and then just do them all in one long day. People would be understandably pissed and worried, and I'm still trying to recover some of that trust.

Most of that is independent of alcoholism, but what the alcohol did was allow me to burrow further away from the reality by dulling my senses and making it easier to shut out the worry (at least on the surface, deep down the worry never went away).

So how do I deal with that today? Good question. These past few weeks of not drinking have helped me start to see things a bit more clearly. But other than that I really don't know.

Like "fear is the mind killer," there are a lot of philosophies and ideas that I know I should be trying to incorporate into life. Just gotta keep working on that from here on out.

I think there are various phases to this journey.

Number one phase is obviously stop drinking/using. but there's a whole lot of phases after that that come under the umbrella of 'living a happy life, sober'...

Dealing with fear took me a while - I was scared of a lot of things.

I think the key is to be patient and not miss the journey trying to get to the destination at breakneck speed.

you'll get there reset :)

D

Yeah this is a good topic.....fear freezes me, it overwhelmes me. I'm noy naturally good w stress fear adds a whole new level of anxiety. I'm struggling w that right now I think it will all work out.

Dee....your second to last post....are you saying that (subconsciously) we may respond with fear because that will provide an excuse to then drink, so to speak? That is a really intriguing idea....unless I've misread you.

It was true for me TS, yeah. The roots of addiction can get pretty deep and gnarly.

D

Wow. This strikes a chord with me. Deep and gnarly is right. I will ponder this - thanks.

I try to keep fear in historical and biological perspective. Fear is one of the strongest and most primal emotions because it is part of the limbic system or "lizard brain" we all have. It appears we have more than one set of circuits going in our brains at all times. The limbic system can normally trump our rational thinking and is responsible for most of our largest lapses in judgment relating to anger, aggression, fear, sex, etc.

The thing to remember is that this system and the emotion of fear were very well adapted to when we lived in packs on the African savannah as early humans. It is, however, quite poorly suited for modern life. Back then, humans, like most other animals, were constantly at risk of being eaten by predators. A few screams from the other members of the pack would have everyone running in fear to get away from the danger. Fear needed to be an incredibly strong instinct to make sure people were properly motivated and energized to flee. In such a scenario, it truly does not pay to sit and weigh the pros and cons of running or staying put. By the time you think about it and look around, the tiger will be eating you.

Now in the modern world, there are very few situations which call for such an emotion. While fear does help keep us from doing dangerous things, the emotion has become inappropriate in most situations. Do we really need to fear the telephone when the boss calls? When the stock market is down? That people will disapprove of us? Back in ancient times, being cast out from the group could mean starvation and death, as well as being cut off from all other goodies, hence the basis of social anxiety. Now with abundant food and modern social welfare programs, nobody starves in the first world, not even the most loathed criminals. Of course, it still pays to be popular, but the downside is no longer a matter of life and death.

So we are left with this emotion of fear that is a relic of our caveman days and poorly adapted to modern life. What can we do except to try and recognize irrational fear when it occurs and try to counteract it? I try to keep in mind that before modern times, the normal human life expectancy was about 25 years, so for most of us the rest of our time here is gravy. People were constantly at risk of being eaten by animals, killed or enslaved by neighboring groups, murder was widespread and life was short without any modern medicine, dentistry or plumbing. In fact, the poorest person living on public assistance in the first world today has a living standard and life expectancy way beyond those enjoyed by any elites throughout most of human history.

oWhen I got sober I chose to give Mrs sw any money every time I still do this

I had a couple of grand debt which sent me into a devastating panic attack which left me shaking I couldn't run from it & it wasn't going to go away so I rang up and agreed to make payments which I'm still making today the debt shrinks every month the calls about taking me to court & baillifts stopped

This is an excellent thread D

Yes i agree that 99.9% of my daily situations are nonlife threatening at all. I still let fear of money, work stress, home stress and life in general scare the crap out of me. There is a good book emotion intelligence that talks about being unable to make rational decisions while the lizard brain is going off.

For true life changes i wonder if cognitive therapy would be the best. Everytime fear comes in stop and write it down and really think it over.
My boss called. The sitation feels uncomfortable but not life threatening.
I relate drinking to numbing a lot these uncomfortable annoyances. I can adapt and live through better with meditation and exercise.

Fear is good when walking down a dark alley at night. Not so much other times. For me fear was always about loss of control. Now when fear creeps in I ask myself what can I control? With finances it can be learning to cook from scratch, coupon, shopping loss leaders. Going over debts and renegotiating terms, getting quotes on new insurance, increasing deductibles. I have learned for me financial problems can usually be solved quite simply by taking care of how I spend it.

As far as working maybe look into teaching an adult enrichment class, lots of community colleges have these and you don't need a degree to teach them. Sell off an old collection of stuff you have that you no longer care for. Become a flea market seller of stuff.

Don't be afraid, be empowered.

LOVE AND FEAR AS OPPOSITES
All these failings generate fear, a soul-sickness in its own
right.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 49

"Fear knocked at the door; faith answered; no one was
there." I don't know to whom this quote should be
attributed, but it certainly indicates very clearly that fear is
an illusion. I create the illusion myself.
I experienced fear early in my life and I mistakenly
thought that the mere presence of it made me a coward. I
didn't know that one of the definitions of "courage" is "the
willingness to do the right thing in spite of fear." Courage,
then, is not necessarily the absence of fear.
During the times I didn't have love in my life I most
assuredly had fear. To fear God is to be afraid of joy. In
looking back, I realize that, during the times I feared God
most, there was no joy in my life. As I learned not to fear
God, I also learned to experience joy.
--


when i was diagnosed with cancer......well, honestly a few days later when the severity of the situation got from my head to my heart....... this reading saved my ass.
i had so many feelings going on which caused me to become soooooo dammed afraid. i got sober 13 months prior because if i didnt i was going to kill myself and now these docs are sayin i have a 19% chance of living 5 more years????
no fear of death, just the timing. fear of the future. fear of no future. insecurities galore.
everything generating fear and, the major contributor how i got through, i didnt want it.

for some reason, after talkin to many people in aa, reading this,that, and the other- when i was completley frustrated because i wasnt hearing/reading anything tnat made sense- i whipped open the book this is in a d right to this page and it all made sense.
turned it over to God and put him in the pilots seat.
kicked Him out a few times along the journey. i dont do good inthe pilots seat.

i have had fear stike quite a few times through the fight with cancer and after, mostly fears beyond today. things i bave no control over.
and get me some gratitude to help me through it.
may sound scewed up, but im certain there is someoen out there that would love to be in my shoes and have my life.

Much of this fear/insecurity mode for me is deeeeep rooted from infant to………
My parents were not alcoholic and were raised in the big depression when bread was sometimes considered gold and they walked the RR tracks for spilled coal for cooking and heat.

My mother was a constant worrier from financial to catching a cold because of not wearing a hat or scarf. Recently I suddenly recalled her constantly starting sentences with “WHAT IF?”
Talk about installing fear into the subconscious, especially when it started as an infant.

This is my reason for saying work and change is so important for long lasting recovery. To me simply not drinking without changing the reasons we drank is usually not successful in the long run. JMO

BE WELL

I need to make at least one decision each week (business related) which I find stress/fearful. Fortunately, I usually have someone I can run the problem by before making a decision.

Over time I've learned not to panic (too quickly that is...) and work to prepared myself if the situation should return. On the other hand when things happened which are completely out of my control that's that. I don't have to like it but I try not to dwell on what I can't change. (Or just not as long as before.)

I also need to go easier on myself. I've made plenty of mistakes in sobriety but I've also done o.k. as well. I keep the AA program simple: I change what I can, accept what I can't and if I don't know the difference (which is often the case in business) I ask for help.

Cant say Ive really figured that one out yet. One thing Ive been meaning to do for well over a DECADE now is doing meditation CONSISTENTLY, but still just havent managed to do that for whatever reason.

As you kind of mentioned, procrastinating (something I have a huge issue with unfortunately, like an addiction in of itself) is actually a poor strategy and just makes the stress/fear/etc. worse.

This is a great thread. And lots of wonderful posts.
I'm dealing with fear and anxiety right now. Deep fear.
My job will disappear in 3 months - the company is closing. I know I'll have to take a sever cut in pay when I get another job. This will probably wipe me out financially.
I will most likely be able to afford some kind of shelter and healthcare. I know I should be grateful for that but it still scares me to my bones.
Unfortunately, because I isolated myself with my drinking I have no real friends to confide in. So I started going to AA a couple days ago just to be around people.
the meetings help.
But the fear and depression are so strong it's hard just to get out of bed.

This thread is good because I can see others that have dealt with it and done OK.

:grouphug::grouphug::grouphug:

Fear has been a less familiar emotion for me, more often I struggle with anger, at least on a conscious level. But if I look a little more deeply, underneath the anger is often fear ...

Right now I have fear about my elderly parents' well-being, as they're both going through health crises. So fear is coming up in a big way. I'm not so much afraid of them dying ... they're in their 80s and of course that day will come at some point. More I'm afraid of their suffering ... it's hard for me to tolerate watching them be uncomfortable, in pain, or frightened for themselves and each other.

So I'm trying to use the tools that others have posted about. A big one is focusing on just today. At the moment I've done everything I can to comfort them, and others are temporarily taking over their care. There's nothing more for me to do at the moment. So my job today is to take care of myself, rest, and try to let go of my fears and worries. When worries about "what will happen next" come up, I try to let them go. And/or turn them over to a higher power. I'm still new to this, so it's a learning process right now.

Thank you for the thread and everyone's helpful posts.

I have kind of pat answer when I start to feel fear creep in = when I am dead for a hundred years it is just the start of how long I will be dead.......

Not trying to be morbid, but it helps readjust my perspective. It's only life, I try not to take it so seriously.

I can live in fear or faith. If I am living in fear and trying to get to the other side, taking action in faith helps me break through the fear.

With my finances, I simply do not procrastinate anymore. I contact creditors and tell them what I can and cannot do - then live up to it. If worse came to worse there are laws to help me through really bad scenarios.

As has been stated the vast majority of my fears never materialize.

Keep on truckin gang!!!!

Nice one