The title of this blog sounds like an oxymoron: peace and fear in the same sentence?  And, who wants to make peace with fear anyway?  Don’t we just want to rid ourselves of it?  Or, better yet, let’s not have it in the first place. Well, yes, the idea of not having it is a good one but, unfortunately, it’s not at all practical.  If you’re alive and breathing, you’ve likely felt it’s pull on your heart several times during your life thus far, despite your many creative attempts to avoid it.  I’ve come to believe that fear, along with managing our money, taking out the garbage, and listening to our children tell us how unfair we are, is just one of those annoying realities of life.  It walks with us, and most often, uninvited.  So what to do?

Well, you’ve probably found over your lifetime that avoidance of fear rarely works as a long-term solution.  In fact, the opposite is usually true.  It seems that the more we try to avoid it – or the person, place, situation, or thing that prompted it in the first place – the more it grabs hold of us.  The very thing we’re trying to escape not only seems to be glued to us, it  begins to ‘own’ us.  And, inevitably it’s only a matter of time before we find that the only way out of fear’s grip is to turn around and stare it in the face, whatever ‘it’ is.  That’s the only path to freedom, unfortunately.  That’s the bad news, I suppose, but it’s also the good news.

In 1987, Susan Jeffers, Ph.D. wrote an inspiring book about fear titled “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway”.  The ideas in her book are as relevant today as they were the day it was first published.  After all, experiencing fear is as unpleasant as it’s always been, and as humans, we’re likely trying to avoid it as much as we ever did in the past.  As such, I encourage you to read it and absorb the many ways in which she challenges us to use fear as a way to ‘push’ ourselves beyond what we might have otherwise thought possible.  And, more often than not, it’s simply a matter of what we therapists refer to as ‘reframing the problem’, or thinking about the issue in a different light, or from a different perspective.  Doing so isn’t necessarily easy, especially if we’re accustomed to running away as soon as we feel fear approaching.

For example, I had a client who felt bored to death by what he was doing professionally, but the thought of change paralyzed him with fear.  He took the presence of fear as a ‘sign’ that he should stay and accept his current situation as it was.  In fact, that interpretation ruled his whole life, and not just his professional one.  But, over the course of our work together, he began to view fear differently.  He learned to see it as a reflection of how he felt about change more generally.  But, this time, rather than running from it, or letting himself remain paralyzed by it, he came to accept that his fear of change was just a natural part of his own process, and not something that he needed to interpret as a sign to resist change in and of itself.  In other words, he learned to tolerate the discomfort of his feelings of fear when he understood that they ultimately wouldn’t ‘undo’ him.  And, in doing so, he began to reach beyond these feelings to a point where he was free (but not entirely free of fear, of course) to more fully engage in, and even enjoy, the creative process of discovering what he most wanted to do.  And, as he moved closer toward his goal, he began to feel more excited and alive than he’d felt in years.

So, if fear’s going to stick around anyway, why not make it useful?  After all, it can be one of the very best teachers we’ve ever had if we learn to listen to what it might be saying to us, and about us, instead of automatically shutting it down.  As I’ve said to many clients over the years about fear, pick it up and carry it with you, because if you wait until it’s no longer there, you’ll be waiting for the rest of your life.  So, in the end, perhaps the only way to make peace with fear is to do exactly what Susan Jeffers suggests: feel the fear and do it anyway

The title of this blog sounds like an oxymoron: peace and fear in the same sentence?  And, who wants to make peace with fear anyway?  Don’t we just want to rid ourselves of it?  Or, better yet, let’s not have it in the first place. Well, yes, the idea of not having it is a good one but, unfortunately, it’s not at all practical.  If you’re alive and breathing, you’ve likely felt it’s pull on your heart several times during your life thus far, despite your many creative attempts to avoid it.  I’ve come to believe that fear, along with managing our money, taking out the garbage, and listening to our children tell us how unfair we are, is just one of those annoying realities of life.  It walks with us, and most often, uninvited.  So what to do?

Well, you’ve probably found over your lifetime that avoidance of fear rarely works as a long-term solution.  In fact, the opposite is usually true.  It seems that the more we try to avoid it – or the person, place, situation, or thing that prompted it in the first place – the more it grabs hold of us.  The very thing we’re trying to escape not only seems to be glued to us, it  begins to ‘own’ us.  And, inevitably it’s only a matter of time before we find that the only way out of fear’s grip is to turn around and stare it in the face, whatever ‘it’ is.  That’s the only path to freedom, unfortunately.  That’s the bad news, I suppose, but it’s also the good news.

In 1987, Susan Jeffers, Ph.D. wrote an inspiring book about fear titled “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway”.  The ideas in her book are as relevant today as they were the day it was first published.  After all, experiencing fear is as unpleasant as it’s always been, and as humans, we’re likely trying to avoid it as much as we ever did in the past.  As such, I encourage you to read it and absorb the many ways in which she challenges us to use fear as a way to ‘push’ ourselves beyond what we might have otherwise thought possible.  And, more often than not, it’s simply a matter of what we therapists refer to as ‘reframing the problem’, or thinking about the issue in a different light, or from a different perspective.  Doing so isn’t necessarily easy, especially if we’re accustomed to running away as soon as we feel fear approaching.

For example, I had a client who felt bored to death by what he was doing professionally, but the thought of change paralyzed him with fear.  He took the presence of fear as a ‘sign’ that he should stay and accept his current situation as it was.  In fact, that interpretation ruled his whole life, and not just his professional one.  But, over the course of our work together, he began to view fear differently.  He learned to see it as a reflection of how he felt about change more generally.  But, this time, rather than running from it, or letting himself remain paralyzed by it, he came to accept that his fear of change was just a natural part of his own process, and not something that he needed to interpret as a sign to resist change in and of itself.  In other words, he learned to tolerate the discomfort of his feelings of fear when he understood that they ultimately wouldn’t ‘undo’ him.  And, in doing so, he began to reach beyond these feelings to a point where he was free (but not entirely free of fear, of course) to more fully engage in, and even enjoy, the creative process of discovering what he most wanted to do.  And, as he moved closer toward his goal, he began to feel more excited and alive than he’d felt in years.

So, if fear’s going to stick around anyway, why not make it useful?  After all, it can be one of the very best teachers we’ve ever had if we learn to listen to what it might be saying to us, and about us, instead of automatically shutting it down.  As I’ve said to many clients over the years about fear, pick it up and carry it with you, because if you wait until it’s no longer there, you’ll be waiting for the rest of your life.  So, in the end, perhaps the only way to make peace with fear is to do exactly what Susan Jeffers suggests: feel the fear and do it anyway