Tag: Fear

A Couple Things About Fear (Feelings Part 2)

Posted on by Corbin Humble

One of the many nice things about being a counselor is that I get to learn a lot from many other peoples’ experiences in addition to my own. And over my years, I have noticed that at the end of the day, many things boil down to fear. And there are a couple things I have learned about fear:

1) Fear is self-reinforcing.

This may get a little bit technical with the psychology, but the premise is fairly simple and important, so bear with me. According to Behavioral Psychology, there are two basic ways to make something happen more. Positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement.

Positive reinforcement is the easiest to understand, as it is basically rewarding behavior with something pleasant. Give someone money, praise, candy etc. for a task and they will do it more often. It is as simple as the fact that we usually do things that give us pleasure.

Negative reinforcement has a bit of a confusing title, because it is still a way to make people do things more, but in this instance, you remove something unpleasant. Tell a teenager that they will no longer be grounded if they do an extra chore and you have rewarded the chore. Scratching a mosquito bite is negative reinforcement because it removes the itchy feeling. Basically, a behavior is reinforced if it makes something negative go away.

So, consider fear of the dark. Does the dark hurt you at all? No. But if you are afraid of it, that fear is an unpleasant feeling. And if you experience that feeling and run away, you feel relief. The avoidance is reinforced, even though there was not actually anything physically harming you.

Thus, one of the reasons fear is so pervasive and detrimental is that everytime you give in and avoid fear, you feel better and are more likely to avoid it faster next time. Each time you avoid fear, your mind reinforces the idea that the thing you feared really was nasty and aren’t you glad you didn’t deal with it. Every time this happens, you get weaker and the fear gets stronger.

That is why fear starts out small, but ends big. Perhaps you start with something as simple as embarrassment of going to school with a bad haircut. But then, if you just stay home from school, you feel relieved. But next time you feel anxious, you avoid again since you did it before. Before long, you avoid parties and people. Then you avoid grocery stores and restaurants. Then you avoid work and other responsibilities. This is the process that ends up with people not able to leave their home.

Fear could be social anxiety, the fear of failure, the fear of conflict, the fear of losing control and so on and so forth. It all follows the same process. And the efforts to protect yourself just cause your world and your ability to function in a healthy way to shrink as time goes on.

2) Acting in fear often causes what you fear to happen.

This is another one of those things that I have recognized from many repeated observations. I think it is best illustrated by examples.

Consider the scene in Jurassic Park where they are told the dinosaur sees movement so they need to stand still. The person who is so afraid of getting eaten panics and runs. Guess who gets eaten.

I’ve been told that those red buoys that lifeguards carry are specially designed to move through water to knock people unconscious. This is because when someone is so afraid of drowning that they cannot think straight, they will wrap up the lifeguard and drown both of them.

What about people who are afraid in relationships? Afraid that their significant other will leave them, or cheat on them, or betray them. The fear of losing the other person often leads people to become clingy, irritable, untrusting, needy or even self-sabotaging. All things that will make the other person likely to leave.

If you are so afraid of failure and disappointment that you do not even try, then you just guaranteed that you will never succeed.

I could go on and on, but hopefully that is enough to illustrate the premise. 

 

I think I have said it elsewhere on my blog, but I’ll say it again. The opposite of fear is love. A fantastic way to break out of the mindset of fear is to ask when you have a dilemma, which action is based in fear and which one is based in love? If you are afraid to stand up for yourself because the other person may get mad or leave, love focuses on what leads to healthier relationships, while fear focuses on how to prevent pain.

And perhaps that helps make sense of other fear. Do you love yourself and believe in yourself enough to risk some pain because you know it is good for you, or do you just do what avoids pain today, even though you know it keeps on hurting you in the long run.

I don’t think I’m alone when I suggest, you need to love yourself.

 

 

Feelings are Real but not Reality (Feelings Part 1)

Posted on by Corbin Humble

I remember watching the original Star Trek when I was a child and taking note of how often Spock and Kirk would debate logic versus emotions. In retrospect, I think they did a good job of valuing both. Inspired by those debates, the young counselor in me came up with this theory.

 

What if emotions are like a super fast computer that quickly evaluates a situation based on past experience and generalizations to warn us of danger or problems?

 

Have you ever felt angry before you even knew why you were angry, only later to process that someone had violated your boundaries or undermined your security? Have you ever felt uneasy or anxious about a situation only later to recognize all the clues and warning signs?

Anger, fear, frustration, worry, etc. come on quickly and the unpleasantness motivates us to change our behavior. They can serve as excellent warning signs and indicators that we need to take a situation seriously.

 

The problem is, because this survival mechanism needs to process things so quickly, our emotions are based on generalizations, assumptions and past experiences, which are prone to error. For example, when you have all those odd physical reactions to public speaking, it is because your body reacts to the anxiety of being judged, the same way it would react to prepare to run from a lion. It is a protective mechanism that we regard new situations and people with hesitation and care, but to the extreme this becomes racism and seclusion.

And while our logic is certainly still prone to errors, given more time we can usually discern better what is right and true and what was just a false alarm or poor judgment.

Feelings are just another way to get information about the world, but just like sight or hearing, they can be impaired or faulty. I like to think of feelings as warning lights on a car dashboard. They are indications that something might be wrong. They should be respected, not ignored. But there have been times that I had a low tire warning light, checked all my tires with a gauge to find they are fine and later found out that the pressure sensor was broken. It feels a bit odd to drive around with that warning light on afterward, but I know why it is on and that things are ok.

Society appears to be doing a better job lately of recognizing that feelings need to be validated. Too many people have been hurt and told they were wrong to be upset. And too many people have ignored their feelings when they shouldn’t. Furthermore, depression, anxiety and many other mental health issues are invisible illnesses where people appear to be fine from the outside, but have a very real internal experience of pain and distress. Consider that if someone has tinnitus and experiences painful ringing in their ears, but there is no external sound, their pain is still real. It is largely ineffective or counterproductive to tell someone their experiences are not real.

But, it is an opposite and equally problematic extreme to confuse validating a person’s experiences with saying that those experiences are reality. It is a delicate balance for both those experiencing painful emotions and those caring for such people. But it is good to first validate that feelings are real, and painful, and distressing, and confusing. People are not crazy for being angry, or scared, or stuck.

But then no one should stay at this point too long. Feelings are real, but not reality. Just because you feel scared does not mean you should run. Just because you feel hurt does not mean anyone did you wrong. Just because you feel hopeless, worthless or a failure does not mean you are.

When actions are based on feelings all kinds of things go wrong. Half my blogs are basically getting at this point. I plan to write Feelings Part 2 soon as an example of this. And many of my clients, especially people who struggle with bipolar disorder, are basically just trying to learn how to stop letting their emotions be in control of their lives because of the ongoing problems this causes.

On the other hand, many people have tried to be Spock and be purely logical, and that usually fails or has its own problems, because our emotions are valuable and a crucial part of our existence. Often the best parts of our existence come from emotions. When we are in touch with reality, including the painful parts, life becomes so much more vibrant and rewarding. I think the balance is to learn how to use feelings as clues to navigate our lives, but not let them be in charge of steering the ship.

And as many people say, the longest distance in the world is between the head and the heart. It is a very difficult challenge to act based on your will, rather than you feelings, but it is a challenge worth accepting. At the end of the day, it is not what you feel, but what you do that matters.

On the bright side, most people find that once they realize they do not have to act based on feelings, they start to do things differently, challenge their reality and have new experiences. And, as I said at the beginning, since feelings are largely based on experiences, new experiences are often the best way to eventually change our feelings.

Being Alone to Be Healthy

Posted on by Corbin Humble

I was recently given the opportunity to write an article for Arise Ministries, an organization that seeks to empower single moms. They suggested I address the following question:

How long should single divorced moms wait and get healthy before dating?

Firstly, I want to say that just asking those kind of questions is a good sign.

As far as the answer, I’m not sure I really have anything new to say. But that is perfectly ok, because I have learned that often we seek some new, life changing wisdom, when in reality we just need to do what we already know.

And chances are you have already heard this many times before:

You need to be ok alone before you can be healthy in a relationship.

So, I’m not telling you anything new, I just want to reiterate why everyone keeps saying this thing that you may so easily hear and ignore.

I believe most people have a God given desire to be in relationships. Your yearning to find someone to do life with is perfectly healthy. There are lots of benefits to being with someone and you probably think about how your kids would benefit. However, a desire can be good and healthy, but given the wrong priority it just doesn’t work. Most houses need roofs, but that doesn’t mean you build that first.

So, let’s explore why being ok alone is a necessary foundation.

If you are not ok being alone, then essentially you fear being alone. You will fear whether you can make ends meet. You will fear the pain of loneliness and the empty times where you have to face all the things you do not want to think about. You will fear the uncertainty. You will fear finding out who you really are. And so on and so forth.

Given more time, I could explain in greater detail, but just trust me on these two principles about fear:

Fear is the opposite of love.

When you act in fear, you often cause what you fear to happen.

If you are not ok being alone, then when you are with someone, fear they will leave you will prevent you from expressing that you matter. It will keep you from setting boundaries, being assertive and requiring that the relationship be healthy. Most people will treat you how you allow them to treat you.

Furthermore, even if the relationship is good and healthy, if you do not know that being alone is an option, then will you ever really know if you are in the relationship because you want to be?

Oddly enough, it was a teenage boy who said something to me once that I feel exemplifies how everyone should treat the dating process:

“I will do everything that I am ok with to keep the relationship.”

While this may seem simple and straightforward enough, it is fear that breaks the rule and causes you to do things you are not ok with. And that is how relationships are allowed to become unhealthy.

So, to answer the original question, everyone is different. I don’t believe in any set time. And even the concept of waiting until you are ok being alone is pretty gray. As you pursue that place of personal well being you will fall down, make mistakes and uncover whole new realizations about your issues and vulnerabilities. And, even when you still have work to do, exploring the dating world is ok because the bumps and bruises that come with it will just give you more experiences and insights on where you are in the process.

But first, you have to be alone until you are not afraid of it anymore. And only you can be the judge of that.

Love Does Not Mean You Always Make People Happy

Posted on by Corbin Humble

I love working with people who are introverted, people pleasers or very conscientious, because a lot of their work is the same work I had to do for myself. Also, it is much easier to teach a selfless person how to love better, than it is to get a selfish person to care about others.

One of the big lessons I had to learn as I became an adult and that I see many people struggle with, is to realize that:

Loving people does not always mean making them happy.

I think the impulsive need to try to make people happy comes from childhood. As a child, you have very simple, black and white thinking. If you upset someone, you are told you did something wrong and you need to go fix it. If you make someone happy, you are told you are a good little boy or girl. Perhaps this is even more ingrained in homes where an upset adult may become abusive, so the best way to protect yourself is do whatever you can to make them happy.

Either way, it results in a powerful emotional impulse to make everyone happy so that you feel safe, loved and good about yourself. Those are some of our most crucial needs in life.

But as you get older, more and more situations arise that require increasingly complicated value judgments.

If your friend is stumbling around drunk and asks you for their car keys, do you give them the keys to make them happy and protect your friendship, or do you risk upsetting them and possibly losing the friendship to keep them safe?

I use that example because most everyone sees the clear loving choice is to keep the keys even if they get mad. But what about when the stakes are a bit more grey?

Do you tell your boyfriend that you are not comfortable with his actions and risk having him reject you?

If you feel really guilty for something that has happened to your child, do you let them get away with bad behavior?

If your girlfriend had a horrible childhood and is deeply depressed, do you stay in a relationship you do not want in order to love and protect them?

Some of those questions are more difficult than others, but it is really hard to figure out the ethical choice, or even the most healthy thing for the other person, if you measure the rightness of your actions based solely on whether people like them or not. It takes more a mature morality to discern that love is focused on the the well-being of another person, which is not always the same as their happiness.

Someone once told me that the opposite of love is not hate, but rather the opposite of love is fear. I’ll probably go more into detail on this another day, but this knowledge helps greatly in decision making. When you are struggling to figure out the right thing to do for someone you care about, ask yourself:

Am I doing this out of love, or out of fear?

When I realized that most of my dilemmas were an internal struggle where I worried about upsetting people or how they might think of me or that they might leave me, I realized that most of those concerns were based on fear, and fear is the opposite of love. When I removed fear from the equation, usually the right, loving choice became fairly obvious.

So, if you want to be the strong, confident, loving person you want to be, you need to remember, “Loving people does not always mean making them happy,” and ask yourself, “Am I doing this out of love, or out of fear?