What are you afraid of?

I am currently reading My Year With Eleanor, a memoir written by a woman who lost her job and came across a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt which said “Do one thing every day that scares you.”
That quote steered her into a year of doing things that scared her, from the more extreme things like trapeze work and shark diving to the more simple things like Karaoke singing and getting off sleeping pills.

The book is really funny and often enough thought provoking.

It definitely got me thinking. About my fears, how I relate to them and what I do about them.

So before making any drastic decisions like the author and tackling my fears with actions, I decided to start by publishing a list of them. I am a wuss, I know.

1. Telling people about my fears.
   I guess I tackled that one by publishing this blog post…
2. Spiders: not all of them. Just the bigger ones, those that have a fat body.
3. People not liking me. And ‘people’ of course starts with my loved ones, my friends and colleagues and yes even the stranger in the street.
4. Being ridiculous.
5. Loosing my husband, my children, my parents and family and friends. To either death or estrangement.
6. Having no money.
7. Intimacy. Being real. Showing 100% of me. Really, I mean really, loving!
8. Not achieving anything ‘important’ before I die.
9. Dying. Especially before I’m ready. Before my kids. Before being able to be what I can be, what I have been put on earth for.
10. Driving in the snow. I once slid and bumped my car. Nothing serious, but enough to make me scared.
    
11. Skiing. Well, actually: breaking my neck, leg, arm… while skiing.
12. Getting an incurable illness, like cancer.
13. Small, closed space (IRM scanners, small caves…)
14. Being mugged/kidnapped and my mouth being scotch taped (I have trouble breathing through my nose and that would definitely slowly kill me… or set me in a panic at least, which would prevent me from breathing slowly and hence kill me faster).
15. Telling me parents that I used to smoke and that I love them.
16. Heights. Not the ‘climbing on a ladder and looking down heights’. But the jumping out of an airplane heights.
17. Flying. I used to love flying. Now that I have kids, I am terrified of my plane crashing. But I guess this is just going straight back to fear number 9.
18. Myself. We are our own worst enemy when it comes to our fears. We love our comfort zone. Stepping out of it means fear. Challenging ourselves is hard! In creativity they often say ‘when it’s laughable, or feels uncomfortable: do it! that’s where the essence lies’. But that’s not easy in every day life…
19. Meeting/confronting the woman who fell in love with my husband. Because my reaction could go anywhere from hitting to hugging her. Because of what she could tell and teach me about myself. Because I hate her and understand her. Because I ‘was’ her.
20. Conflict, in general. I don’t like to fight. But that also means I often avoid conflict and hence clearing up something that needs a solution. Avoiding conflict means brushing things under the carpet until you stumble over the big bump and suffocate from the dust.
21. The fear of conflict stems from the fear of not being able to find the right words. When in an argument, it is hard not to take things personally and not to attack the other, i.e. not being drawn into the drama triangle. It is hard to explain feelings and it can be frustrating when you think the other doesn’t get it.
22. Loneliness. I like to be alone. I don’t like to be lonely. And I am afraid of ending up old, alone and very lonely.
23. Silence. When I go for a massage, I chat with my massage therapist. I chat with my hairdresser. I chat with myself when I go for a run. I have trouble being silent. The first time I went to a retreat I had a lot of trouble being on my own. I had spent all this money to ‘learn’ something and kind of had the ‘bring it on’ reaction. It took some time for me to understand that silence, being alone with yourself is the biggest learning part of it. And I know I need to do this more often.
24. Being a bad mother. Every day I hate myself for something I have said or done, or not said or not done to/with my kids. Because I want to be the perfect mother. We all want to be the perfect mother. I know, we all know, deep down, that she does not exist. So we berate ourselves, we put our expectations way too high. And we have ourselves for setting them and for not reaching them. Every day.
25. Publishing this post…

(read part 2 of this article)