F.E.A.R. — FALSE EVIDENCE APPEARING REAL
Fear of something that hasn’t happened yet is not real. It is a perception that you create in your mind, choose to have, and nurture. Will Smith once said ‘Fear is not real. It is a product of thoughts you create. Do not misunderstand me. Danger is very real. But fear is a choice.’
Fear becomes valuable when it alarms us of a dangerous situation. But when you are maintaining this emotion for a long time, it will start eating you alive.
Fear equals no faith; it’s simple as that. You either believe that everything will eventually work out just fine, or you fear things going badly. You can’t have both at the same time. It doesn’t matter which one you believe. Either will create the results depending on the intensity of your thoughts and emotions. You must know that.
There are six basic fears:
- Fear of ill health and dying
- Fear of old age
- Fear of poor finance and poverty
- Fear of rejection, losing, or not finding love
- Fear of criticism
- Fear of change or failure
Napoleon Hill talks about this in his famous book Think and Grow Rich. ‘The Six Ghosts of Fear’ (as he calls them) are deadly diseases. They are initially innocent creatures, but after a while they turn into flesh-eating monsters — literally! Fear destroys our confidence, faith, and our sense of focus. It clouds our judgements and makes us forget the concept of common sense and rational thinking. When we are fearful, our thoughts spiral out of control. Our obsessive thinking makes things worse, as we cannot act sanely and make any rational decisions. Any scenario in our heads turns out badly.
The best method to deal with fear is to get busy with something else! Accept the emotion, don’t deny it. Depending on the intensity, get professional help. People who deal with this have a way of explaining that your fear is irrational and that only your perception makes things worse. In the meantime, get busy and distract yourself. When you draw your absolute attention and concentration to a different task, you won’t be thinking of your fear. I recommend you read Dale Carnegie’s book How to stop worrying and start living. This is one of the best books on the subject that helped me get through some tough times.
I think, and I speak here mostly from my own experience, the fear of ill health and dying is the most paralysing of all fears. What else is there for you to do if you think you’re dying, right? You must realise that a fear-based story is entirely different from an actual illness. It is a story that we’re telling ourselves that has been influenced by something that has happened in the past (a sick relative, the program you have seen, a story you’ve heard, past sickness, etc.). They aren’t the actual sensation of the body. Well, yes and no. When you’re continuously thinking of being ill, you might, at some point, create an actual illness or symptoms — you are creating what you are thinking about. With this in mind, you have to make sure that you filter your words, thoughts and emotions.
There are two kinds of people that deal with these phobias — ‘Self-coddlers,’ as I call them, and Hypochondriacs.
Self-coddlers talk about illnesses for sport; they’re practically living it. Of course, they might experience fear, but they’re also delighted to get involved in any conversations on related subjects. They will talk about it whenever there is an opportunity to do so. They will read about illnesses, watch programs about that, engage in conversations about dying, viruses, or sick neighbours. This person is highly susceptible to autosuggestion, taking many unnecessary supplements or pills to avoid the ‘sickness.’ These people might experience some pain, discomfort, even some non-life treating conditions that are easily maintained. Still, they will also continuously feed into it. They often ignore any good advice because ‘they know better,’ and when their tests come back clear, they look for the next illness in line!
I used to work with a girl who was a healthy, vigorous person, but when you’ve mentioned that you had a migraine or toothache, in about one minute, she had the same symptoms. Twice as worse! And then she talked about it for hours, providing her entire medical history. She drove us insane! There was no other subject with her. On the other hand, thanks to her, we all avoided talking about any illnesses, which was a pretty positive outcome!
Another example — my dad. He complains about high blood sugar and checks his blood pressure several times a day, but he starts his day from eating an instant Chinese noodle soup! During the day, he can’t say no to his ‘occasional’ sweets, and he always has an extra bottle of energy drink in the car. And let’s not even mention his night time fridge search for a jam on the way to toilet. Then when he meets up with his brothers, they sit at the round table and practically compete with one another on who has the highest sugar! My Goodness!
Some self-coddlers continuously look for compassion. They are trying to make everyone feel bad for them or get attention. They often use some condition they have as an excuse to avoid their chores, meeting people, or going somewhere. It is an effortless way out, especially when you don’t like doing something! Like going shopping with your daughter, dad!
Now, Health Anxiety (hypochondria) is different. It has some similarities with behaviours mentioned above, like strong autosuggestion, but people like that are not self-coddling. They might be calling their friends and family with questions about their ‘illnesses,’ but purely to look for reassurance (which they often don’t find) that there is nothing wrong with them. They will continuously ask the same questions, presenting their ‘findings,’ but in reality, all they want to hear is that they’re healthy and there is nothing wrong with them! That is a significant difference. People like that are so terrified of non-existent illnesses that they often can’t even say the name of that illness out loud without feeling almost ‘contaminated’ by it! They are scared and uncomfortable watching programs about the type of illness they think they might have. It makes them feel more anxious. They will often carry out routine daily body check-ups looking for potential symptoms (lumps, swollen glands, weird rashes on the skin, mouth ulcers or discolouring, etc.). They are willing to pay any monies to get tested, and they do that as often as they think it’s necessary.
I know it well because I’ve been struggling with health anxiety for years, and it has paralyzed me. It destroyed my confidence, self-love, and love life for a long time. Like in most of these cases, my health anxiety was triggered by something. I was a young, fun-loving girl in my twenties’, full of life, confident, brave, enthusiastic. At that time, I was dating a boy that I had met a couple of weeks earlier. One day he started questioning me about an STD (Sexually Transmitted Diseases) test. Up until then (whether it was wise or not), the idea of having this test didn’t even cross my mind. I didn’t think I needed one. But the seed was planted. I have attached a powerful feeling to it — a fear of getting AIDS, which paralyzed me for many years. I know we can maintain this condition now, but fifteen years ago, it was a different story and a completely different world. I was a no longer fun-loving girl. The first time I went for a test, I couldn’t stop crying. I was positive there was something wrong with me. During a wait for the test results, I practically looked like a Walking Dead. All I was doing was thinking about how my life would change if the test came back positive, and I kept checking my phone for a text message with gruesome news from the hospital. When the results came back, and they were clear, I was the happiest woman on earth! Until the next time. The moment I felt a bit under the weather, I calculated the possibilities of when, how, or if I was infected. It didn’t matter that I used protection; it didn’t matter that a nurse used a fresh needle while taking my blood. There was always a possibility…
Every day I was carrying out a complete body check-up. My usual routine was to check my tongue, feel glands, look for any marks on the skin or inside my mouth, or check my temperature (which, by the way, in states of anxiety always rises by about 1.5 degrees). Often, I kept asking my colleagues from work if the glands around my neck looked ‘ok’ to them. Once, I was so paranoid about this that my cheeks had swollen up and become numb! I spent hours on the phone with my friends asking if they were sure that there was nothing wrong with me, bless them! I couldn’t say that ‘bad’ word (name of the illness) out loud, I couldn’t watch any related programs, and if someone mentioned it in the conversation, I was blushing and changing the subject quickly, feeling a gulp in my throat. And trust me, checking the internet is the worst possible thing you could do. I felt like I was losing ground under my feet. Happy girl during the work hours only to come back home and stare in the mirror looking for possible ‘defects.’
Meeting someone new was an absolute nightmare. I could have been sitting on the date and looking at someone’s neck or skin, searching for rashes. If I asked a boy I was seeing to go to get tested with me, he often told me I was rude or crazy. It didn’t matter that I’ve explained to him ‘my issue’ and that it was not personal. The story most of the time ended the same way — telling me to get lost.
I vividly remember one night when I found some unusual rush on my leg. That night was one of the worst nights in my life. It was raining, and I’d been drinking alone. I went outside to the communal garden at night in total desperation. I was in an absolute state of hysteria. I cried, kneeled down on the grass asking God to let me live. I felt like I was at the bottom of the deepest cave. I knew I couldn’t live like that anymore. I had enough of my state, my obsessiveness and depression, constant doctors’ appointments and money spent on it, and the relationships that barely started and finished soon after. I sought help. I attended some counselling session at work and started taking an anxiety medication. It was a long journey and it helped, but the fear like that always stays on the back of your head.
I will be fine when I am in a long-term relationship, but if that ends and I begin dating again, my fear is back. And there is no rationale to it. I know what I know, and I nod along when my friends are trying to reassure me that there is nothing wrong with me and then the next day, I order an STD test like some wacko! I can’t help it!
I shared my story with you to show you that when you are in a state of fear, the rationality of the facts completely disappears. You have a poor understanding of body sensations, which means that any headache might seem to you as a brain tumour; any pains in the chest will be associated with a heart attack; any marks on the body or shooting pains would mean cancer.
During my journey, I often ‘switched’ sicknesses. I had a couple of MRI’s, blood tests for no existing illnesses. At some point, I also thought that I was experiencing the symptoms of multiple sclerosis and hepatitis C. Trust me when I tell you this — whatever you see in your mind, you’ll create. You will attach such strong feelings to your thoughts that your body will eventually catch up with that. Why? Some will say the power of attraction, but let’s focus here on the medical point of view.
When you live in constant fear of something your body creates similar responses to those that are being used when we approach a real danger. And this, in return, can damage your body’s homeostasis — both mental and physical. When you are in danger, for example, your body activates Cortisol, which subsequently shuts down your immune system to save energy. We need our immune system to operate well so it can fight any pathogens and diseases. If you’re under long-term chronic stress, you’re not able to do that. You’ll get sick more easily and heal much slower. Similarly, in any danger, your Sympathetic Nervous system will increase your blood pressure to provide more energy to the muscles and give you the kick you need to protect yourself, but if this continues, it can cause cardiovascular diseases. Hyperventilation (your breathing rate increases), that’s common in times of high stress, will create breathing difficulty, sometimes almost asthmatic-like. This happened to me when I was in my youth. For two years, I felt like I couldn’t take a full breath. I had a feeling that there was some ‘gate barrier’ dropping down just before I’ve reached my full inhalation. This created constant anxiety and exhaustion. I couldn’t stop yawning, as it was my defence mechanism when I was trying to catch my full breath. Because I was doing this constantly, even during my university classes, it often created a hostile environment, as people kept telling me to ‘get some rest,’ and I felt like showing them a middle finger.
So, my grasshoppers, if I could quickly summarize my jibber-jabber I would say, that chronic stress and F.E.A.R. can cause an absolute breakdown of our bodies, if we and only we, will allow it. It’s a disease itself that eats us from the inside out, often irrational and blown out of proportion. And, if you have to live with it, similarly to me, know this — you are not alone, and admitting that you have a problem would be a first step in understanding that IT IS (not) JUST YOUR PARANOIA, what you will often hear!
‘We don’t get stomach ulcers because of what we have eaten, but because of things that are eating us.’ — JOSEPH F. MONTAGUE
