Fear & Anger

Similar to anxiety, fear is not all bad. In fact, many of our fear responses are natural responses in our bodies, but it can be destructive when not kept in check. When fear is allowed to keep escalating it can become an irrational phobia, which will take over and run and ruin your life if you let it. If it exists there is a phobia of it. Fear can be like a silent disease that will slowly keep spreading unless you question it realistically. Before you know it, you could be so far down the rabbit hole, you could be believing something totally false and go on believing that. Then the longer you hold onto that belief the harder it is to change or challenge it.

Fear can be learned from bad experiences in life. Many of our fears are internalized from past experiences we may not even consciously remember that much but our bodies and our minds do. Speaking from experience, fear has ruled my life for as long as I can remember. Most of the memories I can remember vividly are not good ones. I had one bad experience when I was younger with being stung and feared anything buzzing anywhere near me. Then, as I grew up, I realized that not all buzzing things are bad and that they are more afraid of me so I learned to let them bee. Haha.

Fear can keep you from taking risks, which is necessary in life to experience new things. Like making new friends. Or telling someone how you feel about them. Fear of abandonment is a huge one I have experienced as I have had this irrational fear that everyone will leave and I will end up alone. Many other people have that same fear, though it can affect everyone differently. The way I have counteracted that is by learning everything I can about things and trying them out myself. Another big fear of mine is fear of rejection. Which I guess both go hand and in hand in a way.  Rejection feels like abandonment in some way and can be taken harder than it should. Rejection always felt personal to me when it should not have been. Other people should have the freedom to say no to you without fear. But I always took it as there was something inherently wrong with me, which was not rational.

There were a lot of fears that came out during COVID. The fear of the unknown creates scenarios in our minds where we feel we have a sense of control and then when things don’t work out like that, like life usually does, we react in usually not the best way. Fear and anger usually are best friends and team up with self-sabotage to make your life hell. Be careful when you run into them. I have had my fair share of regrets from things I have said in anger that later I realized were coming from fear that had nothing to do with the situation or person. The more and more I experience the more I realize how other people treat me does not have to do with me. I think many people are living their lives from fear and have no idea.

The fear and anticipation of something is usually way worse than the actual thing itself. I can waste a lot of mental energy just on fictional scenarios in my head. Quite a few times I have reflected back to what I thought would happen and compared it to what actually happened and realized that 9/10 it doesn’t turn out that bad and all that mental energy wasted. Yet I do still worry sometimes. Why do we still let irrational fear get to us? You can ‘what if’ yourself into a corner and end up never living your life. We are human and the more we know (and don’t know) about the world, the more questions we have and the more potential scenarios we can worry about. The combinations are limitless!

Fear has a brother named anxiety, who share everything with each other. They love to work together to create chaos in your life, no matter what the cost to you. They are a toxic combination that have to be kept in check. When they get away with things and are not diffused then they will sure turn your life upside down. After some time of being left unchecked, they can often escalate into making you angry as a way protect yourself. Sometimes when you are angry it helps to stop and ask yourself, what are you so afraid of? And is it realistic or is coming from anxiety?

Anger is often times just an outward side of inner pain and turmoil, but it also seems to me avoidance and fear of anger is more common than actually getting down to the root cause. We are quick to quiet someone’s anger instead of asking where it is coming from and why it is there. Usually, anger is not coming from nothing, even though it seems like that. It is built up from holding things inside and taking things for so long and not doing anything about it. It doesn’t just need an outlet though, it needs healing and understanding. That is what I think is missing in the world today. I know I have been afraid of other people’s anger and even my own, which is something I am working through. We all have the capacity to get angry. What do you do with it when it shows up? Do you stop to listen with care or do you let it take control and escalate things?

I found a list of all Robin William's movies as I plan to watch them all eventually. The other night I found one free on one of our streaming services to watch called The Angriest Man in Brooklyn. (Spoilers here if you care) He plays a very angry man who finds out he has 90 minutes to live (which is not exactly true) and tries to make amends with loved ones before his time is up. It is not his funniest or the best movie he has been in by far but I later found out it was the last movie that was released while he was still alive.  The movie had other stars in it as well but the story is what stood out to me. The more I read about his behavior leading up to his death in 2014 (link below) the more similarities I see in the movie. 

In the movie he was told he had an aneurism and needed to keep his blood pressure, and thus his anger, under control. But after so many years of being angry at everything and everyone it was hard to stop and it made trying to get closure that much harder for him because his anger turned people away from him. When he tries to make amends with his son that is when he starts to unravel the underlying pain behind the anger before it is too late, all while struggling to stay calm after years of being angry. The movie showed me how destructive and scary anger can be. It pushes people away and makes you become a person you do not want to be. I know when I was super depressed, I had unexplained anger at the littlest things. Angry people are not born angry or decide one day they are going to be an angry person.  Also, I realized that this year, 2024, will be 10 years ago since we lost him. 

https://nypost.com/2018/05/05/how-an-incurable-brain-disease-haunted-robin-williams-final-days/

 

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. 

Fear is the little death that brings obliteration. 

I will face my fear and I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past... I will turn the inner eye to see its path. 

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain."

― Frank Herbert, Dune