True fear is a survival mechanism meant to protect you. It’s the kind of fear an animal experiences when a predator stalks it, triggering the fight-or-flight response that may save its life. True fear is what you experience when your minivan goes out of control on the interstate. False fear, on the other hand, shows up as worry, anxiety, and ruminations about all the things that could go wrong in an imaginary future. It’s always the finger pointing toward something that needs to be healed in your mind. In this way, both true fear and false fear can help you, if you know how to interpret them in healthy ways.
If someone could wave a magic wand and make you fearless, you probably wouldn’t survive very long. Those who grow up to be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder are often fearless as children, and such fearlessness puts them at great risk. Fear is critical to our safety and survival. But the very thing that protects you can go haywire. Although false fear can illuminate areas in your life that need your attention, healthy decisions that guide appropriate behavior never arise from false fear; they arise from intuition and integrity. Learning to discern between true fear and false fear allows you to know which voices in your head you can trust to guide your decisions.
True fear is the fear you feel as you lean over a cliff and realize that one misstep could kill you. It’s the fear you feel when you meet a mountain lion on your hike. It’s the fear you feel when someone holds a gun to your head. It can also be the calm, measured voice in your head that says, This guy is dangerous or I need to go check on the baby right this second. The voice of true fear is meant to keep you safe.
You may think that false fear keeps you safe, too. Perhaps you think that worrying about your finances will keep you financially secure. Maybe you think that fear of having your child abducted leads you to take better care of him or her. You might think fear of getting sick keeps you from engaging in reckless behaviors. Maybe you think you’re more likely to quit smoking or eat organic because you’re afraid your health will suffer. Many people think fear is the only thing keeping them from reckless behavior that might threaten their career, their financial stability, their marriage, their quest for excellence, their reputation, their health, and the safety of those they love.
But does false fear really help you behave more responsibly? If you weren’t afraid, would you throw away your money, leave your child unattended, and gorge on sugar? Is false fear what motivates you to make good decisions? And are the stress responses such fears activate worth the risk they cause to your body? No!
By shining a light on what needs to be healed, false fear may indeed play a role in helping you look at your money issues, your bad habits, your parenting challenges, and any dissatisfaction in a relationship. False fear may also alert you when creative problem solving is called for. If you can recognize it as a signal not to let stress responses run amok but to explore the situation further, in a calm, relaxed, intuitive way, false fear may have something to teach you. For example, maybe you’re afraid about getting cancer, even though you just got a clean bill of health from your doctor. Perhaps the fear stems from an intuitive knowing signaling you that your unhealthy lifestyle may be putting you at risk of cancer, even though you don’t have it yet. Maybe your instincts are telling you to stop eating so many processed foods, ditch the cigarettes, and start meditating so your immune system is better able to maintain healthy homeostasis. Or maybe you’re afraid of running out of money, even though there’s plenty of money currently in your bank account. Perhaps this is an alert from your intuition that the reckless way you’ve been spending needs to stop so you can build up more of a buffer in case something unexpected happens to your income stream.
The key is understanding that you don’t need the fear in order to motivate healthy, responsible behavior, although it’s worth paying attention to the fear that may point a finger in the direction you need to be looking. When false fear is in charge, your mind gets smaller. You limit your ability to problem solve creatively. You’re paralyzed into inaction. But when you’re able to let fear help you expand your consciousness, something opens up, and you’re able to make better decisions.
©2015. Reprinted with permission. The Fear Cure by Lissa Rankin. Hay House. February 2015. www.HayHouse.com
