When fear is my most accessible emotion

[Note: I talk about God in this post. (S)he is a very real and active force in my life and I didn't feel that I could write this post without discussing that. However, I want to acknowledge that it may be alienating and painful for some, especially those who have been hurt by the church or anyone who professes the name of God without professing the love of God.]

There’s a book study out there called The Eight Feelings, written by Chip Dodd. In the book, the eight core feelings (from which all other feelings branch out) are hurt, lonely, sad, anger, fear, shame, guilt, and glad. I went through this study with a small group of friends and can assure you that, although naming and discussing feelings felt like marriage counseling 60% of the time, it was actually so helpful in expressing and understanding my own emotions. I don’t think the idea is flawless, primarily because I refuse to accept that all my emotions are variations on these eight, although I have yet to come across one that didn’t fit somewhere, but I do think the premise is useful. Briefly, for each feeling, there is an impairment, or unhealthy expression of the feeling, and a gift that comes from acknowledging the truth of our feelings, even the negative ones. At it's best, I found that this framework allowed me to accept the complexity of the emotions I experience rather than push them away, and in feeling, recognizing, and understanding all of these emotions and their gifts, from shame to fear to glad, I was actually free to experience life more fully. 

Each feeling is worth discussing in detail, with a few close friends if you have that option, but I’m focusing for now on fear. As framed in the study, fear is the true feeling, the impairment is anxiety, and the gifts of fear are wisdom and faith. I’ve recognized fear as my most accessible emotion, the one I feel most clearly and most often, and have been on a journey to try and understand how to live with it. Fear is what I feel when I am insecure, in transition, unfulfilled, tired, and honestly, even when I’m just hungry. It's so familiar and still so uncomfortable for me. And right now, although I am confident that this phase won’t last forever, I experience fear most often in it’s impaired form: anxiety. Once I was able to connect that my anxiety was usually rooted in fear, I started asking myself what it was I was afraid of in moments when I was experiencing anxiety.

In day-to-day life, most often I am afraid of the worst-case scenario event—which, in my experience, almost never happens (my worst case scenarios are generally catastrophic, e.g., the plane crashes, someone has a heart attack and I am the only one around to help, etc., etc.). My anticipation of situations is almost always worse than the actual situation and ends up putting me in a place where I am always worried about something. This is exhausting physically and mentally.

In addition to this day-to-day anxiety, there’s also the underlying life anxiety, which for me, stems from deep-seated fears of not meeting my own standards for success in the short and long-term, not living a purposeful and meaningful life, not pursuing what makes me happy (and even worse, not knowing what makes me happy), not living to my fullest potential, not being able to provide for myself, not having the stability or freedom of movement that I desire. These things are easier to ignore and not always so top of mind, but I think that they probably affect my day-to-day anxiety much more than I realize. For example, could the fact that I recently uprooted myself from my community and job and family on the east coast to drive across the country to live in Seattle with a handful of friends and without a job be contributing to an increase in anxiety? Yes, certainly. As much as I want a life of adventure and freedom, I also crave stability and routine. I already knew this about myself when I planned this life change, and I intentionally made such a big move because I wanted to push my limits, push myself beyond the comforts of the life I was living, hopefully not just to step outside my comfort zone temporarily but to actually expand it. And with that growth, anxiety.

Feeling anxious is never enjoyable and occasionally interrupts my living the life I desire for myself. I frequently want it to be gone, just magically lifted away and dissolved into the air. It seems like a burden and a weight that I don’t always understand, and even more seldom feel grateful for (for anyone else out there dealing with anxiety, a pro tip is that allowing yourself to allow the anxiety you feel, even inviting it in and accepting it, calms your brain both chemically and emotionally, so if you take a second to acknowledge and allow anxiety in moments when it is feeling overwhelming, it can be a great counter balance. Doing 25 jumping jacks also works for me.) But there have been several instances and one moment in particular where I’ve felt that, no matter how many times I wish it away and how many solutions I come up with to manage it, it will always be a part of who I am. Accepting that fact brings me freedom, an opportunity to practice trust and surrender to a force bigger than my life, but honestly, not relief. Most days, it still feels like an uncomfortable and unattractive part of me that I wish I didn’t have and don’t like to share with others.

What has recently shifted the way that I view and experience my anxiety is acknowledging it is from God, and God did not give me to draw me closer to her (although that surely is happening and likely I’ll continue to learn obedience and acceptance and self-love from it), but to present an opportunity to redeem my anxiety. I had always considered it as something unattractive that I would just have to live with, but never as something with the potential for redemption, the potential to be beautiful and to give me strength. Redemption is so much more complex and difficult than simply taking away the bad, but in the struggle and the fight, it is ultimately making the whole, including the parts I see as ugly, beautiful. In the process of learning this, I came across these ancient words of Symeon the New Theologian (translated by Stephen Mitchell), which so artfully describe this redemption of the body:

“…and everything that is hurt, everything that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful, maimed, ugly, irreparably damaged, is in Him transformed and recognized as whole, as lovely and radiant in His light. He awakens as the Beloved in every last part of our body.”

Maybe it’s these kinds of realizations, and the living into them that follows that are the gifts of fear that lead me into deeper wisdom and faith. Maybe it's the strength and confidence that comes from knowing that, although anxiety accompanies me wherever I go, it is not who I am. Maybe it’s the deeper understanding and connection with the hurting and broken and imperfect and unattractive that allows me to experience redemption, in my own life, and in the world.