Negative Energy: Fear (3 of 3)

My fear of walls needs to be addressed.  When the accident first happened, I walked around wearing a helmet.  Instead of helping, the helmet reinforced the fear.  Also walking around with a helmet on is only a stopgap measure.  Since I live in an urban area, I have to make peace with walls in general. 

The store where the accident happened is a place that I have to shop at.  What I do before entering the building is to recite the following” “Now, I don’t like you, and you don’t like me.  We’ll be fine, if you’ll let me be.”  Through the power of this incantation, I feel safe.

Going into other stores is still problematic.  What I do is to fix in my mind where the item would be.  Then I zip in and out before I realize what just occurred.  If I do get stuck, I leave the item and exit the store.  However, it does not deter me from going back in, and redoing the process until I finally buy the item. 

Living alone is a fear that I do share with a lot of other people.  Since my son needs to live his own life, I need to find a solution.  One thing that I can do is to avail myself of the services offered by the Brain Injury Center.  This place is within walking distance from my home but I have put off going there.  I think it is because the Center is new and unknown to me.  I prefer my safe little rut that I currently live in.  However, to resolve this fear, I need to expand my “rut”.

Living without my son is a problem to be solved.  I can look into assisted living or home-based services with the help of the Center.  My family had prepared for this sort of problem before my accident.  Once I communicate my fears with them, we can then prepare for the future.  I see this as making fear work for me.  It spurs me into action to plan for the future.  As I plan, I gain power in overcoming my fears.

The fear of not being able to return home is about my brain shutting down and being unable to function.  To calm my racing mind, I use my Pillow Pets ™ to hold.  Their commercial claims that “this is a stuffed animal with a purpose.”  Holding the soft, huggable pillow calms me.  I found out that the company sells Pillow Pets pee-wees ™, which are a smaller version of the original Pillow Pets ™.  I have Ms. Lady Bug™, whose happy, bright face comforts me.  Whenever I go someplace, I tuck the Pillow Pet pee-wee ™ under my arm.  The toy comes with a little poem that I often recite.  Again saying this incantation helps to ward off the fear.  In addition, this poem helps my brain to think of comforting thoughts, and calms my brain.

Ms. Lady Bug’s Poem™

“I’m a cute little bug with a caring heart,

We will never have to be apart.

I’ll always bring you good luck & cheer,

And I promise to always be near!”

Fear for me runs the gamut from worry to stark terror.  Fear can be a wonderful emotion to tell you when something is dangerous.  Fear offers the opportunity to resolve a distressing situation.  Properly harnessed, fear can keep you safe and prepared for the future.  When fear is not recognized, it can morph into paralysis restricting our lives.

Works Used

---, “The Merriam-Webster Thesaurus”, Merriam-Webster: Springfield (MA), 1989.

Sotkin, Joan, “Using Financial Fear as a Positive Force”, Pro$perity Quick Tips, 23 Aug. 2011, http://www.joansotkin.com/

The Official TV Site of the Original Pillow Pets ™! http://www.pillowpets.com/Default.asp?bhcp=1

Negative Energy: Fear (2 of 3)

My second fear comes from my inability to live independently.  My son lives with me and commutes to college.  I depend on him for many things including companionship.  I am afraid to be alone, navigating my life by myself.  When the wall fell on me, my self-confidence was shattered.  I experienced the extinction of myself.  The freak accident destroyed my life, leaving me helpless and fearful.

Because I need supervision with cooking and other things, I become overwhelmed thinking of the future without him.  The future of being alone frightens me.  I see myself alone, isolated, solitary without anyone to care for me.  Thinking about this sets my brain spinning, and I start to grind my teeth.

My fears of being alone may override my commonsense.  I may make hasty decisions and invite unscrupulous people into my life.  Before my accident, I lived independently confident of my actions.  Now I cannot even leave my home without help.

My third fear is to go somewhere and not be able to return home.  Once, I used the disability-access transportation to go shoe shopping.  Because of a mix-up in communication, the return transport was not waiting for me.  After waiting awhile, I panicked and crying and shaking.  But I did have the presence of mind to call my family, who came for me.  Once I started shaking and “seizing”, I could not remember what happened next.  All I know is that I came home in very bad shape.  I had panicked because I thought I was stranded by myself.  There were no familiar landmarks for my brain to focus on.

Since my goal is to be a fully functioning human being, I must overcome my fears.  In her blog, Joan Sotkin points out that fear can be a positive force in a person’s life.  Instead of reacting by running amok, fear tells us to stop and think.  She further states that “fear is a signal to bring you back to the present.”

I see fear as being a conditional emotion.  For example, the wall might fall down – not will fall down.  To counter the fear of “I am alone in the future”, I can focus on the here and now.  Ms. Sotkin further writes that “fear can motivate you to find solutions.”  Taking her advice, I can view my fears as problems to be solved.

---------------

 

Negative Energy: Fear (1 of 3)

Part of nature is negative energy - predator hunting the prey, the flood that destroys everything, the earthquake that shakes the ground.  I will be doing a series of blogs on these basic emotions in my life.
----------

Fear comes in many disguises that we may not recognize.  Some of the synonyms for fear are “afraid, alarm, cold feet, dismay, fright, horror, panic, terror, and worry.”  Reading these words gives the impression of how all-encompassing this emotion actually is.  Fear ranges from mild worry to stark terror.  The knot in the pit of your stomach is an indication of the presence of this emotion.  Also worrying about the future is a form of fear.

Joan Sotkin, in her “Pro$perity Quick Tips” writes, “Fear can be your survival instinct kicking in.”  Fear tells you when your safety is at risk, and counsel caution.  Sometimes, fear gets out of hand when it stops you from living your life.  For example, the fear of public speaking is a wildly held fear.  However, speaking before people generally does not result in death.  But, this fear keeps many people from participating in public life.  Instead of speaking out, they remain silent because of their fear, and do not achieve anything for the public good.

My personal experiences with fear are with its panic and gut-wrenching terror aspects.  Some of my fears are real, and some of them are imagined.  One thing that I discovered is that fear can be contagious.  I think that if others are afraid, then I should be also.  Our fear then feeds on each other until all of us become paralyzed.  For me, it is difficult to break out of this mind set.

My fears today derive themselves from a freak accident that happened to me.  A wall had fallen on me, and nearly killed me.  My brain bled, leaving me with a traumatic brain injury. This accident has left me with a phobia of walls amongst other fears.  Intellectually speaking, I know that this fear is absurd.  Except for me, the other patients in the Neurological Unit at the hospital were victims of strokes or car crashes.  Therefore, a wall falling on someone is extremely rare, unless they are construction workers.

My phobia of walls is a fear that I deal with daily.  Since I am surrounded by walls, I am in a constant state of fear.  Because of this fear, I am nervous around bookcases or anything of a structural nature that is higher than me.  This makes shopping in stores problematic to me.  I often ask myself, “Will these walls fall down?  Will they fall on me?”  

My experience with shelves in stores is that they are usually stacked with heavy products such as cans and bottles.  When I do go shopping, I have to plot out my route.  I go in, zip about, and quickly zip out again.  I only shop for items that I cannot obtain on-line (including groceries).  If there is a line, I panic and leave the item.  While waiting in line, I imagine the stacks of cereal boxes, fruit, or cans falling down on me.

The worst store for me to go into is the Home Depot.  Seeing the plumbing supplies stacked to the ceiling or piles of lumber make me start to think of falling objects.  Then I start to shake.  I cannot enter this store because I am paralyzed with the fear of falling objects. 

My oddest fear that I encounter in stores is flying crock pots.  The last things that I remember about the wall failing on me are the crock pots raining down on me.  Whenever I see one on sale, I imagine the appliance leaping off the shelf at me.  I regard these store crock pots as “wild, malevolent” entities.