Fear of what?
As an adult, its so easy to complicate the feelings and thoughts I have into unapproachable messes that are more forces than feelings. And something that's very present in me is fear. In some way it feels even less shameful to say I'm depressed than to say I'm afraid everywhere because at least depression is made sound to feel like a fight and a struggle - yet people struck by fear have less of that sympathy; usually from the only person whom this matters, oneself1. All fear is sadness in some way; notice how some of the best horror movies are tragedies, so maybe there's also sadness in there.
Nevertheless. Fear of what? I'm afraid of death, obviously, and I don't want to die. How would my grief feel like if I didn't fear death? Would I be sad that I'm not with this person in this moment, if I believe in an afterlife? Or if I don't, would I just be pissed? Depends on whether I believe death is neutral or not, I guess. A part of grief that I don't know how to process if the fear that I've felt seeing the open casket of someone I've loved. Sadness, in part - idk, grief is weird - but in the ball of it all, fear.
I digress. Fear of what? Do I have one of those fancy fears along the lines of "fear of outliving my usefulness"? No. At least not that. Would I feel more special if I indeed had one of those? Fear of social shame? Yeah, that seems reasonable. And workable too. At least its good to know there are ways to keep on living in...
Its not fear. Think of driving a car. Its not really fear I feel when driving a car, but its the knowing that at any moment you could be a headline - in a bad way - and not have that fear be the mind killer. Mind killer fear. And not mind killer... not fear.
Fear of what, then? All I know is that I'm very afraid most of the time and I'm messing around with the inputs to figure it out. Fear of change, fear of hunger, fear of social death, fear of compromises, fear of sickness, fear of losing oneself, fear of love, fear of happiness, fear of not being enough, fear of...
Not being enough... Should I count that as a fear? Is it valid? Its a social kind of fear, even if the social space is . I feel like it belongs more into the shames section. Shame is useful, it drives change. Its a very clear signal that "hey, you're messing up here, do something else". At least if its calibrated and you know why you're feeling shame. Shame without cause is just torture. And shame about the wrong things, and with the knowledge that they're the wrong things, leads into a weird kind of shame-feedback-loop where you feel shame out of even feeling shame!
Not being what, then? Not being enough is just so vague. It feels more like a shame rather than a fear because fear has a source. An abyss which is not good to gaze for too long. Shame, though? No. Shame corrupts and transforms because it doesn't have a source, but a direction. "I don't know of what, but you're feeling shame from there!", and reminds you of that time you fumbled hard a pick up.
Maybe there's a dial that can tone down fear in general. Knock it off into not-mind-killer fear. I've started doing this in the hopes of deconstructing the complicated landscape that surrounds me into simple-er verbs. Fear is actionable, there's literature on working on that. "Just the way I am" is not. In a sense, its about losing fear of fear.
Funnily enough, the same can be said the other way around. Its easier to have fear because you can just "do a leap of faith" than being whiny about being sad. An idea can be wrong no matter what shape it takes.↩