What are you afraid of? What made or makes you afraid of (fill in the blank)? Why are you afraid? Can you do anything to deflect or eliminate the threat? Perhaps the important question(s) should be… what lessons have you learned from being afraid? Have those lessons made you stronger and feel less threatened? Does your ‘afraid’ cripple you? (You do appreciate that there is a difference between ‘fear’ and ‘afraid’ – yes? You can be afraid and it can lead you to fear but not necessarily. Fear is a far worse strait to be in because that does cripple.)
I believe that the first question, when it comes to being afraid, is: can I do anything about the situation? Can I influence the decision in any way? However, I suspect that this isn’t the first question that pops into one’s mind. We seem to be a creation that fixates on ‘fixing’ whatever we see as a problem, whether or not we can, are equipped to, or should. Analysis always takes a back seat. But if the answer is ‘no’ to the fixing, then that’s the end of it? Rarely. I don’t believe any of us are particularly ‘good’ about accepting that there are some things we can’t ‘fix’. Most of us will try anyway.
If it is something we can’t do anything about or with, how do we react? Flight? Submission? (No right/wrong answer – just the question. And yes, sometimes flight or submission is the only response.) However, when the time comes to accept that there is nothing we can do, how we react and respond in these situations tells a great deal about how we apply the lessons we learn about ‘afraid’. The potency of the ‘object’ of our afraid may lead us to how to respond to this afraid.
I’m not denigrating being afraid. It is an ‘is’, it happens. Sometimes it is a warning of problems that are coming. But who’s in control should be the issue. We should never let being afraid escalate into fear and then let it control us… though we all do at times. I would hope that we would stop long enough to remember what we’ve learned when we met afraid. I do wonder about whether or not we transmit our afraid to others. This can either alert them to a potential problem or it can develop a fear in them. Ultimately, if we can’t control the issue we can still control our response.
