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Our challenge prompt today is to watch the video below, then write on:
What fear can teach us.
Fear is ingrained in all human beings. How much fear drives a person's actions and reactions is determined by how said person interprets fear. Much like what Karen Thompson Walker describes in the video, fear is more like a story and how we handle our fear comes down to how we read it. What are my fears? I have plenty that are health related, which makes sense because my health has been a major story line in my life. Some involve my youngest and whether he will ever be comfortable around people. His Selective Mutism has a stranglehold on his ability to interact with others. I fear that he will never have any friends and will live a lonely life centered around fear and anxiety.
- Will I ever get to the point where the Migraines are episodic instead of chronic? What if this is how the rest of my life will play out?
- What are the long term effects of the dozens of prescription medications I've been on since childhood? Will I encounter new, life-threatening conditions?
- When my children become adults, will they resent me for being sick,depressed and for trying to end my life?
- What if I have a stroke later on in life because of my long history of Migraine?
- Will I live a long life?
- My mother had breast cancer. I had severe cervical dysplasia in which part of my cervix was removed. Will I get some form of cancer?
- Will my son ever overcome his anxieties and make friends? Will he be able to find happiness within his anxiety disorder? Am I doing enough to help him work through his anxiety?
How I approach my fears will determine how the story of how my fears will play out. If I were writing this particular blog post two years ago, my answers would have been full of apprehension, pessimism and anxiety. I gave too much power to my conditions and circumstances which in turn, made my fears monstrous obstacles that even giants couldn't overcome. Two years ago, I almost died. I'm not really sure to this day what caused me to overdose on Effexor, because I was not feeling suicidal. But the fact remains that I did and I was extremely close to being successful in ending my life. The doctors gave me a 30% chance of survival and my poor husband was called back to the hospital because they doubted I would pull through. Miraculously, and through a lot of prayer, I made a full recovery and after a week in the hospital, I was able to go home.
My perspective on life changed drastically after that. For the first year I struggled with why I survived because the emotional pain, shame and embarrassment was too much for me to deal with. It would have been very easy for me to attempt suicide again during those twelve months, but I didn't act on those impulses because I couldn't put my husband, children or family through that again. Which made me angry because if I had died then I wouldn't have to deal with the pain and obligation of living. That was a difficult and very dark time for me and it felt like I would never get to the other side of it. My biggest fear at that time was whether I would ever want to feel like living and participating in the journey of life again. That was the longest and deepest depression I have ever been through and it was scary. But like all episodes of depression, one day you wake up and it doesn't feel so heavy, dark or cumbersome anymore. And each day after that it got easier and lighter until I felt more like myself and less like a shadow wandering through the dark.
At that point I decided to not read into my fears the way I used to because my previous interpretations of fear drove me into deep depressions and caused unrelenting anxiety. The stories of my fears only propelled me into situations where I became bitter, stagnant, and doubtful. I figured out that the only way to defeat them is to change the way I saw them. Yes, I will most likely continue to have challenges during my lifetime, but how I choose to see them and approach them will determine whether they scare me or not. So, I have decided that I will not give any more power to the possibility of something happening without there being evidence that it will. I will and have changed my approach to health and healing so that I will limit the chances of having a medical setback or disruption happen later on in life. I have decided that I'm doing more than enough to encourage and support my son through his own struggles with anxiety. I have consciously changed the narrative of my fears in order to change their outcomes and reduce their power over my life. It took me 35 years and a very dark episode to get here, but I'm grateful for what it taught me.
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