Fear

Earlier this week, Aruna asked us to contextualize and find our fear, mentioning that the system tries to make you feel fearful.

I find it interesting how I fill my life with fear. I am obsessed with watching crime shows, particularly true crime shows, such as American Justice and Cold Case Files. I have been diagnosed with four (yes, four) separate anxiety-related disorders. Fear is a daily part of my life.

Putting my fear into context is a little more difficult for me. I can only assume I surround myself with fear for a couple reasons. Mostly importantly, I have never really experienced fear in my life. Most of it was manufactured by Hollywood, sensational newspaper stories, or other people's stories. I have never feared for my life, I have never had a near-death experience. My fear is purely the result of the system in the culture I live within. As a result, I eventually envisioned my fear for everything in the form of snakes, a phobia I was diagnosed with in my 4th year, but one that has affected me for a long time. Although my ophidiophobia has lessened, it is still a very present part of my life, and one I doubt I will ever fully be able to release, especially during times of stress.

I do find it interesting, however, that all of my anxiety-related diagnosis are surrounded around things that haven't happened yet. They all trigger my OCD, which is my defense mechanism to ensure bad things do not happen, and the completing the various rituals my OCD dictates me to do (sometimes with no particular reason, it seems) makes me feel better. This is my system to deal with fear, and being in therapy to help rid me of my system is frightening in itself.

However, I find my fear is really about the anticipation before an event happens, and the government, news, etc, all capitalize on this fear of anticipation of a horrible event. I have never experienced a natural disaster, religious persecution, or threats against my race or sexuality. I have experienced the fear of moving, and of my parents and brother (all of whom I am very close to) moving far away from me, which provokes the fear of isolation and immediate threat (i.e. if one of them was in the process of dying suddenly, would I be able to see them before they died?), but I am incapable of accurately and processing the reality of this fear because it so emotional and personal.

I feel that optimism has been quashed due to its lack of marketability. People don't want to hear how well things are going because that won't sell the newspapers. I dislike this fear-mongering culture because I bought into it so long ago that I feel I can't get out.