Facing Our Fears: How Do We Overcome Them…Or Maybe That’s Not the Point?

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

We all have fears, but acknowledging them and exploring their origins while detaching from any outcome of eliminating them, is valuable in itself

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I had been afraid of bees since I was a child. I caught a bee in a glass jar when I was very young, because it looked so beautiful. I wasn’t going to keep it. I just wanted to look at it. And then I decided to pet it. I wasn’t going to hurt it — just give it an affectionate petting. The bee, of course, didn’t understand what I was doing, so it stung me. It hurt, and I was emotionally stung as well. I was just trying to be friendly. The memory of this did not stay with me. I promptly forgot about this encounter with the bee until a teacher of mine later encouraged me to think about myself. I was afraid, but I didn’t know why.

Years later, the fear was still with me. I found myself running frantically away from any bee that happened to fly near me. I didn’t know it, but one of my middle school teachers must have witnessed this. One Saturday morning, there was a knock on the door at our home. It was my middle school teacher. I was stunned. He was absolutely my favorite teacher, but I didn’t know him outside of the classroom.  He taught science, and everyone, including me, loved his classes. He asked my parents if he could take me for a walk, and we went down the road together as he explained what bees are and what motivates them. Ahead of us, I saw a grove of flowering trees, with what I believed then were about a thousand bees (I doubt I was really seeing things as they were), and he told me that if it was all right with me, he wanted the two of us to lean against one of the trees and watch the bees. I was really afraid, but I trusted my teacher when he told me that he knew I could do it. And it was transformative. I finally understood what the bees were doing and what the circumstances were under which they might sting me. I knew I was safe.

My teacher suggested that I think about myself and what might have led to my fear. And he told me to take my time and practice my newfound understanding, so I did that. When I felt ready, I took walks by myself and tested how I felt, and over a period of months, I found that I no longer had to force myself to walk near bees. I stopped even noticing that bees were around. My fear was gone.

Fears are complex, powerful, and mysterious. But so are we.

We cannot be easily defined, and we cannot be limited by someone else’s understanding of us. There is no single kind of fear, and we are all different from one another, so there is no single way to overcome fear. But if we take the time to understand ourselves, we can find the courage that we need.

Fears can be physical, psychological, or intellectual. Some people can be very brave when it comes to one kind of fear and yet not be able to face another kind of fear. You may have seen this yourselves. For example, there are people who are able to handle almost any kind of physical pain and yet tremble on the phone with their mothers or fathers. And there are others who are not bothered at all by family challenges but who find it difficult to handle the possibility that one of their political views is weak or problematic.

And we all have different lived experiences, so it is sometimes difficult for us to understand why someone else finds something frightening. If we are not frightened by it, why should someone else be? It is often hard to understand people who are different from us. When fears grip us, it is personal. It doesn’t matter if anyone else feels the same way. And people shouldn’t be bullied into facing their fears. It isn’t respectful of them as individuals, and it doesn’t work.

My father told me a story about his time in the Navy. All of the sailors had to know how to swim, but there was one young man who had never learned, and he was afraid of the water. The person in charge had him thrown against his will into the deep end of the pool. He was traumatized by the incident. It didn’t help him overcome his fear and it didn’t help him learn to swim. Forcing someone to do something because it comes easily to you is never the answer. Everyone needs and deserves empathy when it comes to fears.

At the same time, we should never tell ourselves that our fears have to be permanent. We need not live with them our whole lives. Our teachers, family, and friends can help us, but unless we want to overcome our fears, it cannot happen. No one else can do this for us. It has to be up to us.

So what can we do? In order to find our own, personal version of courage for our own, personal version of our fears, we have to do two things: understand and practice.

If we look deeply into ourselves, we can uncover the triggers of our fears. Sometimes it helps to find someone else we can talk to about this: a friend, a relative, a counselor. Sometimes the triggers for our fears become clear to us fairly quickly, and sometimes it takes a long time to discover them. Sometimes we are completely unaware that we even have a fear, and we need someone outside of ourselves to help us see it. It’s not always as easy to see as a fear of bees.  And we shouldn’t put pressure on ourselves or demand that we meet a rigid timetable for self-understanding. It can be a long process.

And then we must practice. The key to success here is baby steps. Don’t demand success from yourself immediately. Start small. Forgive yourself for failures along the way. And persist. Understanding your fears is not, by itself, enough to overcome them. We can know something without being able to do it. Knowledge is helpful, but we need to try the knowledge out and keep trying it until we no longer depend upon the knowledge. As we become more comfortable with confronting our fears, we become less dependent upon our understanding of our fears. That is how we can make progress. Step by step, taking our time. Until the mystical equivalent of muscle memory takes over and we wake up one day free of the fears we have chosen to fight.

One more thing. There is a hierarchy of fear. Some fears are weak and relatively unimportant to the way we live our lives. And some fears are central to our ability to be ourselves and have satisfying, happy lives. Don’t ever feel that you need to root out all of your fears. No one needs to live a life completely free of fear, nor is it likely even possible. Prioritize. Focus on the things that are most important to you and work on those.

And if you discover that you simply can’t triumph over some very important fears, the struggle is still worth it.

Understanding yourself helps you live your life, even with some fears you might like to cast away. When it comes to fear, there is no such thing as failure. Sometimes our life has hurt us so much that the fears we have can never be banished. That’s okay too. By confronting them, you already make your life better.

You can do this. You might need a little help from someone else. But ultimately it comes down to you. Always remember, you are stronger than you think you are. Don’t “bee” afraid of facing your fears.

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You may also enjoy reading How to Make Friends with Our Fears,fear by Sarah Fabian.