Fear

“I know you think we’re all out here on our own

But you don’t have to go this alone

You don’t stop you don’t go you ain’t right

Did you think you could hide in plain sight”

-Jim James

Fear keeps us from living fully while simultaneously keeping us alive, paradoxically.  One of the most common, essential feelings, it is one we would probably like to avoid the most.  It is the emotional equivalent of physical pain, forcing us to make one of three choices when we encounter it- fight, fly, or freeze.  Yet it also intrigues us through horror movies and amusement park rides.  We know we need it but only when we get to choose when to feel it.

Without fear we wouldn’t have made it this far.  We would be written about in history books by tigers or other wild animals who evolved into rational, intellectual beings taking our place on this earth.  But us humans listened to our fears and learned how to deal with the very real dangers we faced in order to survive.  And, in a much less dramatic way, continue to learn from our fears in order to keep surviving.  Examples: sticking around our parents in unfamiliar environments as kids, not taking up every invitation to someone’s house or invitation to try every substance offered to us as teenagers, buying meat from people who know how to handle the carcasses instead of picking up dead animals from the ground and handling them ourselves, or crossing streets and immediately stepping back when we see cars flying towards us.

There are times we are still cautious, hesitant, avoidant and even confrontational in our fearful states when we may not need to be.  Examples: when we are reluctant to make friends with people who are different from us even if we share similar interests; and I’m not talking about obvious differences but those subtle ones, like if they’re “more successful,” “more confident,” “wilder,”  etc.  More examples: when we avoid telling people the truth because we don’t want to lose them, or keep our disappointing jobs because we’re afraid of finding something worse, or staying home when we want to explore but think the world is a dangerous place.

None of us are old enough to experience what it actually felt like to run from animal predators as our ancestors did.  But all of us hold onto this valuable feeling just in case we need to put it to use.  Have you ever heard of the “Strange Situation experiment”?  It’s not directly connected to fear, but it is one about attachment.  I bring it up because I think fear is the direct blockage to attachment.  And our connections to others, as social beings, is one of our main focuses in life.   In the experiment, a mother and infant are asked to hang out in a decorative room full of toys with a psychologist.  Then the mother is asked to leave and the child’s behaviors are assessed.  Some children cry and are then consolable, either on their own or by the psychologist; some cry and cry without stop.  And some don’t even notice their mothers have left, or don’t seem to care.  The three types of attachment styles identified are secure, anxious, and avoidant.  You can read more about this experiment here or a great book on attachment, Love Sense by Sue Johnson.  This experiment is fear based— the sudden disappearance of the mother—and there are healthy and unhealthy ways to deal with that fear.  But they are all ways to deal with it.  They are all answers to the problems fear evokes.

Here are 5 songs that don’t really offer answers but are reflections on fear.  Think of something that scared you in the past.  Did you tame it?  Are you still afraid of it?  What are your fears now?  Who can you share them with?  How do you console yourself?  Is it effective?  Does the method help you grow?

 

Strange Weather by Anna Calvi and David Byrne

This song encapsulates fear because it carries both fear and other moods so well, too.  With fear there is a whole army of feelings waiting to fight or flee.  The fact that David Byrne sings in this shows us the whole package of a human being, too— the fearless, fun experimental Talking Heads and the shadowy, vulnerable fear of this project.

Nightmares on Repeat by Emily Jane White

This song is new to me but I came across it looking for a Marissa Nadler song.  This felt more appropriate.  It’s a gentle look at being stuck in fear.

Hide in Plain Sight by Jim James

As the lyrics demonstrate above, this song gets to the heart of fear.  To me, it calls to mind a Buddhist teaching (maybe just Tara Beach’s teaching) that all fear can essentially be boiled down to the fear of death.  That if we ask our selves what we are scared of, at first it will might be the obvious, and then it will move to the fear of loss of someone or something, and then ultimately our fear of death.

Young Lady, You’re Scaring Me by Ron Gallo

This song has the feel of rejection, but if you really pay attention, I think the speaker is tapping into the fear and intrigue of being in a relationship with someone so unfamiliar to him.  It’s kind of like an angry song for someone whom the singer hasn’t stopped loving.

A Forest by The Cure

This is just a spooky song.  Our imaginations can scare us.  We can learn something from our fears or we can just feel scared and that’s okay too.