Fear of ...

I've been thinking on fear...mostly because of something someone said on Monday when I was at work.

I don't quite remember how we got onto the subject of spiders, but we did. She said she will not go to visit Australia simply because of her fear of spiders!!



Since moving to the UK, I've never come across quite so many people who have arachnophobia as much as the Brits do. My very first encounter of this phobia was my first temp job. I shared the office with another woman who one morning suddenly started screaming as she jumped away from her desk.

Shit man! Gave me such a fright.

Turned out there was a tiny spider running across her desk! Huh?

On another occasion, one of my son's friends was confronted by a spider in our house. His resultant frenzy of terror belied the size of the threat the spider posed.

And too many more to document here...

So why this national obsession? It is not as though the spiders here in the UK are poisonous or will bite. But you know...maybe it's not only here, it is just that I've only noticed it here. Maybe it is a worldwide phenomenon?

An impatient businessman came in as a patient last week. Underneath the bluster and 'I'm so important in my world that if I leave it to do its own thing for one second everything will fall apart' attitude, he was frightened. What was scaring him was his perception that he had no control over what was happening to him that night and it was this fear of the unknown that made him aggressive and grumpy.

What then sprang to mind was when BBC wildlife photographer Gordon Buchanan went to America to film bears. Someone out there has spent years studying the bears around him and introduced Gordon to them - very carefully over several months. As part of the documentary Gordon visited a family who shoot bears during the hunting season. Oh my word, the aggressive fear surrounding them...

He took one of the men with him to introduce him from a distance to the bears. Was this man terrified, especially as he had no rifle with him. He was really touched by the visit and though he may never befriend them, he seemed to get something out of the visit. (I am not advocating befriending wildlife, but what I am saying is that we shouldn't kill something simply because we don't understand it.)

There isn't much to fear in this country. We have a stable society and the government looks after their people - which is probably why it is considered the land of milk and honey to outsiders and the Brits themselves are (with a few exceptions) are a very tolerant and trusting nation. Okay...there are other underlying things going on, but mostly on the surface...life is good. The wildlife is pretty tame too - maybe foxes, the odd snake or a feral cat or two to worry about - but otherwise it is not as though whilst walking through the countryside, something is going to eat you, mug or shoot you if you are in a town or city!

Pondering this today I slowly came to the realisation that fear is relative. In a society where there is nothing to fear we will find something to fear because that is what we have always done. It's become an habitual addiction.

The unpredictability of the unknown and therefore the lack of control that we perceive we have causes the fear, rather than the thing that is creating the fearful reaction in us.

How often do we think things into a huge mountain of fear and then don't do it? How often have we done something anyway despite the fear and then realised it was nothing quite as bad as we thought?

I have done both of these quite often. I have also learnt that until I am ready to face a fear, I will avoid it like the plague. 

So...do we have control?

The answer to that question is...yes we do, but not in the way we think we do...or don't.

If we accept that we are the sum total of all our aspects (past, present and future and every emotion that came with those lifetimes) as well as our Soul/Higher Self, there are going to be huge chunks about ourself that we don't know, restricted as we have been by our human bodies. It is the unpredictability of our emotions of which we have no consciousness recall, that causes the fear. We have been so cut off from everything that is us...for a very good reason.

Thus...it is not something else that makes us fearful of the unpredictability. It is the unknown about ourselves and how WE will react that makes us distrustful and worried and therefore fearful. If we are not ready, it is easier to project this fear onto something else rather than take responsibility for our own fear.

Though I may have a chuckle at the antics of those who come across a spider...I reckon I must look ridiculously funny to others in my attempts to run away from that which I don't particularly like.

We can be our own worst enemies, if we so choose.