Learning to face your fears
On a scale of one to 10 for bad driving, I would have given myself a three. A minor misdemeanor committed at 5.23pm on a Thursday afternoon.
The clouds hanging thick and low, like whipped cream from a can, according to the four children I was transporting. Two lanes becoming three, the traffic inching along. Unsure where I was going, at the last moment I chose my direction, omitting to indicate. Honk! In my rear-vision mirror a man shook his fist.
Sorry, I mouthed. He trailed me through two sets of lights, pulling out in front with an angry screech when the traffic cleared. As we turned the corner, he braked suddenly, jumped out, stalked over to my window, swearing all the time, calling me names. The children cowered, the dog barked. You're overreacting, I said. Behind me the traffic banked up. Go back to your car, I said. Finally he did, tearing off in a furious skid.
My small daughter took a very big breath. I'm scared, said my son. I'm not, I said. Not of that stupid fool. I would've run over that raging bonehead before I'd have let him touch you.
Later, adrenaline subsided, I considered whether I had been telling the truth. Yes, I concluded. I had been pissed off, stressed, alert to danger, but not scared. Upsetting, disappointing, crossing the people in my life; that makes me anxious. But not stuff. Not aeroplanes or roller coasters. Not morons with anger issues or insects.
Recently I pulled a small enamel pot out of the cupboard to boil an egg. Inside laid a spider. Massive and black, a give-away white spot on its bum. I thought about screaming, but didn't want to alarm my children. So I flicked it in the sink and turned on the tap. When a moment later it crawled back up and onto the dishcloth I was holding, I pounced with a whoosh of fly spray, masking the small squeal that slipped out my mouth.
Fear is crippling. It can stop you going places, speaking your mind, making life changes. And being told your fear is irrational does nothing to assuage it. When my children are scared, I try not to over-engage. To address the issue, but not to indulge it. Despite our societal faith in analysis, sometimes over-exploration can be fatal; resilience and determination ultimately more useful. There are certain things that fill my mother with an unholy terror (we estimated 10 recently, but only got to six), and I imagine she is relieved and pleased not to have passed them on to me.
Like his grandmother, my son is petrified of needles. The three of us were discussing how he might conquer this, and I said that while he is free to acknowledge it, he is also free to choose, and that he could choose not to succumb.
But, he said, what about what happened in Fiji? And in front of my mother, whose fears I have been known to smugly mock, he recounted how when I took my children snorkelling, the first time for my nervous daughter, we were swimming happily enough along, marvelling at a large blue starfish, when my daughter said, "shark!" And how I screamed, "swim!" and hoofed it back to shore, heeding not whether my children were behind me, intent only on reaching terra firma.
And when I got there and realised they had swum in the other direction and were now being comforted by a fellow group of snorkellers, and that my daughter, believing her mother had abandoned her, was sobbing, even then, I could not bring myself to get back in that water.
I heard there's more chance of being killed by a toaster than a shark, said my son to his grandmother. Yes, I snapped, but when I toast bread, the Jaws soundtrack doesn't run through my head.
Written by Megan Nicol Reed. First appeared on Stuff.co.nz.
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