Facing Fear and Not Losing Faith
What are you afraid of?
Listen now: Facing Fear and Not Losing Faith
For our next series, we decided to tackle the subject of Facing Reality and Not Losing Faith, which is something that all of us find difficult, especially when the realities of life are painful or challenging. To live in reality is to face things that you didn’t expect, that you’re not prepared to handle, and that turn out differently than you thought they would.
You may encounter things that can be so painful and devastating, you don’t want to face them, and live in denial or avoidance instead. You may either try to manage these things in isolation, or cling to someone desperately to get through it. It’s also really easy to lose your faith in God. You might be wondering why He would let you go through something painful, unexpected, or confusing.
In this series, we will name specific realities that we help clients face in counseling, including chronic illness, betrayal, addiction, church hurt, suffering, and loss. We will normalize and validate how hard these realities are so that you don’t feel crazy, ashamed, or alone when you’re struggling with them. And last, we will give you wisdom and practical steps that you can use to grow in your faith - not lose your faith! - as you face these realities.
The Reality of Fear
The first reality that we’re going to address in this series is the reality of fear. Fear manifests itself in many forms: worries, anxieties, panic, dread. Any of those manifestations can be at best, intrusive, and at worst, paralyzing. A way we look at fear in therapy is to realize that it’s synonymous with being STUCK. Imagine your life as a movie: is there one sequence you just can’t seem to get out of? Often, the mechanism that keeps you stuck in that ‘freeze frame’ is fear.
When we meet with people for counseling, one of the most effective questions is simply asking: What are you most afraid of? For example, someone may be fearful in friendships – fearful to speak up when hurt, in case their feelings are dismissed or invalidated. Others may fear relational conflict and avoid hard conversations because of it. That might result in carrying around anger, hurt, bitterness, and resentment.
There are many different kinds of fears; the following list is just a sample:
Being left out or abandoned
Death, pain, and aging
Isolation and loneliness
Being divorced
Fear of failure or rejection
Being disrespected or misunderstood
Lack of control or choices
Loss of health or beauty
Loss of reputation
Financial losses
That list may be overwhelming – in fact, you might be fearful of all the fears! But it’s okay to be overwhelmed and fearful. In fact, the first step in facing the reality of your fears is to admit that you have them. Then you can learn how they affect you, and finally, how you can deal with your fears.
How Does Fear Affect You?
There are 4 main areas where fear can affect your life:
Mentally
Physically
Emotionally
Spiritually
1. Mentally: Psychologists have identified 3 primary triggers that can activate the “fear” center of your brain.
The first primary trigger is memories. If you have a strong memory of a traumatic event, where you had a strong physiological fear response, this can cause mental fatigue and distress. Your brain can take you into the memory in a way that feels very real, as though the threat were in the present instead of in the past.
The second primary trigger is bodily sensations you experience as being “dangerous”. For instance, if you feel light-headed or tightness in your chest, or nauseous, these sensations can heighten your sense of fear or anxiety.
The third primary trigger is thoughts. Thoughts like, “No one sees how much pain I’m in” or “I will never be loved” or “I’m trapped” or “Everyone is looking at me” or “I can’t trust anyone,” can cause anxiety or distress to rise in your body.
2. Physically: God wired you with a neurological system that evaluates threats. You were meant to have a sense of safety and security. If and when that safety and security is threatened, you may become fearful. There are a couple different mechanisms in your body that go into action if and when you experience fear.
You may have heard of the 4 F responses: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. These responses are on a spectrum, which means they can happen in mild ways and severe ways. The fight response causes you to gear up to fight back; flight urges you to get away; when freeze takes over, you feel paralyzed; and the fawn response is the desire to go unnoticed.
Your body’s response to stress or trauma, or any perceived threat, isn’t “right or wrong”, it just is. And thank goodness for it! Your intuition, or ability to read small cues to sense danger, can be a valuable tool. Not all fear is bad; it’s designed to warn and protect you. But irrational fears can end up overwhelming and paralyzing you. If those systems never turn off, then you’re always in a state of fight/flight/freeze/fawn.
3. Emotionally: Fear can shut you down emotionally. You can become numb, reclusive, isolated, withdrawn. You can stagnate relationally, as you disconnect from your emotions. This may be a survival technique when anxiety is overwhelming. And for a time, this may be necessary; if you faced your fears during a time of survival it could mean that your world would literally stop, and that wouldn’t be good.
On the other hand, when you are not in survival mode, it’s important to acknowledge the feelings that accompany fear. Those could be anger, sadness, regret, uncertainty, disillusionment. These are all part of the scope of emotions that ride alongside fear. But many people fear feeling “anything”! They are resistant to feeling any distress, but this actually works against them. Their avoidance of negative feelings keeps them from working through their fears.
There’s something that can be helpful in counseling. When we encourage a person to continue to play out their fear, “and then what”, “and then what”, “and what would that feel like”, etc. they are often able to express all the variety of emotion that has been connected to that fear, and in doing so, the fear itself is lifted. Although pressing into your fears seems like it wouldn’t help anything, the opposite is actually true.
4. Spiritually: Part of the spiritual effect has to do with your individual, vertical relationship with God. For example, your prayer life, time spent in the Word, and closeness to God. Fear can affect that relationship with God; you may stop being honest and vulnerable with God, avoid fellowship with God, and attempt to ignore or minimize your fears.
But there is another aspect of your spiritual life - the relational, horizontal aspect. You are made for relationships, and you learn about and experience God in and through relationships! This horizontal/relational aspect cannot be separated from the individual/vertical aspect. They’re like two sides of a coin. If you experience fears in this area, you might isolate yourself from other people, view people with suspicion, and believe the worst about others.
3 Practical Steps to Facing Fear
1. Figure out your biggest fear. Spend some time thinking about this, journal, write it down, talk it over with a trusted friend or counselor.
2. Follow your fear to its most logical conclusion. “If I don’t get this job, I’ll be unemployed, I won’t be able to provide for my family, my kids won’t be able to go to college, I’ll be a failure as a dad”. Your brain has mapped out these fears that are likely irrational, but they feel very real. It’s important to acknowledge where this trail leads in your mind. Until you do, you’ll be stuck in that “fear of the future”.
3. Determine your foundation. These are the ultimate questions of life: Who determines my future? Who is in control? Who do I trust? Who loves me and cares for me? Think of the parable of the man who built his house upon the rock versus on the sand. You know that the storms of life will come, they have come, they are coming, so what you have built your life upon will be revealed. Establishing your foundation on God takes time, intention, and community.
Ultimately, if you believe that God is in control, then all will be well. This promise is found repeatedly in Scripture, as it says in Romans 8:38-39, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Listen now: Facing Fear and Not Losing Faith