I live with a constant level of fear. I had made the joke once to a friend that that was my secret, I’m always scared. He didn’t get the reference but he also doesn’t watch movies so his loss.
But for me I constantly am worried. I read a lot into other peoples words, actions or what they don’t do. I have been to a lot of various therapists who have said it has to do with my poor health and surgeries as a child, my survivors guilt from my poor health (you meet kids in the hospital who don’t always get to leave), that it has to do with my parents, the various addictions in my family, and various other traumas I have suffered along the way throughout my life.
That is possible. And that probably caused some of it. My ability to assume someone is angry at me is pretty funny when you look at it logically. And my natural assumption that no one is actually interested in me is my default. My need to feed people definitely stems from a need to feel useful to someone, I get that. But I think there is something else in the mix.
I know I am smart, there are tests for that sort of thing. But often, I feel like I am not smart enough, that I am a fraud, that everyone will find out and I will shunned. I feel I will fail people depending on me and it will all fall apart. I know, super martyr statement and yet the fear will grip me and can freeze me where I am.
Sometimes I look in the mirror and think, I’m kinda cute. Then I see a picture of me and all that disappears. I see the fat, I see the double chin, I see the scars. And the fear that no one can truly love me because I am so ugly grips me.
It is odd to have these fears constantly. They are always there, low grade, in the back of my head. It makes me question so much. But when I am stressed, oh dear lord do they come out.
A friend told me I am overly emotional. I cried after we got off the phone. No shit I am, if I could numb myself I would . I feel everything so intensely it is really annoying. And I know he didn’t mean to make me cry, far from it. He is kind-hearted but under-emotional so I know he meant it more as a I need to detach from things. He has said that before so I know that’s what he meant. But I think the fact I feel everything so intensely is just fuel to the fire of the fear.
When I love I am all in. It’s a book and I am telling everyone about it and will give it to a person I think will also enjoy it. If it’s a food I will eat it constantly until I finally get sick of it. And when it is people I will do whatever I can to make their lives better and help them. This really sets me up for pain and that feeds the fear.
I am trying hard to work on overcoming the fear. To limit the self-doubt and instead of fighting the intense emotions, maybe accepting them and letting them pass through. Sometimes I wonder if fighting the emotions just makes them worse.
But I don’t live in a vacuum and as stress creeps in the fear can take over. It makes me want to hide, to procrastinate, to fail to do the things that I not only know I need to do, but that I normally enjoy doing. It is odd that it can have such an impact. And yet it does.
I am not sure if I will ever truly be fearless. But I know that I need to address these self doubt issues if I want to. And that I need to in order to regulate my bad reactions to stress.
I have accomplished a lot in my 41 years on this planet, even with these issues. But can you imagine what I can do if I overcame them?
