Countering Fright

“I don’t know why sometimes I get frightened.”

~Split Enz, I Got You (1980).

Anxiety is probably the biggest causer of the issues related to fright. Perhaps as we’ve adapted to life the best we could, we’ve also in the process maladapted to it and our coping is founded in thinking that either doesn’t work every time or is often found roundly fallible or incomplete in some way.

Handling Snakes

Discussing and assimilating fright is an awkward experience. It’s rather life, for many, the prospect of handling snakes. It’s something we studiously avoid as a human default.

But we can’t fix or contend with a problem unless we look into it and face it square-on. For the many it is a contradiction of gargantuan proportions.

So, just how are we to tackle something we’re known to have basically a phobia about?

Centring On Truth

Re-training our minds to think correctly is at the heart of all these issues.

To some reading that it will sound insulting. This is not deriding anything, however. We all have ways where our thinking might potentially or actually hold us back.

Wrangling with unknown sources of fright, also known as anxiety-producing, is a deeper challenge than simply learning to respond most repetitively in truth. It’s about learning to abide in a most truthful awareness—and that held in tension, without being tipped over the edge—to assist in learning about the self, as the moments intercede.

This is momentary awareness and regulation back to a steady truthful state—as far as that’s possible. It can, at times, take great powers of focus to do it.

With it we enter the cauldron; to learn of our fear so we can at last ameliorate it. But the moment it gets too much we must get help, usually professional or pastoral help. Pharmaceutical therapy, too, is often wise—under the supervision of the appropriate physician.

Belief for a Way Through

Perhaps most of all what we need is the sheer belief that these frightful issues will be resolved, if we put in the truth-filled effort. This is, at source, about courage.

Very often when we add our courage to the notions of truth as they pin themselves to us we do get through, and easier than we perhaps once thought we might. Most often we think our problems and fears are bigger than they actually are.

This is not to downplay the scourge before us. It’s as big as it looks and we’re most blessed to handle it in truthful terms, just as we see it.

Still, it’s our belief that we can get through that sees us through. We can if we think we can.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.