When it comes to fear I feel like often times I’m living in the movie “Groundhog Day”. I wake up thinking the day will be different and that I won’t allow fear to overtake me, but inevitable by the end of the day a similar story has played out and fear has again been victorious.
In chapter 3 of my new book, “Hope Changes Everything” I talk in depth about how fear is the number one driving factor behind our decisions. And although a repetitious groundhog day type life sounds depressing, there really is hope to overcome this disposition. Below is a sneak peak at Chapter 3, you can read the whole chapter by purchasing the book from Amazon.
Today’s preview is from chapter 3 entitled: “Fear Drives More Than You Think”
If you would like to go ahead and purchase the book now, click here: Hope Changes Everything
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I learned about this fear-based reaction to life through a program I went through in the early part of my recovery. One of the many things that rehabilitating yourself teaches is how to really examine your life and determine why you do the things you do.
Part of this program involved me walking through my early history – starting from childhood, through the time period in which I started using and then beyond – to identify what sorts of pain I’d endured… and then to identify what fears were created as a result of that pain. The idea was that we all base some of our fears, whether we realize it or not, on the types of pain we’ve had to deal with. This program was all about recognizing the fear and examining how it had skewed our relationships, our confidence, our self-image, our theology, you name it.
Looking back through that lens, I can see that I was afraid. I was afraid of myself, afraid of my failures, afraid of who I was. I had a deep-rooted fear that I couldn’t operate without drugs and booze, that I wasn’t enough on my own. I was still believing the lies that had come along with the pain of being rejected by my parents – and really the society that they represented – in our living room that day I told them I was going to be a father.
They had unknowingly, through their reactions, communicated to me that I was a failure and not worth loving. They were completely unaware that they had taught me I was unconfident. They didn’t know they’d ripped aside whatever thin veneer I’d painted onto my own hollow sense of self and shown me how poorly I felt about myself.
But that’s where I was. I was in pain, I felt horrible, and I needed something to make me feel better and instill some sense of confidence, regardless of how inauthentic that confidence was or how damaging its methods and outcomes.
So I gave in to the fear and immersed myself in drugs, which in turn gave me the ability to maneuver past the pain and fear and to put up a loud, brash front that
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