Day 651, Fear Is Not All Bad

 

 

Fear is not all bad.  Going back to prehistoric times, it has a survival advantage.   We want courage:  resistance to fear or mastery of fear.

 

I walked down the road to the chiropractor’s this morning, a bit over one kilometer.  I went somewhat further this morning on the way because I circled the civic park.  However, on the way home, I took a shortcut.  It was getting hot by the time I returned.  I told the chiropractor’s assistant that I was still doing very well.  It has been three and a half weeks since I came home from the Santa Fe House.  My productivity level has gradually gotten higher and higher.  I am starting to do things I have put off for years–such as getting into more recipe creation.  There are a few recipes in my blogs over the past two years, but not many.  I would like to have something every time I post a blog entry.  Lately, I have not been my complete self.

 

 

However, in the past two years, I have learned a great deal about mental health.  Learning about the prefrontal cortex was a breakthrough for me.  You may enjoy this mindmap of what Dr. Daniel Siegel, author of Mindsight, believes are nine essential functions of the prefrontal cortex.  (I had to put a diagram of a brain in the background.)  Take a look at the mindmap.  I memorized the nine functions using Kevin Horsleys’ method of associating them with parts of a car.  They are:

 

 

Is it possible that all of these functions go away during a manic episode?  I think they may do.  If I were to give specific examples from my manic episodes, it would be embarrassing.  I say a lot about my disorder in this blog, but I cannot tell you everything.  In some ways, it is impossible to exaggerate about it.

 

 

When I first learned about manic-depression in a high school psychology class.  I thought, “That’s me.” However, then I thought it was nothing more than extremes of mood.  That was years before my first episode.  Bipolar disorder is also extremes of behavior and highs and lows of energy level and rewards seeking.

 

During my last manic episode in 2016, I finally had enough energy to drive on the freeway and do everything I wanted to do.  I drove from one end of the county to another.

 

I ended up begging for quarters in a laundry mat.  And I have my own washer and dryer!  I turned my apartment into disorder from going from one project to the next, without cleaning up in between.  Regrettably, I did lose my moral awareness.  At the time, it seemed like no big deal.  Anyway, I know now that I cannot afford to experiment with my medication.  Men close to me and even my doctor in the past urged me to ditch it.  They were not real friends.

 

 

When I was manic, I lost my fears.  I would have been better off to have remembered the wisdom behind my anxiety.  There seems to be a movement now to help people get rid of all their fears as if becoming free from fear makes them whole.  I think that is dangerous.  We have fear for a survival purpose.  We would do better to learn from our fears rather than trying to get rid of them.

 

You can argue that there are irrational fears.  Still, perhaps there are fewer irrational fears than you think.  When I was nervous about an upcoming airline trip, I mentioned it to my therapist.  He said, “Are you concerned?  I will never say your fear is irrational.  I helped a lady overcome her “irrational” fears once, and she went on her trip.  Her plane crashed.”  End of story.  I went on my trip anyway.  Still, that was a lesson.  Fears are not all irrational.  Sometimes, they are premonitions.

 

 

So are dreams.  I had a dream once that I was put on disability at work.  Not long later, I was.  Before my 2016 episode, I had long been afraid of driving on the freeway.  During that mania, I drove on the freeway freely.  However, I could have died.  My physical and mental condition makes it hazardous for me to drive on the highway.  My medication slows my reaction time.  The labels on my medication say, “Do not drive or operate dangerous machinery until you know how this medication affects you.”  Now that I know the effect of the drugs, is it time to pause and adapt?

 

I work less at overcoming freeway anxiety now.  And I am less bothered by it.  If I have to take the freeway, I call Lyft.  I could sometimes force myself, but why do I need all that anxiety?

 

To ditch freeway anxiety, I tried:

 

 

I still had it.  It was practically a paralysis.  The only way it goes away is to do something like take Lyft.  Maybe it is a protection rather than something wrong with me.

 

 

If you have phobias or fears, you can get them treated.  They might go away.  They might not.  Consider the realities of what you fear.  When I was about seven years old, I almost stepped on a rattlesnake.  A friend of my parents was staying with us and had taken me on a walk.  She jerked me off my feet to protect me from the snake and could have saved my life.

 

Reptile Gardens, a tourist attraction in the Mount Rushmore area, was just a few miles from our home in South Dakota.  They had an exhibit showing a man’s arm, grotesquely blown up and black.  A rattlesnake had bitten him.  Whether he was able to recover entirely, I never knew.   I am grateful I never went through that.  People have phobias of snakes for a reason.

 

 

Doing some things will help you overcome phobias and anxieties.  Russ Harris, the author of The Happiness Trap, never overcame his fear of public speaking.  Still, his belief in his message was so emphatic that he would do it despite the anxiety.  Fortunately, I do not have a fear of public speaking.  However, I embarrassed myself on the podium several times, especially when giving speeches while manic.  If I were wise, I would not speak in public while manic.  However, I did not always know until later that I was manic.  Luckily, I have had enough positive experiences that I do it anyway without much discomfort.

 

 

EVENING PRAYER

Dear Lord,   I worked for almost two decades to get rid of my freeway anxiety.  I finally solved it.  I do not drive on the freeway anymore and no longer obsess about it.   We can show courage by mastering fear.  However, it seems that in our transformation culture, we have come to regard all fear as wrong.  It is not.  Try living without fear.  Then you know what trouble is.  I know that because I have experienced a lack of fear.   Fear can keep us from doing something we truly desire.  Then what do we do?  We can contact our transformation coach(es).  However, I think we should first listen to what our fears have to teach us.   Teaching appropriate fear management is beyond the scope of this blog entry.  I simply want to make the point that not all fear is bad.   There are a few things I fearlessly did that I should have at least waited until later when I was better prepared.  The adage, “If you are prepared, you shall not fear” is an apt one.  If I am afraid to proceed, perhaps I am not ready.  Let my readers give that some thought.   I hope, now that I am doing better, I can do activities from which depression stopped me, while still having adequate caution that I would not have if manic.  During a life with bipolar, I rarely have reached a happy middle.  For most of 2020, my mood has been up, then down, then up again, also called rapid cycling.  It was hard even to get a blog entry written, though I posted a few.  More than once, my writing was so morose from depression; I scratched an entire blog entry.   Will all of that end?  Maybe not.  Just to be realistic.  However, if I can reach and stay in the middle more, that would be a substantial improvement.  It looks like I have the possibility of doing that.   Lord, thanks for that.  Help me to be productive and serve my readers well.  Help them to find relief from their demons and addictions and attain vibrant joy.  Let them bless their fears for the protection they offer.  If any need to be overcome, scores of transformation coaches are available to help them.   Amen.

 

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