The Mother of All Fears

Fears can ruin our lives because they prevent us from being ourselves and living happy fulfilled lives; they keep us closed up, bottled up, inhibited.

We could list all kinds of Fears but underlying most of them is.....

Fear of rejection. That is the big one

If you think of all the things that make you anxious, fearful, nervous and drill down you will are likely to see fear of rejection is an underlying factor.

Ok, so what is Fear of Rejection?

I think it is a natural human reaction built into us at the same time as the Fight or Flight impulse and it is part of our mission to understand it and learn to overcome it in order to have a happier, freer, more successful life.

When Fear of Rejection gets out of hand it is similar to when the body creates an 'auto-immune disease'. The body does not realize that it is fighting against its own healthy cells and a dangerous, even life threatening disease can be created.

So what does that have to do with Fear of Rejection? When it is not managed well, it can create an unhappy, unhealthy life. It destroys good things about us just as an auto-immune disease destroys cells.

If that is so, how can it be a natural part of our makeup?

Long before we lived in cities, towns and nations our ancestors gathered in tribes and moved from place to place in search of food. They survived as members of the tribe which provided safety, community and sustenance. If someone was forced out of the tribe, no matter what the reason, their chances of survival greatly lessened and in many cases, certain death; unless they could find another tribe to join. There was (and is) safety in the tribe that didn't exist alone. There were also restrictions, the rules of the tribe. You had to be pretty fear-less or fed up to take on the tribal leaders.

It is interesting that we are seeing this in Iran today. The dissatisfaction is so great that it overcomes (not eliminates) the fear.

In our own country, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was an example of enough is enough overcoming fear. Does it mean that people had no fear? of course they were afraid, but they acted anyway. But I must point out that in both of these cases there was a grass roots ground swell. The initial person who may have acted did not have to act alone for long. If they did not get a ground swell, they would have been jailed...ousted from the tribe so to speak.

So a "tipping point" had been reached. The anger and frustration, the sense that success might be a possibility, that action had to be taken...allowed people to hold their fear in check. Inspiration and the excitement of possibility helped to supplant the feelings of fear. But they did this in the context of a new "tribe" so that when fear arose, they could support one another in maintaining their inspiration and enthusiasm in creating the new order and the new 'tribe'.

This weekend was 4th of July, the celebration of our independence and the founding of the United States of America. In watching many of the great educational programs on over the weekend, I began to realize in a whole new way the deeply personal and life threatening choices the colonists had to face. How much they had to lose. The signers of the Declaration of Independence would be hung and probably their families as well. The were wealthy men with much to lose. The average citizens would have to leave farms and shops and with little food, training or ammunition take on the greatest army in the world!

The British Army was vicious in its response to the uprising in an attempt to create fear and terror in the colonists so that they would give up, surrender. And the people were afraid, but they did not give up. they may even have wanted to but they did not give up. Miraculously, some might say, the persevered and created a new "tribe".

Fear of Rejection is deep within our makeup. It is there to keep us safe; to keep us within the "tribe". But it does not fit in many, perhaps most, situations. It is about 'prevention' not creation.

Ok, so what do we do about that? Stay tuned for the next post!