Are you never afraid?

I was thinking about this last night. For most of my life, I was brave about some surprising things and fearful in other areas. Like yours, my husband was also fearless – or never showed it – and I became dependent on him for many things and probably more anxious and fearful. When he left, as I’ve said here in the past, I wasn’t sure how I would manage many of the practical aspects of life.

Now, I just stayed alone in the house through a blizzard for 36 hours and dug myself out at the end of it. I travel, with occasional anxiety, but I travel alone, including renting apartments in Paris and San Francisco. The only things I still fear are losing my health and/or my financial security but I don’t focus on them. It is amazing to me to have come to this place at this time of my life. It is lovely to live without fear.

My suggestion to you – if you want to work on it – is to do more things independently of him so that you can begin to see the capabilities you have.

I’ve never been so fearful. I think my fear level is somewhere between 3 and 5, and it has never changed. In the past I was too ignorant to fear. As time passed, I knew more about the world, but it didn’t bring me too much fear. Maybe I’m too adventurous to fear.
But to tell the truth, the fearlessness can bring some not so great moments. I can make mistakes because I don’t fear. I sometimes wish I could fear more so that I would avoid those moments.

@janbb I’m more fearful now than when I was younger. I think it partly stems from having more to lose. I thought, my husband, like me, had some fear too, we just didn’t let the fear stop us (although now my fear has been stopping me) but now I really understand he just doesn’t have the fear.

@JLeslie You might benefit from some therapy at some point since it seems to hamper your pleasure in life.

I’m no longer married, so I worry about not having companionship and support. I also fret more and more about my health and to a somewhat lesser extent, money.

I also worry every time I get behind the wheel. I don’t know if that’s because I’m getting older or drivers are becoming increasingly aggressive—a combination of the two, I suppose.

@janbb I know therapy would probably help. I find myself more and more reluctant to go to therapy, because of the laws I am more aware of now, and I more or less know what I probably should do to be better. Therapy would help me vent, and a good therapist might help me reframe some of my thought process.

I realized yesterday I have been in almost a constant state of mourning for 5 years. I think that really has taken a toll. Not from someone dying, but from changes in my situation. I figure I’m in the denial or bargaining stage right now regarding this move to Ohio. I don’t want to move to acceptance.

I have generally been fearless, and accomplished a lot of things because of it. Having children introduces one to entirely different levels of fear, though, but I don’t think that’s what you mean.
I am not reckless or stupid (although my mother would disagree) but I just don’t really feel fear, much.

@JLeslie: Even if you are reluctant to do therapy at this time (and with the move I kind of get that) maybe research some books that explain how CBT can help you rethink things. I have found that to be very helpful when I try to deal with some anxiety issues related to my family.

IMO only a fool is without fear. Fear equals caution, and caution can equal life.

I don’t know that I’m more fearful as I age (I’ve always been fairly fearless), but I am more likely to acknowledge my fear, and take any easy steps available to assuage is.

Specifically, I think of 3 nights ago.
I live in the sticks with no neighbors in view.
I came home near dark and walked up the sidewalk beside the garage to check the ‘large deliveries’ box. Sitting next to the box was a partially eaten ice cream sundae and 4/5ths of a bottle of Rolling Rock beer. Although it’s cold here, the beer wasn’t frozen.

I was seriously creeped out. I went in the house and secured the doors. There is nothing behind our house but a steep, wooded valley – back yard and then acres of brush. I thought, “What if someone was waiting for someone to get home, and are hiding until dark?’
Screw it. Stop the images of someone busting through the patio doors…I have a home alarm. For the first time ever I set the alarm for ‘stay home’, and never gave it another thought until my S/O came home.

I could have been ”tough” and gotten a gun to lay on the bed beside me.
Meh. Set the alarm. If that’s the cause of a little razz, (it wasn’t), so be it.

@canidmajor I find CBT to usually not be helpful for me.

@JLeslie I find that when one is stuck in a quagmire as you seem to be, that some sort of outside intervention is helpful to get unstuck. It seems that you’re afraid of therapy because of some fear(?) of legal consequences? That might be a misperception to evaluate.

@janbb Maybe I can do it, and just be careful what I talk about. In the past I was always an open book.

I see now how sometimes we are asked on forms and policies about mental health, and having to list depression as a recent problem isn’t something I want to do. I know I’m a little depressed, but I’m not afraid it will last forever, I still can function (it’s harder right now) and I still have fun. I’m not in the worst pit ever, but I certainly could be doing better.

I think for me to be better I need to be more independent and responsible for myself (financially responsible). After years of not having to do it, it’s daunting, and I’m feeling lazy about it too.

If I do what I really want, I get a job in FL, and my husband follows me back “home.”

When ever I face a situation that has me scared and or concerned and my wife is not is because I stay strong and not let my fear show. A great example of this was the morning of 9/11 we were on a plane heading for vacation. The pilot said we had to make an emergency landing due to terrorist activities. HOLY SHIT! I told my wife and kids not to worry everything will be all right and they went back to reading their books. Inside I was terrified over the unknown that was happening and was that way for the rest of that day and for many days after that moment, but my family had no idea just how scared I was.

@Cruiser My husband said it. He said, “I’m not afraid of anything.” He said it twice now. Once several years ago, and it caught me off guard. I don’t remember exactly what we were discussing. Yesterday he said it when I told him I was afraid of buying a house here. I think he really isn’t afraid. He doesn’t worry about the consequence of a bad decision I don’t think, he just moves forward.

Or, I’m totally fooled by his facade.

@Cruiser Which leads me to a separate question which I think I’ll ask.

@janbb I’ll seriously consider getting help. I feel like I’m at a fork in the road. It has me paralyzed.

@JLeslie I sense that.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha
ha

No.

I feel that people who are fearless possibly never had something really bad happen to them at random? Like they still have the feeling of invincibility that everybody has when they’re young. Maybe that’s not a fair assessment on my part. But my whole world view changed when I realized that I could do nothing wrong and still have my life ruined by my own body. It’s the sense of powerlessness that paralyzes me.

I’ve never managed to get a significant other to fully understand the extent of the scariness that is my body. I can’t really expect them to at their age and without having seen me at my worst. My current boyfriend is only just starting to ask me more questions and seem more nervous because of the drama that’s been going on lately with me not being able to access the medication that has been keeping me out of the hospital the last few years.

I’m afraid of flying, well…crashing, but ya get ma drift. Where it gets strange is that this fear is only with planes, i’m fine with helicopters, in fact, I want one.
The only way I can make sense of this is that a plane’s take off & landing seems way more violent to me than that of a chopper. Gradual ascent/descent & the ability to hover feels so much more calm & sensible, less speed, more control I guess.

My wife has it the other way around & can’t comprehend why I would feel this way, nowt stranger than folk eh?

Not very often. You asked for a 1 – 10 score. I’ll assume 1 is no fear and 10 is paralyzed every day. I’d say I am a 2.
I get a pang of fear when I am doing something where I feel I have no positive control.
Examples:
– Riding a horse. If a horse came with an ignition switch I’d be fine. I have no trouble riding a 150hp motorcycle that could kill me in an instant, because I know where the brakes and kill switch are located. A horse seems to do what it wants.
– Downhill skiing on anything beyond the intermediate slope. If I can’t stop, I don’t like it.
– Getting my annual PSA blood test. I have no control over the results. They are what they are. If they are low that means I beat cancer and can enjoy life for another year. If they rise, well, it means I need to do something else. At this point, statistically there is a 97% chance I beat it, but that 3% still scares the crap out of me the week before I have the blood drawn.

@Mariah: Or perhaps being fearless indicates an attitude of having already lost a lot and finding lesser things not worth fearing. There is a difference between fearless and reckless.

@JLeslie: My most recent therapist (I have lived a number of places) calls my issue “situational anxiety”, not depression, although it could be called that. “Situational anxiety” is a good term that avoids the question of some kind of mental illness.
Too bad you dismiss CBT so quickly. A different presentation from a different source might help you a lot, because CBT is such a concrete, doable type of approach.

@canidmajor I like your distinction.

Thanks! :-)

@canidmajor I don’t know why you think I dismissed CBT easily. I’ve been in therapy enough times that I know CBT doesn’t really help me. My dad used to try to convince me of it when it was first being researched. He worked at NIMH for many years, he approved federal grants for psych studies. I know a plethora of information on the topic.

I like the situational anxiety label also.

I notice I have more fear the older I get. Because of my depression I’m either totally fearful or I just don’t care. It’s hard to put a number on it. It’s so situational.

@JLeslie Your husband races cars and that kind of experience and control over what a car does pushed to the limits of it’s abilities and win a race or 2 has to build a super strong sense of confidence even a feeling of invincibility and to hear he articulates that he is fearless is very believable.

I too have a very strong sense of confidence and why many think I am fearless too. Verey few people have that sense of confidence I have to enable me to risk every penny I worked 30 years to save, my house, savings to buy a company during the worst recession this country faced.

But hearing the pilot of your plane tell you that terrorists are at that moment fucking around with your airspace I think would put anyone in an acute state of fear. It only got worse for me when we landed and then found out that these terrorists were flying planes into buildings and my first reaction was HOLY SHIT! I’m in a plane get me and my family off this flying bomb! It took the airport over an hour to get us to a terminal and off that plane and that hour was purely terrifying.

@Cruiser It would be crazy not to feel terrified in that situation.

@JLeslie: just FYI, I thought so because your previous post on the subject was brief and dismissive. That’s why. Now you know.

@Cruiser Right. Just the fact that my husband feels confident doing some fairly risky things shows he lacks fear in situations that many other people find too scary to participate in. I go back to again that that is not necessarily always a good thing.

@canidmajor Makes sense.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that I’m actually afraid of quite a lot. I used to put on this front of being super fearless and tough but it was a shaky facade. There’s a lot that scares me.

For me, it’s losing loved ones. Both my mom and brother passed away and the rest of the family has fallen apart since then. I’m still close to my one brother and sister, but that’s all that I have left as far as family goes. I guess that I’m afraid to lose them, my partner and my partner’s family (they treat me like a daughter).

Other than getting sick myself (mom passed away from
Ovarian cancer), I’m not afraid of much else.

I am afraid much of the time. I regret it, but I deal with it. Anti-anxiety medication has helped a lot. SO has a lot of therapy.

I have fears. I wouldn’t call myself fearful. I’m not fearless either though.

I occasionally find myself worrying about ‘what ifs’. Those ‘what ifs’ are invariably to do with my loved ones. I don’t have these thoughts regularly.

I think everyone has fears. However, if those fears become out-of-control and are affecting their view of the world and their lives, that is worrying.

I just read all the answers. I’d say I’m closest to @Earthbound_Misfit. I have fears, don’t consider myself fearful but am not fearless, either. I am not one to worry too much, but I do have a close relative with an illness which she is dealing with quite well now, but my concern is what may happen in the future. I wouldn’t say I am anxious about it, but it’s in the back of my mind.

I think about my job and the ramifications of my boss not getting re-elected. I’ll have to deal with going back to my “regular” job and change is not always fun or easy. I’m not fearful of that but I know it will be difficult. Another possibility would be getting laid off. I work for the government and they’re always threatening layoffs every budget year. I have money in various funds but still, not easy. Again, not fearful about it but it is a possibility and a concern.

I drive a lot and I tend to drive fast. I try to be careful and mindful of what a bad car accident could mean.

I think in general I’m less fearful and less anxious than many people. I kind of tend to take most things as they come.

@JLeslie: How about if you went for therapy and paid cash, therefore keeping the insurance company out of it? Maybe 100 dollars a session, once a week, would be doable?

Or perhaps a support group that’s less formal than therapy?

Well, I feel all sorts of justified now. My husband was fired tonight. Thank God I was terrified to buy a house here. If I was in a new house here I would be sick. Sicker than I already was.

The job was so abusive. I wanted him to quit three weeks after he started. He wanted to give it a go, I understand why. He worked 7am to 11pm once a week the last few weeks, and till 9:00 other days, and this past Saturday 7 hours, and Jan 1 and 2 and it has been horrible. The whole group works crazy hours, it’s not like he just can’t do the work. They need three more people, and I could go on.

It doesn’t change that I need to handle stress better, and that I need to really figure out what I want to do for myself going forward, but it does reinforce that my anxiety comes from a real reason to have fear. I just, as I said, need to deal with it better.

I think being worried about things that really are likely to happen is perfectly normal. You undoubtedly had an idea that things weren’t right. I’m sorry you’re going through this. We’ve talked before about how hard it can be for men to deal with redundancy etc. It’s hard for women, but men, in my opinion, struggle more with losing their job.

Is your anxiety likely to settle down now you’re not dealing so much with the ‘unknown’ but with something that has happened and you now need to find a way through?

@Earthbound_Misfit My anxiety is down because my husband won’t be going into work every day to a place that treats him so badly. He won’t come home late at night without having eaten dinner, and look worn. I worried about him driving home. He will be 49. He has done his type of work for over 25 years. It’s never like this. In those years he has worked for 4 or 5 companies. This company is bad.

My husband came home saying he felt liberated! Thank goodness. I hope he doesn’t “crash” in the coming days or weeks. Psychological roller coaster.

@Cruiser :: I am calling total bullshit on your story. I doubt the pilot would be all “gotta land, terrorist”. They are not stupid enough to freak out the passengers. And then the cherry on the top of their brave daddy saying it is cool and then everyone simply goes back to reading since their awesome papa will protect them..

You know what’s crazy? WIth the economy and job market, companies are so short staffed that what your husband experienced is probably what’s expected for the majority of workers. Unless someone is working a job like McDonalds or Walmart, workers are expected to put in long hours, crazy hours.

@JLeslie Yikes. I understand the sense of relief… but what a shitty situation to deal with.

Does this mean that you get to go back to Florida?

@johnpowell I felt exactly the same about his announcement. He could have said “ladies and gentlemen this is your pilot speaking. We have a blinking little red light that is nothing to worry about but we are going to land up ahead in Indy and let the mechanics have a looksey.

Instead he said…(quoting the pilot’s exact words which are forever seared into my brain)...

“Good morning ladies and gentlemen this is your Captain speaking….Due to terrorist activities, the entire East Coast air traffic control system has been knocked out and we have been instructed by the FAA and our parent company to land immediately at the nearest airport which is Indianapolis International just a few minutes up ahead. Please turn off and put away any electronics and secure all personal items. Will the crew please prepare the cabin for landing”

We took off from Chicago O’Hare at 8:05 AM that morning on a long distance United Flight 1258 to Orlando (still have the ticket if you want to see it) and it was approximately 15 minutes into the flight when we got this message from the pilot. We had no way of knowing exactly what was going on in the world….but I did know this much…we were flying over Indiana at that time which meant we were supposed to be under East Coast air traffic control, but the pilot just told us it was out of service which meant we were essentially flying blind. Instant pucker factor 10 as I contemplated a landing attempt without radar guidance or being obliterated in mid-air by another plane.

We descended like a rock and landed fast and hard and since there were so many planes coming in like leaves on a fall day there was nowhere to put them all so we got parked wing tip to wing tip on a taxi way. Upon landing all the cell phones come out and one by one people are screaming out…”Oh my God they are flying planes into buildings!” I am like holy shit! I am in a plane!! Get me and my family off this f’ing plane NOW! It took over an hour to get to a terminal and once the door opened up we were greeted by the Indiana National Guard who were waving M-16 Rifles and screaming…”LET’S GO! GET MOVING! RUN! RUN! GET OUT OF THE TERMINAL NOW! RUN! So we literally are running with both my little boys in tow trying not to panic them.

If you still don’t believe me you can look at an archived copy of the September 12, 2001 issue of the Indianapolis Star newspaper and on the back page of the front section is a full page picture of me in the luggage claim area laying back in my sons car seat reading the hot off the press paper with pictures of the towers on fire on the front page of what I was reading. Pretty cool pic but I do not look my best with my hair all a mess from the ordeal. My cousin lives in Indy and called me that day to tell me I made the paper and sent me the pic. I have a copy of the pic stashed somewhere.

That depends I suppose. Some things scare me more than others. Like my children’s, health and happiness and that of my husbands. I remember my dad being ill for years, but the worst was the first time I realized he was dying was when he became really ill and I was away and accidentally found out about it. Then I realized his illness would take him sooner than later as I had imagined. I was terrified for the last 3 years of his illness. Never knowing if today would be the day he would take a turn for the worse. And then the worse happened. He passed away. That fear was gut wrenching and I found myself pulling away from him in the last year. I knew he was really bad but I didn’t want to face my fear head on.

So in short it taught me one thing. You should be reasonably scare of some things that are in your control because it keeps you from doing stupid things, like dying in an accident or blowing all your money on a get rich scheme or handling a poisonous snake.

But death. Our own death. Isn’t something we should contemplate on a daily basis or the death of others. It may be that your husband isn’t really fearless but less willing to let death rule life.

I recently lost my beautiful pup, 2 years back. I was devastated and thought I never wanted to have another dog and go through that again. But I felt sad remembering all the joy he bought in my life and found I didn’t regret one moment of loving him. So a few months later we go to the pound and get another dog. She has been with us a little over a year and already she has won our hearts. It took almost a few years. I realized I didn’t act the same with her. At first I thought it was because she wasn’t him. Then I realized I was afraid of opening my heart again. After that . I realized I was doing it again. Leaving my life on pause for what will happen. Now I can honestly say I love her as much as my first pet. and she brings me great joy and I notice she has even gotten closer to me now. I think she could sense I wasn’t completely her human and now she does.

So my point. Is don’t live in fear. Keep it around for the things you can control or for survival. But it has no real benefit in the day to day.