Hmm.
I know when I was a kid, I was always pretty afraid of losing my sight or of being paralyzed.
When my kids were younger, I felt some fear that I might die young and leave my kids motherless.
When I think about aging, I feel afraid of losing my mind and my memory; I do not want to become a crabby, irritable person who is a drain on others, and the idea of having no control over my personality and temperament is a dreadful thought to me.
In a more present-day sense, probably my biggest day-to-day fear (and this is embarrassing to write!) is that people will not like me.
I do not like to hurt people or be an inconvenience to people, I don’t like to argue or make waves, I don’t like to confront people, I don’t like to say things that other people disagree with, I don’t like to say no to people…and while some of these things are helpful and good, they are also unhelpful and not-good in equal measure.
I think I often labor under the delusion that if I just work hard enough or am kind enough or am sensitive enough or am thoughtful enough, then no one will be upset with me.
And an accompanying delusion is this belief: If someone is upset with me, it’s probably because I did something wrong.
Now, I can sit here and recognize that, ok, it truly is not possible to avoid upsetting everyone.
(particularly when you write posts that thousands of people read!)
And I also can sit here and tell you, “Oh yeah, it is possible for someone to be upset with me even though I did nothing wrong.”
But I still struggle to really believe these things in my heart, particularly when someone lets me know they are upset with me.
And at times like those, I really have to remind myself, “I am responsible for my behavior. I am not responsible for other people’s feelings.”
I feel sort of silly typing this up; I could be afraid of things like a nuclear bomb! Or venomous snakes! But nope; I am afraid of people being upset with me.
GEEZ.
My greatest fear is my husband dying, followed by losing my mind. I, too, used to be very afraid of becoming a quadriplegic; I sometimes tried to devise ways I could kill myself if it happened. I used to imagine tricking the nurse into placing my bed near a window. I would then use my teeth to inch my way up the curtain and then would depend on my body weight to break the window so I could throw myself out and down 10 stories. I realize how ridiculous the scheme is but it helped me deal with the anxiety.
My husband once told me his biggest fear was ending up so poor in his old age that he would have to take a job working in a day care center. Apparently he once saw an old professor working in a day care center because he had lost his retirement on a bad investment, and the image never left him. Now it is sort of a joke between us, like when I buy something I might say, “Don’t worry, there is still enough money in savings that you don’t need to start applying to day care centers.”
I, too, am afraid of people not liking me. And for me the fear behind the fear is being alone—abandoned by God and man because of my inherent worthlessness. When I look at the fear behind the fear it’s not so silly, and says a lot about my faith. It also gives me a way to counter the fear with truth—that God chose to love me anyway. Rather deep for a first ever blog comment.
Thank you so much for sharing your fears. I know it can be hard to do!