Fear is a Trainable Animal
Fear is a Trainable Animal
Forget being fearless. This is better.
It's 1994, and we live on a street named Mortimer on the west side of Cleveland. Back then, it was idyllic. Or at least it felt that way as a 5-year-old kid.
I had friends every few houses, a massive park at the end of the street, and a convenience store two blocks over that always had Reese's Cups on sale. F*cking perfection.
It was the 90s, so us kids did pretty much whatever we wanted. Kickball in the street, racing bikes past dark, stealing Playboys from our friend's dad's basement and reading them on the sidewalk in broad daylight. Ah, good times.
But that’s why when Tim (we’ll call him Tim even though that’s not his real name) invited me over to his house to play video games, I immediately said yes. Tim and his parents (whom I hadn't met yet) had just moved into the neighborhood, about 5 houses down on the opposite end of the street (all this info will matter later).
We head over, and his house is awesome. There’s posters of rock bands everywhere, not just in his room, but literally all over the house. And it smells like barbeque sauce. I honestly have no freaking idea why those are the two things I remember, but that was my 5-year-old brain for you.
Tim’s asking me what we should play and showing me his gaming collection when I hear voices. Oh, that must be his parents. As they get closer, they sound…bigger. Before I can finish processing the thought, in pop two of the largest grown-ups I had ever seen smiling ear to ear.
So, what do I do? Yell, “PLEASE DON’T EAT ME!” And proceed to run, yes Usain Bolt sprint, back to my house across the street.
My god, do I wish I was making this story up. But it’s 100% the truth.
Oh, and all because of Hymie.
How all this craziness began
I was one of the first boys born to my family. My uncles both had girls a few years older than me. That meant they were pumped when I came around. Not only did they have a nephew to spoil with guy stuff (sneakers, basketballs, car posters) — they also had a little dude to pull pranks on.
By far, their favorite prank was convincing me that their friend Hymie (James in Spanish) was going to eat me.
Seriously.
For yearsss, they taught me that large people ate small children and that Hymie was one of the worst. He just couldn’t help himself. Especially at barbeques. There was just something about the smell of charcoal and seeing a little boy that would drive him feral.
For context, Hymie wasn’t even that big. On a Gabriel Iglesias scale, he sat comfortably between husky and fluffy.
And I wasn’t that gullible. I accepted the truth about Santa and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny all pretty early. I was reading Jules Verne in second grade. I knew that Sesame Street characters were puppets and that Barney wore a costume and that babies came from bellies, not birds.
But the idea that fat people ate small children – I believed all of it. Down to my prepubescent bones. And it scared the sh*t out of me.
The first f-word
I knew that fear was going to be the first f-word we covered from the moment the series idea hit me.
For better and worse, fear has shaped my life. Sometimes because of its excess. Other times, because of its absence.
Every man I know has a complicated relationship with fear. We’re told to be fearless, but have seen fearlessness turn into destructive indifference a few too many times. We’re handed lists of approved fears that are twisted by politics or racism or scarcity.
Inevitably, our fears get all jumbled up. The real ones bumping up against, and sometimes merging with, false ones. And so, we begin to distrust fear altogether, when in fact, it has a very real, very helpful role to play in our lives.
My goal is to help you look at fear a little differently and to plant the idea that you have as much influence over it as it has over you.
What we talk about when we talk about fear
I'm a word guy, so whenever I'm trying to sort through a problem, I start there — with the language. And fear is an interesting S.O.B.
I jotted down some of the phases I used or read in a typical week related to fear and these are what came up:
Feel it and do it anyway
Don’t show it
Move past it
Overcome it
So much of what we say about fear makes it out to be a static thing. An unchanging force in our lives. A mountain range that was there long before us and will remain long after us.
But that’s not true at all.
Our fears change all the time. They evolve, disappear, grow, and shrink. The things you’re afraid of now likely aren’t the same things you were afraid of 20 years ago and won’t be 20 years from now.
Most of these changes were passive. You grew up. Got taller. Made more money. Moved. Learned. Upgraded. Each of these changes molded your fears. Quieting old ones. Planting new ones.
So, what would happen if you were intentional about all those changes?
Fear is a trainable animal
During my Usain Bolt sprint back home, I crossed the street without looking, burst through the door, and collapsed to the ground in tears. I wanted a hug and a rocket ship off this planet all at the same time.
Instead, I got yelled at.
Turns out, my mom saw me cross the street and narrowly miss getting pancaked by a Ford Ranger by mere inches.
I had no idea.
I let a trained false fear (of getting eaten) scream so loudly in my head that I completely ignored the real danger (of getting squished) in front of me.
Fear loses its credibility, Gavin de Becker writes, when it's "applied wastefully."1 That's what most of us do; we waste fear. Which is why it makes sense when we label fear an enemy or a waste of time or a liar.
We villainize the tool because we don’t know how to use it.
"Fears are educated into us and can, if we wish, be educated out."
— Karl A. Menninger
How to be afraid like a real man
One of my now fears is that you won’t like my writing or find it helpful. That I’ll pour myself into these pages and they’ll sit on the internet’s invisible shelf, unread. Unused.
Part of that fear is because I know I will ask too much of each post. So, I’m asking less. This thing that you’re almost finished reading isn’t meant to transform your relationship with fear in 5 minutes.
It’s meant to plant a seed. The seed of belief that fear is trainable. That by laughing at the categorically dumb fear I held of being eaten by fat people, maybe you’ll find a few laughable fears you’ve been carrying around too.
And with these last few paragraphs, you’ll know a bit more on how to approach those fears. How to visit with them, and maybe even turn them into something useful. Eventually.
Start by giving your fear the right kind of attention.
I’m going to drop a quote from a monk real quick, and then we’ll explain how it applies to people who aren’t bald and enjoy having more than one clothing option.
"The first part of looking at our fear is just inviting it into our awareness without judgment. We just acknowledge gently that it is there. This brings a lot of relief already. Then, once it has calmed down, we can embrace it tenderly and look deeply into its roots, its sources."2
—Thich Nhat Hanh (aka DJ Thic)
TLDR: Fear wants to know you’ll listen. It wants to trust you, knowing that you will trust it. Most of the time, because we don’t give our fears or emotions the time of day when they do show up, they look like a goddamn chainsaw massacre impersonator – wreaking havoc and noise all up in your mind and body.
Your fears will never get quieter by being ignored.
Sit with them — this is where the first bit of intentionally comes into play. Pull over. Go the bathroom. Take a deep breath and just let yourself encounter what fear is trying to say. The more you listen, the quieter it gets.
Next, ask “What are you protecting?”
Fear is never unprompted.
You’re afraid because your mind, body, spirit, self has found a reason to be afraid. It saw/heard/smelled/felt something that you either didn’t notice or ignored, and now you feel the feeling of fear because it’s saying, “Hey, this actually matters!”
Investigate. This is the second step of intentionality, where you're making room for the fear and directly interacting with it. Alright fear, I’m listening. I trust that you have my best interest in mind. What’s going on? What are you trying to protect?
So much of the training begins here. Fear doesn’t always know that keeping you safe sometimes means keeping you stuck. You have to be the one to teach it the difference.
How do you do that?
Physically respond to the fear you feel.
When it comes to shaping a mind you love, your body will always be part of the conversation (intentionality step three).
When fear is trying to protect you from being embarrassed or feeling awkward, make yourself bigger. Stand up, raise your hand, laugh out loud (in a not-creepy way, please). Show fear that this is a misuse of its ability. It will see that you’re okay and adjust accordingly. The signal that used to blare in these situations will die down, and you will be free.
When fear is trying to protect you from harm, follow your intuition. Should you leave, sit, call for help? The brain processes thousands upon thousands of bits of information per minute, and you might be aware of 0.01% of it. Trust that gut of yours.
When fear is so loud, it makes everything else go blank — that's a system overload. It can be terrifying. The way you gain back control is by thinking smaller. One strategy I use is the grounding technique, where you tap your thumb to a finger and say, "I am o-k," with each new syllable tapping a new finger).
Ok, wow, I didn’t know this was the route we’d end up going down, but it must have been for a reason. You teach yourself what to fear by how you respond with your body. Use this to your advantage.Fear’s purpose
Fear is not a static mountain or a hungry, obese neighbor. It is not a lie or a distraction or waste of time. Fear is not even something inside of you.
It is a neutral visitor—many of them, in fact. Your job is to greet each one, listen for a short while, and then do something that either reinforces or quiets the warning they bring.
How you treat one visitor will influence the next. Each encounter a training for your mind.
But (and this is a BBL-sized but), the goal is not to become a person who is never afraid. It’s to become a person who is afraid of the right things in the right ways and who sees fear as what it was always meant to be…
A partner of the mind.
PS: I don’t like to say I overcame my fear of being eaten. More like it dissipated. Like an ice cube melting in the sun. Now, I have much more brain space to fear the things that matter. Like furries.
From the book The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect Us from Violence.
From the book Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm.