FEAR MANAGEMENT
Two insightful stories on conquering illusory fears
Kurukshetra war was about to begin. Warriors on both the sides were ready and waited for the customary signals to start the combat. Suddenly, something bizarre happened, stunning everybody on the war front. Yudhishtira removed his quiver, armor, etc., disembarked the chariot, and proceeded towards the Kaurava army with folded hands. His puzzled and wonderstruck brothers following him with their questions to him unanswered, he went straightaway to the grandsire Bhishma.
Prostrating at the feet of Bhishma, Yudhishtira said, “Revered and unconquerable grandsire, kindly permit us to fight against you and win this battle. I want your blessings and prayers for our success, and also shall be grateful if you could tell me how we could do away with you in the battle.” Bhishma smiled and said, “Will let you know at the appropriate time” (and he did it, as promised).
The eldest of the Pandavas then proceeded to Drona, their teacher, and mentor, and repeated the exercise and the same solicitation. Drona also, like Bhishma, agreed to pray for the success of the sishyas, while fighting for the Kauravas. To the question of how to win him, the guru said, “While I hold weapons in my hands, none can kill me. If and when I hear anything that depresses my spirit, I’ll put the weapons down; any person of integrity telling unpleasant words that inflict pain on me, I’ll give up my arms.”
Mission successful, Dharmaputra alias Yudhishtira returned to his position on the battlefield, and the war commenced. The rest is history.
Taking perhaps a cue from this episode in the Mahabharata, there was this young warrior, who fought against her all-time foe and won the battle hands down. Her mentor told her that her major enemy was the fear of failure, and she had to win over it first, to be successful in other areas. But the fear was deep-rooted in her, and she could hardly think of taking on it. The teacher insisted that there was no other go, and he gave her detailed instructions to follow.
A journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step, she remembered. And she decided to make a try. The moment of truth arrived. She perhaps thought about the winning strategy adopted by Dharmaputra of the Mahabharata. Mustering courage, the student-warrior stood on one side and pitted against her on the other side was her perennial enemy, the fear of failure. The warrior felt too small and timid, whereas the enemy appeared to her too big and wrathful.
They both had their weapons ready to fight. But from her past experiences, the lady was sure that she had no chance of tasting success in the battle with the mighty opponent, the fear. The young warrior then remembered the modus operandi adopted by Yudhishtira. She dropped aside all her weapons and accosted her foe, the fear, with reverence and humility. She prostrated three times before the enemy and asked, “May I have your permission to enter into a war with you?”
Fear was taken aback for a moment at this unprecedented demeanor of its meek opponent; it said, “I am happy that you came to me and sought my permission to confront me.”
The warrior bowed her head and asked again, “But how can I defeat you? Will you please enlighten me on the technique for that?” Fear replied, “Because you have surrendered at my feet and given me due respect, I will tell you. My weapons are that I talk fast and I get very close to your face, with the result you get completely unnerved and come totally under my control. And then you do whatever my bidding is.”
Fear continued: “If you don’t do whatever I ask you to, I will have no power. You may listen to me and may have respect for me. You may even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I will turn powerless.”
The student warrior reflected on her musings. She also thought about her teacher’s suggestions on the matter. And then she put into practice her new-found wisdom. Thus she conquered her fear of fear, forever!
(This story is adapted, with inputs added from the episode of Mahabharata, from the bestseller: ‘When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times’ by Pema Chodron)
As Louise L. Hay says in ‘You Can Heal Your Life’, you are the only person who thinks in your mind. You are the power in your world! You get to have whatever you choose to think. As you think, so you become (“Yeth bhavam, thadh bhavati”)
Pan to the Kurukshetra war front again. Arjuna, the hero of Mahabharata, was overcome with fear as he thought about killing his kith and kin in the opposite camp. Lord Krishna gave him His masterly counseling through the holy Gita discourse and emboldened him to conquer the fear. More often than not, we begin to change our perception when the fear of staying put in a predicament becomes unbearable, and embracing a change is considered a better alternative. Krishna made Arjuna understand that his fear was unfounded and why it should be conquered, and how. In fact, the very first lesson the Gita throws out to the world is how to handle our fears.
“Our fears are more numerous than our dangers, and we suffer more in our imagination than reality” (The Roman Stoic Philosopher Seneca)
F-E-A-R, says the famous book, ‘The Conversation with God’, is False Evidence Appearing Real. We all have enough experiences in our lives where we anticipated the worst to happen in a given situation, but somehow those fears never came true, and things turned out much better than we feared.
A strong weapon often used successfully by fear to fail us is that it spins false stories in our heads. It holds us back from a desired action by creating very compelling narratives in our imagination, thereby controlling and redirecting our behaviors and actions.
Over to an Ethiopian folk tale (courtesy: recordonline.com) that buttresses the above points:
Long back, there lived in an Ethiopian village a boy who was so shy and fearful about everything in the world. His family and neighbors gave him the nickname “Miobe”, which meant ‘frightened one’.
“Why everybody calls me by this name?” he once asked his parents. His grandfather replied, “Because you are afraid of everything”. The boy asked others. They also gave the same reply.
Miobe thought about it and decided that he should find out a way to conquer his fear. That night, when everybody in the house was fast asleep, he packed a sack and set off into the world to find a way to conquer his fear.
That night, he lay under the shade of a tree for the first time to muster enough courage to take on fear. He stared up at the dark sky and whispered, “I see you, fear, but I will conquer you for sure”. Slowly, he drifted off to sleep wrapped in his blanket. At midnight, he woke up hearing the howling of wolves, but instead of running away out of fear, he goaded his grit and walked in the direction of the sound, saying aloud, “Here I come, to conquer you, fear.”
He walked until it was sunrise, and when he saw its golden orb, Miobe smiled with relief, understanding that he successfully could survive the first night in the wilderness. “I am becoming brave”, he muttered as he walked on. Soon he found that he has reached a different village away from his, and thought “I don’t know the people here. Perhaps they may be unkind to a stranger like me.”
Again, he assumed he was brave, straightened up, and walked ahead, saying aloud, “I will take on you, fear. This is my firm resolve”.
He went to the village square, where the village elders gathered and were wiling away their time. As they saw the boy, they asked, “Who are you? Where are you from?”
“I am from another village”, he responded. “I am traveling to become brave.”
The elders laughed teasingly. “No one can find bravery, where it doesn’t exist”.
“What do you mean?”, Miobe asked.
With a deep sigh, one of the elders said, “We’re finished. Our village has been captured by a monster up on that mountain”. Miobe’s eyes followed the gaze of the old man, who looked to the top of the mountain bordering the village.
“See him, there”, the old man pointed his finger with lurking fear.
The boy looked up. He didn’t see anything in particular and kept quiet.
“Look”, said another man, “he has the head of a crocodile. A ferocious creature.”
“His body is as horrible as that of a hippopotamus’, commented another.
“It’s like a dragon”, another man cried, “with fire shooting from its snout”.
Slowly, Miobe also began to see the monster described by the elders. He saw the smoke and fire, the wrinkled skin of the creature, and its fierce eyes. “I am also able to see him”, he said. But he promised to himself silently that he would not be afraid and would not give up his mission. So he slowly walked away from the elders and went into the interior of the village. Everywhere, he noticed, people cowered. Children hid inside their houses and refused to go to school as they feared that the monster would come down from the mountain and eat them. “Everyone knows monsters eat children”, said a lady.
The farmers hovered inside their doorways, hoes and rakes in hands; their horses stood outside unharnessed. “We cannot go to work”, people told Miobe. “If we go into the fields, the monster will come down and kill us. We are starving”.
Miobe saw wandering goats, sheep, and cows out at the edge of the village, without anybody milking the animals or tending to them. No one undertook farming activities. While some people left the village, others stayed indoors.
“The monster is as big as ten barges!”, people whispered among themselves. “It’s going to destroy us and the village”, they aired their apprehension.
Having heard all the stories, Miobe finally decided that the monster should be destroyed. “I came here to conquer fear”, he announced, “and so I shall go and slay the monster which is your nightmare”.
“No son. Don’t think about the impossible”, the elders cried in one voice. Mothers gathered in a bid to protect the youngster from harm. Fathers shook their heads disapprovingly and warned: “Don’t be foolish. You will die”.
Miobe shivered and his heart fluttered, but he was determined. “I must conquer fear”, he muttered and set off on his mission.
On reaching the base of the mountain, he looked up and felt a chill of fear running down his spine. The monster appeared many times bigger than any dragon, fiercer than a whole pack of wolves, or a nest of snakes! The boy waited a moment, took a deep breath, again mustered courage, and began to climb.
After a while on the way up, he looked up and was surprised to note that the monster seemed to be regressing in form and getting smaller in size. “How bizarre!”, he said aloud. “Are my eyes deceiving me, or is it yet another ploy of the monster?”, he wondered.
He continued to climb.
When he was almost halfway up, Miobe looked to the top again. He squinted, shielding his eyes, but now the monster’s eyes no longer seemed so fierce, and the flames no longer shot from its snout.
“The closer I get, the smaller he looks!”, Miobe said puzzlingly. He continued to climb, though now he pulled his dagger from his sack to be prepared for combat with the enemy if called for. As he came around a bend in the path, he saw the summit before him. He gasped and was amazed.
The monster had disappeared!
Miobe turned and looked back. Who knows whether the creature was going to sneak up from behind and attack? But when he turned, he found nothing. He heard nothing. Holding his breath, he looked left and then right.
Relieved, he continued to climb. At long last, he found that he has reached the summit. Everywhere it was quiet and serene. Nothing fearsome was noticed around, below, or up.
Suddenly he heard a sound at his feet. The boy was startled. He looked down and saw a small creature just like a toad, with wrinkled skin and round, frightened eyes. Miobe had a sudden fear inside. Whether the monster has assumed a different form to deceive and get at him!? After a few anxious moments, he dared to bend down and picked the little creature up. Holding it in his palm, he asked, “Who are you?” “How did you become so small?” But the creature, with its frightened look, didn’t respond. He cradled it in his hand and walked down the mountain.
When he reached back the village, people, waiting with abated breath so long, cried aloud in chorus: “He’s back. He’s back and safe!” They all surrounded him.
Miobe held out his hand and showed them the tiny wrinkled toad. “This is the monster you were all afraid of”, he said. People looked at the creature with suspicion and anxiety. “Who are you?”, an old person asked it. “What’s your name?”
The creature croaked, and the elders looked around at the crowd and said, “Miobe has brought us the monster. Its name is fear!”
Genuine vs. illusory fears
Fears are of two types: genuine or functional fear and illusory or dysfunctional fear. Genuine fear is a useful one as it alerts us to take appropriate action. Like, when your doctor tells you that you have developed obesity and some health issues because of your faulty diet regime; he cautioned you about developing the fatty liver syndrome and other disease conditions, and you want to adopt remedial measures. As your health improves, your fear vanishes. A student studying seriously for fear of failure in the examination is another example of functional fear.
Illusory fears are based upon misconceptions and often stem directly (and sometimes indirectly also) from an inadequate self-image. As Dr. Jerome Frank, Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University once remarked, ‘we are rational only by fits and starts, and we operate under a great deal of fear and emotional tension, which interferes with clear thinking.’ An inadequate sense of self generally, if not always, has its roots in childhood programming by an authority figure, says Jose Silva. During our childhood, our parents told us, “Don’t go out at the night alone” “Don’t risk your life by stepping into unknown areas”, etc. Many a ‘taught concept of life’ registered in our brains up to the age of five, directly or indirectly, caused us to believe that fear was always negative.
A genuine fear may also be a hurtful one, which can be converted into a useful fear by focusing on what we can influence and control. As Santideva said, “it is not possible to control all external events; but if I simply control my mind, what need is there to control other things?”
