The Anatomy of Fear

I've been working through a lot of things related to fear. Specifically, there is one person who scares the hell out of me (and due to the public nature of this blog, I can't name names) and I'm trying to figure out why.

I believe that fear comes from a history of fear -- meaning, if you were scared of one person, someone who reminds you of that person may well also scare you. That is the case here. My focus is not on trying to change these people -- you can't change someone else. You can only inspire someone else to change, and in this case, that's not my intent.

Instead, I'm focusing on my own reactions to these triggers. I'm in therapy and that helps substantially. It's wonderful to have finally found a therapist who really gets me, challenges me, and is not shy about offering up opinions as well as options. I've taken her up on a few of these options, and it's helping ... but there is more progress to be made.

I wish I could be more specific right now, but the fact is that I can't. Instead, I can only address it in these rather vague terms and let that be that for right now.

I think this fear has really affected me. It's fear, it's dread, it's daily. And it has an end point -- I know that for a fact -- but in the meantime, I'm just trying to figure out how not only to deal with it, but to learn from it.