“Right on the edge of fear was where trust could grow.”
Cherise Sinclair
Fear is such an interesting emotion for me. My knee jerk, socially conditioned response is that fear is bad and should be avoided. However, for me, that isn’t true.
Fear is a strong emotion that changes my balance. It makes me change my thought patterns and can make me move. That’s what fear is meant to do. You can’t sit comfortably in fear. Fear has often been the driver for me to do things that has then expanded my comfort zone.
One of the things about fear is that it strips a lot of extraneous things out of my thought processes and boils things down to a simpler idea. I am, of course, talking about a particular sort of fear here and not the ice strike of fear of someone coming up fast behind me at night.
I recognise that I confront my fears and stare them down quite often. It’s easy to understand that when I talk about being scared of falling from heights and so the adrenalin rush of rock climbing and abseiling was addictive. It’s easy to see that as someone who get nervous riding a bike fast downhill for fear of the speed and the lack of control, that I get intoxicated on the energy of roller coasters. I seek out things that I am scared of and do them.
I like sometimes playing with fear in scenes. Using fear is such a powerful mind fuck for me. It can push me deeper into subspace than many other things. It needs to be with someone that I trust because riding those waves of fear is powerful and I need to know that I can trust them to stop if things don’t seem right. When I do trust someone like that, I can only describe the feelings that I have as the fear goes as total, soul nourishing adoration. It’s such a beautiful emotion that suffuses my body and mind with a glow.
There is one fear that I would like to get rid of. I work really hard to manage it and challenge it, yet it still persists. I am scared of my own mind. Not all the time. And not all of my mind. But every month, there are days when I am scared of my thoughts and feelings. I suffer from Pre Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD). When it’s an it’s worst, I have to put safety plans on to make it through. I can be so bad that I can’t say with certainty that I will get through the next hour, let alone to the next day. Sometimes it’s fills me with vile, violent hatred which is always turned inwards on me.
I’ve worked really hard on all the things that minimise the impact of PMDD. I know I can get through it and, currently, I can keep the violent hatred at bay. Each month, as soon as the symptoms start and the first painful emotions trigger the tears, I am filled with fear in case this month will be more than I can survive. When I battle and subdue that fear, I’m still left with negative feelings. It feels absolutely true to me that I am unattractive of character and looks. I often hide away when this happens but that isn’t a good safety behaviour. Hiding away confirms the feelings of shame and that I am a problem. It lays the thoughts and feelings out, tends them and nurtures them so that they are even more ready to spring back full strength the following month. It pushes facing up to the thoughts to the side and makes the fear of them more constant.
I used to not be able to talk about this. The thing that has changed is trust. I trust some people who are important to me to tell them when things are bad. I trust their feelings towards me so much that even the cruellest PMDD attack can’t persuade me that they do not like me. I trust them enough that I can focus on my fear.
Sometimes I have thought that I am facing up to the fringe by taking cruelly honest pictures and posting them. Those were both truthful and a lie. I wasn’t challenging my thoughts, I was creating evidence to support them. The fact that people responded so positively and supportively was amazing. In some ways, I now realise that those times were an important step forwards. If people didn’t hate and shame me when I showed them the evidence of how awful I am, how could I believe that they hate me the rest of the time?
Today, I faced my fear and took a picture. I didn’t set it up to shame myself. I did set it up to be honest, to be a challenge through not using angles and props to hide and to be bold. Then I shared it. I didn’t retake it lots of times. I didn’t sit and pick out all the features that others might not like. I changed it to black and white and shared it.
It’s beautiful. It’s bold. It’s brave. And it’s me.
I was scared that I am as ugly as some of those PMDD thoughts but I also trusted all the people who would comment on it to see me and to truthfully respond.
“Right on the edge of fear was where trust could grow.”
Cherise Sinclair
If I hadn’t felt the fear, I wouldn’t have the joy of feeling secure in a group of people who I trust. If I didn’t feel that trust, learning to trust my mind even when PMDD hits would be so much harder.
I am linking this to the wonderful Little Switch Bitch’s Quote Quest.
There is no shred of ugliness in your words or image – the opposite in fact: I read courage and I see beauty. I may or may not be *sobbing* reading this … but it feels good, and I thank you for rousing that response in me because it is a sort of catharsis, I relate so closely to what you have shared. This is the power of that courage, your words and thoughts are valuable to you and to others. Thank you for letting us listen and see you and help where we can. You’re worth all of it.