Fear

Image credit: Photo by stuant63 Licensed under Creative Commons

I've been working through the 12 Steps again, more slowly this time than my last time through.  This week, I worked through an exercise where I looked at patterns of compulsive behavior in my life and I was struck (again) by how powerfully my life is dominated by fear and by how much I react from a place of fear.

I've engaged in everything from shoplifting to underage drinking to unprotected sex out of fear that I wouldn't fit in, that I wouldn't be liked, that I would be rejected.  I overeat out of fear.  I stay in relationships and run from relationships out of fear.  I don't exercise out of fear.  I deprive myself of sleep out of fear.  I spend money out of fear.  I even read novels out of fear.

Sometimes I don't know the fear is there unless I look for it; it's just a dark guiding hand behind my actions.  Sometimes, the fear grips me, so tightly and unreasonably that it's impossible to see anything else.  But it is the first type of fear — the one I don't recognize, yet allow to direct me — that I find is most dangerous for me.

Through my recovery work, I've begun to recognize fear more readily and to start replacing it with faith.  Working this Step again has reminded me that this is a journey and a process during which I need to remain vigilant.  Fear is constantly by my side, taking the wheel whenever it has the chance.

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This post was originally published at The Second Road.