One of the most important things to consider when it comes to communication is a four letter f word; any guesses? I’ll give a hint. It ends in an “r.” I bet that confused you. When I talk about the primary emotions, I’ll help people guess the first three, mad, sad, and glad, and then I’ll give them a tip for the fourth: “It’s a four letter f word.” People’s faces at this tip are hilarious: “It can’t be that word… is it? Can I say that word to a therapist?” And the word I’m looking for is… fear. We as a society hate the word fear while anxiety is like a rock star. Pharmaceutical companies have made anxiety, depression, and mental health four of our society’s favourite words. It was a brilliant way for them to make billions of dollars. (They made ADD our favourite acronym.) If anxiety was the problem they’ve made it seem, the main thing we should be shipping to the Ukraine right now isn’t weapons or medical supplies, it should be anxiety and depression meds. If anyone should have those, it’s the person at risk of being shot or their home blown up, but that’s not the target for the pharmaceutical companies. They want people in more comfortable lifestyles – comfort breeds anxiety: “I don’t want to lose this feeling of comfort I have.” Please know I’m not saying anxiety and depression aren’t real, but they’ve been impressively exaggerated. Selfishness breeds self-focused problems. By creating a me-focused world void of God and the Golden Rule (treat others they way we want to be treated), our “You do you” society (aka the mantra of selfish people) has naturally created a lot of unnecessary anxiety problems. What’s really impressive is the pharmaceutical companies have convinced people that when their body’s isn’t happy – our body’s way of warning us that we need to fix something – instead of addressing the source, we mask it with drugs. If you have a bad back, you don’t just take pain meds; you try to deal with the source. The same should work for our emotions. Anxiety and depression are a sign we need to change what we’re doing, and not just shut our body up with drugs… but enough of that rant.
When I was a kid, fear was still a word that was popular in churches, which made sense because the Bible claims: “Fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom,” (Pro 9:10a) and when people in the Bible want to give a great compliment, they describe someone as a God-fearing person. If you want to go intense there’s also the verse that says, “Don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot touch your soul. Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Mat 10:28) You want the cure for social anxiety? There’s a good start. Besides the odd crazy person who screams on inner city street corners, however, fear is becoming forgotten in church as we try to sell Buddy Jesus: (Christian) “He can be your friend” (random person) “No thanks. I don’t need any more. He can follow me on social media, but I’ll block him if he tries anything weird.” Even in church, we’ve lost the power of healthy fear while “anxiety” reigns.
I have a friend who prefers to use “respect” instead of “fear” because it feels normal to say. For instance, claiming “Respect your parents,” sounds “right” while “Fear your parents,” is uncomfortable. But is that right or have we just been trained to not like the word fear? Shouldn’t we have healthy fear of disappointing our parents? I’ve heard parents say, “My kids could never disappoint me.” If you believe this, you’re either a dreamer or an idiot (written with love). Kids need the fear of disappointing their parents; it’s a wonderful motivator. Kids should want to make their parents proud. Some parents throw the “I’m proud of you” statement around like grass seed on a weed-choked lawn. It ends up meaning nothing to kids who have developed a false sense of security. A parent’s number one job is to raise a decent person. Good people are not made with overindulging in praise and comfort. Strength grows in struggle. Motivation and drive are the product of fear. Fear is a gift. I’ve recently had a string of young people admit really screwing up and there was a total void of remorse. When I asked them about it, the basic response was “Why would I have fear?” They seemed surprised I even asked about it: “They’re my (fill in role of person). They’ll always love me.” Why should you have fear? Because you did something wrong! There are repercussions for doing something wrong… or have you never had to face that before because you were so coddled?
Healthy fear of our parents is the beginning of respect. It doesn’t even have to be a “good” fear. When I was a teenager one of my fears toward my dad was proving him right. It was an amazing motivator. Trying to prove him wrong gave me an incredible drive. The year I went to comedy school in my early 20s, my dad said nothing and I crumbled. My mom later told me he thought it was a big mistake, but he never told me that. If he had, I would’ve done so much better. For people like me, there is power in trying to prove others wrong (I’m nicer than that makes me sound… maybe). What I needed was for him to say this was a waste of money and time. I needed the drive to prove him wrong to push me past my other fears like the fear of sucking on stage. Instead, I let my hider side kick in and I avoided being on the stage as much as I should’ve, which naturally made my year conclude with limited results.
Let’s consider fear on a scale:
No Fear (-10)————Healthy Fear (0) ————Too Much Fear (+10)
Healthy Fear motivates us to do things to protect ourselves and others. No Fear makes us stupid and Too Much Fear holds us back. This scale connects really well to the one we’ve looked at the past few weeks:
Attacker (-10)——Self Controlled (0)——Hider (+10)
Self Control, the healthy spot on this scale, includes Healthy Fear. We need Healthy Fear for proper communication. It helps us avoid saying things we shouldn’t. It helps us care about the needs of others (a skill often forgotten).
What makes this really interesting (at least to me) is Self Control not only needs a healthy amount of fear, it needs the right fear. Attackers attack because of fear; Hiders hide because of fear. They’re both reacting to their fear differently (aka fight, flight, or freeze response), but the problem is they both have the wrong fear. Their fear is all about them. It goes back to why we have so much anxiety problems in our culture: We are too worried about ourselves. For instance, Attackers would stop attacking if they focused on having a healthy fear of hurting the other person. Hiders would stop hiding if they focused on having a healthy fear of hurting others through neglect and emotionally shutting off. They could both stop doing what they’re doing wrong if they had a healthy fear of not doing what’s right. When we attack and when we hide we’re being selfish, and we need to push through that in order to have the right fear: the fear of not treating others the way we should. Love is patient, kind, and self controlled. It’s not attacking or hiding.
This week may you consider how your communication can be improved if you have the right fear.
Rev Chad Tomlinson, ChadDavid.ca, learning to love dumb people (like me)