Reacting to Fear in a Healthy Way

Reacting to Fear in a Healthy Way

“The light’s green, you retard!”

Stunned, I looked up from my computer into the street. A guy in a gold Chevy 4×4 with its windows down revved his engine again while waiting at the green light. Two political flags blazed from the bed of his truck.

The woman in the bistro seat across from me screamed, “You’re the retard! Look at your flags!”

I could only see the back of her salt and pepper ponytail, but I knew her face. She and her husband often came on Tuesdays. She would put on her rooster-patterned mask, go into the coffee shop, and return with an oversized cinnamon roll for herself and a coffee for her husband.

He would spend the next hour sipping and reading from his Kindle while she gave a play by play of the news updates she’d found on her phone.

The violence of the exchange stunned me. Another woman, sitting at a different bistro table, met my eyes and shook her head.

It felt like we’d seen someone get shot.

The Root

A few years ago, I let my husband read one of my blogs before I published it because it revealed that he would need another craniotomy.

He read the document, set his computer aside, and said, “I know you. You are not angry.”

I remember thinking, I beg to differ.

And, in truth, I was a little angry as I thought it.

But then I gave myself another day and read and edited that draft.

Anger was too easy. I had to dig down through my emotional strata to find out why.

The thin, soft-spoken neurologist had received the brunt of my frustration, even though he’d had nothing to do with our difficulty in making an appointment and would have absolutely nothing to do with the surgery itself.

I’d wanted someone to pay for my pain, so I wouldn’t have to feel it. But after we’d walked out of Vanderbilt, I was hungover with shame.  

Unchecked fear turns us into animals. Survival is its driving force, and yet living for survival means we are never living with our hearts fully alive.

Once I acknowledged fear as the root of my anger, I felt more peace.

Did it remove what we had to walk through? No. Did my fear increase as the date drew closer? You bet.

And yet, I was not angry. That cold January morning we rode the elevator up to the surgical floor, a senior woman and I looked at each other. This was in 2019, before masks, so I smiled at her with more than my eyes.

She had looked so frightened, as her husband was also having surgery, that I had walked down the hall to find their room only to see a nurse enter it.

If my husband hadn’t challenged me to dig deeper, I would have leaned into my anger instead of leaning into my fear. If I had leaned into my anger, I would have been so focused on my pain that it would have never allowed me to feel empathy for the patients and their families who were also hurting.

Alternate Universe

“The light’s green, you retard!”

Stunned, I look up from my computer into the street. A guy in a gold Chevy 4×4 with its windows down revs his engine again while waiting at the green light. Two political flags blaze from the bed of his truck.

The woman in the bistro seat across from me screams, “You’re the retard! Look at your flags!”

I rise from my table and cross the street. I stand beside the window of the man’s truck and say, “I know you. You are not angry. You are afraid.”

Walking over to the woman at the bistro table, I look into her eyes and say, “I know you. You are not angry. You are afraid.”

At least, in an alternate universe, this is what I would have done.

Lean into your fear, my friends. Love and empathy might just be on the other side.

How do you react to fear? Do you get angry or do you pull away?