Fear Factor

The pain avoidance that holds us back from who we want to be.

It is fair to assume that what motivates us would be the driving force behind our actions and behaviors. If we want something bad enough that should be enough to get us to take action, which causes us to believe that our failures are due to a lack of ambition. In reality even what intrinsically motivates us is not nearly as powerful as what we're afraid of. 

A fear of heights will overpower your desire for an adrenaline rush when you're on the edge of a cliff ready to jump. Fear will also prevent you from taking risks at your job because you worry that you could be fired, or maybe this same nauseating feeling is preventing you from telling someone how you actually feel about them despite all of the amazing benefits they bring into their life. 

Think about a time that you didn't achieve what you wanted to recently. What stopped you from achieving that goal? Was it a lack of desire or did fear cripple you in your efforts? As I started to zero in on my own fears, I realized that those fears were what were holding me back from becoming the person I wanted to be. 

Identifying Your Fear

The Enneagram has been a powerful tool in helping me to understand what my main fear is. The Enneagram is composed of 9 personality types each with distinct fears and specific patterns and behaviors to cope with those fears. By bringing awareness to our actions we can start to unravel why we do the things we do. To better understand what causes fear, we first need to look at the stories that our minds are creating, because our fears are not based in fact and with a little investigative work we can start to poke holes in these stories. 

Each specific personality type in the Enneagram has its own story that they create in response to pain they experienced in their life. A very primal instinct is to fear what makes us uncomfortable. Once we experience discomfort, our brain decides that it would never like to experience that pain again. For example, at a young age if you touch the stove while it's still hot, you learn to fear touching fire or else you'll be burned. These experiences are why we begin to create stories and tell ourselves that if we act a certain way, then we can avoid this horrible feeling in the future. While these lessons come in handy when learning to not touch a stove burner, this thinking can cause us to develop very limiting and bad habits. So in order to free ourselves from our fears we must continue to uncover the truth through awareness, mindfulness, and inquiry. 

As I mentioned in previous posts, the first step towards creating change is to create awareness. In terms of the Enneagram, taking this quiz that assigns you to a type can be a great starting place when trying to identify what makes you tick. When reading into the Enneagram and your assigned type, look at each fear to see what resonates most with you, along with the adaptive strategies that the type takes on to cope with them. Here is an overview of each type's main fear:

Type 1: Fear of being imperfect
Type 2: Fear of being unloved
Type 3: Fear of failure
Type 4: Fear of meaninglessness
Type 5: Fear of the unknown
Type 6: Fear of chaos
Type 7: Fear of deprivation
Type 8: Fear of being controlled
Type 9: Fear of confrontation

The book "The Essential Enneagram" helps to succinctly identify the stories that each type creates. Here is a breakdown of each type's story:

Type 1: This type came to believe the story that they would not be accepted as they are. So they did not allow for themselves to be anything less than perfect and developed a strong inner critic to defend themselves from impending rejection.
Type 2: Type 2s came to believe that they must give in order to be loved and if they are not needed then they are unwanted. Which causes them to not voice their personal needs and wants and creates a sense of pride for being indispensable. 
Type 3: This type is known as "The Performer". They came to believe that they needed to achieve something to be loved. This causes them to focus on success and to quiet their feelings and emotions that they perceive will only get in the way. 
Type 4: This type believes that there is something missing in them or that they are intrinsically different from everyone else which causes people to abandon them. This results in this type's constant search for the thing that they believe is missing. Never being fully present and feeling envious that everyone else has what they don't. 
Type 5: Type 5s created the story that people in their life can be too demanding and don't give them anything back, so they seek fulfillment through withdrawing, being self-sufficient, by seeking to acquire a lot of knowledge, and by suppressing impulses and desires.
Type 6: The world is an unpredictable and chaotic place for the 6. Because of this they will seek out answers and certainty through things such as authority figures and organized religion, or can become counter phobic and begin to question and challenge all authority.
Type 7: The Type 7 believes that the world is trying to stifle them and can only cause them pain. In order to not feel suffocated they seek out adventure and avoid structure and intimacy.
Type 8: Vulnerability equals weakness in the eyes of an 8. In order to avoid this, they learn to assert dominance and create control through rigid boundaries for themselves.
Type 9: Type 9s believe that the worst thing in life is conflict so it is better to take the path of least resistance than to voice their own opinions and wants. They will therefore blend in and use enmeshment to appease everyone around them.
As you can see our fears and the stories that they create greatly impact our actions and behaviors. 

These 9 personality types are also correlated to the 9 known coping strategies and are the ways we know how to avoid and deal with pain, those are:

• Humor

• Seeking support

• Problem-solving

• Relaxation

• Physical recreation

• Adjusting expectations

• Denial

• Self-blame

• Venting

Healthy and Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms

As you can imagine, there are good and bad ways to cope with everything in our lives. By first creating awareness to our habits and behaviors we can then begin to question whether or not that coping mechanism is helping us. One of the best ways to do that is to create more pauses and time to reflect on your actions. By slowing yourself down you give yourself the opportunity to feel the emotion you're experiencing, question the thoughts and their validity, and then choose the healthy response. 

One of the things that has seriously crippled our ability to stay present during moments of discomfort is technology. Technology has now created the perfect escapism tool for any unwanted situation. At an uncomfortable dinner? Don't worry you have your phone nearby and can use an "important work email" as an excuse to avoid that horrible conversation your friend was about to get into. Or maybe you were bullied in school that left you feeling misunderstood and alone. You then go home and turn on your computer, go to Discord, and begin to game and chat with your online community. You now feel like you have a sense of belonging and friendship that is so desperately missing from your life. 

While these coping mechanisms seem harmless, they are creating an avoidance and intolerance to pain. In order to start to combat these tendencies and question if they were really making a healthy impact in my own life, I enforced a 10-minute rule. My trigger for this rule is any time I feel pain, discomfort, or boredom I don't allow myself act upon my immediate impulse, instead I make myself wait 10 minutes and question whether that action would best serve me and reflect my values. After careful consideration during this 10-minute pause I ask myself if I still want to choose to act upon that initial impulse. After trying this for the past month I can confidently tell you that I very rarely chose the first version of my response. 

Not immediately acting also allowed me to not feel resentment or regret the choices I made. A quote I read from Brene Brown quickly became my mantra for this method, "Choose discomfort over resentment.".  By living out this quote I allowed myself to experience the pain and understand that it is nothing compared to the long term pain and discomfort that resentment brings. 

The best way to begin to face your fears head on is with the support of someone else, and the healthiest support you can seek is the support from a mental health professional or life coach. This impartial view will help give you the tools you need to tackle your fears in a non-judgmental and safe space. So I encourage you all the next time you feel that pang of fear or pit in your stomach to take these steps:

• Pause

• Ask yourself what you're feeling and why

• Wait 10 minutes before you react to an impulse

• Question your belief and the story you created

• Seek support when you feel like you can't handle it on your own

I hope this brings you all a little closer towards the liberation from your fears. 

Resources

"The Essential Enneagram" by David Daniels and Virgina Price

"Indistractable" by Nir Eyal