How Can I Use My Own Fears?

Have you noticed the most persistent and irritating fears are the daily phobias, the ones that control us when we know they shouldn’t? I’ve often wished I was one of my characters when it came to dealing with those.

When I go to the doctor, I’d be Leland Keller of Soul Rest, because the Baton Rouge police sergeant is the type of guy who’d be joking with the nurses and not paying any attention to needles, tests or probing instruments. To him, those are nothing to get uptight about.

If I had to get on an airplane, I’d be Marguerite of Ice Queen, the Domme and tea room owner who loves the feeling of flying. She even does BASE jumping and Atmonauti parachuting.

When I go out to the grocery store, movies or other crowded places, I’d be Chloe (Branded Sanctuary) or Julie (Worth the Wait), who can strike up conversations with anyone and see nothing but a potential friend in every encounter, rather than a faceless mob waiting to attack.

For public speaking, I’d be Cassandra Adler of Controlled Response, a corporate negotiator who can think on her feet and never stammers or worries about the numbers of people she’s addressing.

When my time comes and I’m facing death, I’d choose to step into Lady Lyssa’s shoes, because the Vampire Queen (Vampire Queen’s Servant) would never waste time fearing something as inevitable as death. Actually, Lyssa isn’t afraid of much of anything, except losing her servant Jacob or their son Kane.

But that last one is a “real” fear. Pretty much all of us fear losing those we love. There’s not a lot we can do about that except value them every day and not hold them so tight we smother them or prevent them from being who they are. Even if they do things we know may take them from us sooner rather than later. Which takes me back to The River Runs Through It quote: “We can love completely without complete understanding.”

I’m a complete chicken, with a lot of weird phobias. My relationship to fear can be summarized by two different movie scenes/quotes:

In Goosebumps, one of the teenage characters declares he’s never had a teenager’s sense of immortality. He’s always been afraid of death. He exclaims: “When I was four and put on a swing, I thought, so this is how it ends."

In Nim’s Island, Jodie Foster’s author character is a recluse afraid to leave the house, but because a little girl is in trouble, she somehow manages to leave the house and get on a plane. When the plane goes through a storm, Jodie executes a brilliant panicked dialogue that went something like: “If I ever get through this, I will embrace my fears. I will never leave the house again.”

Yep, that’s me. I wish I had the ability to channel my characters’ personalities, don them like armor when I am facing a fear. But while my imagination is great for my stories, “fear monsters” have a way of growing and blotting out the light of any rational thought, as well as most strategies for keeping them at bay. The only successful way I’ve found for knocking them down to size is if they’re countered with a threat against someone I love, or a need to soothe another person’s fear. For instance, I have a friend who fears flying, but when she had to take her infant nephew home via plane, she found focusing on caring for him during the flight took her focus away from her own fears and neutralized them.

You’ve probably heard authors say there’s no human experience they can’t use in their stories, and that is true with fear management. I have characters who have been through terrible things, coming out on the other side of those things with serious physical and emotional scars to overcome. Through their stories, finding the right person (or persons) to love, they do. But they face a lot of fears to get there. While they are WAY braver than me any day of the week, I can use my fears – how they feel, how I manage them, how quickly I know that those fears can overwhelm and create irrational behavior – to flesh out a character’s reaction to a trigger. From there they can figure out how to overcome the situation, take control in a positive way and move forward.

Which is when I wave to them from the safety of my writing cave and wish them well. “Glad I could help! I’ll just be hanging out right back here.” (grin)

I’ve explored a lot of mental exercises to manage fear. None really work for me when I’m actually confronting one of my numerous phobias, but I’ve found they help flesh out great skills/traits for characters to internalize and use as they move forward in their stories and overcome fear. Like these two quotes, though I can’t find the authors at the moment:

Fear is a choice - If you think about it, fear IS a choice. It has a shape, edges. It is actually separate from what you fear. There’s a great scene in one of the Next Generation Star Trek movies where Data turns off his emotion chip so he doesn’t have to deal with fear while he and Picard face impossible odds. Picard gives him an odd look and says, “Sometimes, Data, I envy you.” The scene underscores that what you fear and fear itself are two different things. If you manage and compartmentalize the fear, set it aside, you handle the situation much differently. I have characters who regularly do that, like Dana in Honor Bound, where she dealt with her truck convoy being ambushed in Iraq. Or Celeste in Soul Rest, when she goes into dangerous situations to uncover a story (she's a news blogger). Janet of Willing Sacrifice can do this to a scary level; to the point she shuts herself down after rescuing Max, her former Navy SEAL boyfriend, from a life-threatening situation and he has to help her find her way back. So it’s best to show moderation in all things, even fear management (smile).

Keep your fears to yourself and show your courage to others – Well, my books are chock full of noble people who conceal their fears in order to help inspire and lead others. Guess that’s why they get to be called heroes and heroines. But that’s why for us normal folk I kind of like this last quote:

“Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow.” (Mary Anne Radmacher) Often, the aftereffect of being swamped by our fears is a miserable sense of failure and worthlessness. I’ve had characters who’ve had such bad moments, and that’s when it’s really handy to have that wonderful hero or heroine who says:“Hey, this is just a moment. You’ll do better next time.”

Actually, it’s pretty handy to have those people in our non-fictional lives as well. I owe my husband a great deal in that regard. Here’s hoping you all have those in your lives who help you deal with your day-to-day fear monsters and keep them to a manageable size.

Do any of you have ways to manage your fears that have been effective in dealing with phobias or scary situations? Do you think romances do a good job of realistically showing how characters manage fear and/or inspire us to manage our own?

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