Many of us have experienced times when we’ve been frozen in place, either physically or emotionally, by a difficult personal confrontation. I can fight with the best of ’em when it comes to physical danger or acting in an emergency, but only recently have I been able to stop freezing when someone confronts me directly about something difficult and emotional. Especially something hurtful I may have said or done. Why? Because the thought of hurting anyone was scary and shameful. The resultant fear froze my mind, numbed my self-esteem, and cause my throat to close down and my heart to pound. Response of any kind was impossible as long as I was enveloped in fear and shame.
I’ve worked long and hard on learning to face the core fears and beliefs responsible for my tendency to freeze when I think I’m being emotionally attacked. Or, I sigh to admit, even vaguely criticized. I’d have to say fear of rejection is my biggest bugaboo. If someone speaks harshly or unfairly to me, the response “I must be a bad person” is almost Pavlovian.
A friend of mine says that fear is a gut-jerk reaction. Most of us emerge from childhood with gut-jerk reactions to certain circumstances and experiences. While the familiar gut-jerk response may continue to be our first reaction—our default setting, if you will—one of the major tasks of adulthood is learning to neutralize these subconscious reactions and behaviors and choose more appropriate ones. In other words, we may still react with the fear, but in the light of awareness, we are able to regroup quickly and respond more appropriately.
My determination to face and embrace my fear of rejection has paid off. Recently, I was able to calmly and rationally respond to an undeserved emotional barrage from someone I love dearly. Granted, my stomach was doing gymnastics, but neither my mind nor self-esteem froze. Nor did I run. The new response happened so naturally and spontaneously that it wasn’t until we’d worked through the episode satisfactorily that I realized I had not frozen, fought, or flown. I had faced. Whoopee! Celebration time. And believe me, if I learned to transform my fear by facing and embracing it, you can, too!
Excerpted from How to Stay Upbeat in a Beat Down World by Sue Patton Thoele. Available on Amazon.
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