Have you or are you living your life through the lens of fear?

This past week, I’ve been thinking about the emotion or spirit of fear and its healthy or unhealthy effect on my life. I believe that some fears can be healthy, especially when it comes to survival instincts. When we were living in Florida, I remember one of our neighbors called my husband in a panic, letting him know that they just found a poisonous snake in their backyard and asked him if he could come over immediately to help take care of it, which he did. Apparently, as soon as the family discovered the snake, they were petrified, and the entire family ran back into the house and immediately closed the door. I would imagine that it was the fear (or the survival instinct to keep themselves safe) that caused them to run away.

On the flipside, I think that other fears could be unhealthy and can be quite detrimental to our emotional, physical and spiritual well-being. 

One of the most painful and fearful times in my life was seven years ago. I’ve referred to this time as the trauma of 2017, but I haven’t shared the details in full yet. I won’t go into the full story here, as this blog would be quite long, but what I will tell you is that it started through the lens of fear (although I didn’t know that at the time. 

As I am thinking of this time and sitting with it, it is difficult to stop the flow of tears. This traumatic experience started out as mild anxiety, but progressed and got worse as the time went on. I remember the day it began and the exact emotions that I experienced. It was the middle of the day, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and my heart began beating extremely fast, as if I was hyperventilating. I couldn’t concentrate as I could feel the pressure of the anxiety building up in me. My stomach would persistently tense up and the anxiety was everywhere I turned; it felt like I couldn’t escape it. I ended up going to see my family physician and she gave me a mild anti-anxiety medication. After being on it for a few months, it wasn’t helping, and I ended up going to a psychiatrist and he put me on a few different, stronger medications. The anxiety and lack of concentration became even worse. I also started having difficulty sleeping and because of that, I became even more fearful, obsessing about my sleep. As a result of this, he put me on sleeping pills, that combined with the other meds, caused serious side effects like psychotic hallucinations. Given all of the medication I was on, I was still anxious, and things became even worse.

Long story short, a year later and after spending a lot of time in prayer and endless hours in research into what was going on with me; going back and forth to various doctors; and making numerous visits to the hospital emergency department, my husband discovered the source of the anxiety - Hormonal imbalance. As it turned out, I had no estrogen and barely any progesterone, but what I had in spades was testosterone, the latter which was causing aggressiveness and anxiety. Once this discovery was made and my hormones returned to their normal state, via hormone replacement therapy, I began meeting weekly with a counselor (and constantly praying) and realized that I had been making life choices through the lens of a dysfunctional and troubling childhood. I will share more details about the journey I went through in future blogs and how I came out on the other side, healthier mentally, physically and spiritually.

After having gone through this trauma and experiencing paralyzing fear and subsequent heartache, I’ve realized that if I deny or ignore the fear, it will hold me captive and keep me emotionally frozen, and unable to move forward. But, if I can face it, get to know it and identify its root cause, then I can deal with it, and live a healthy, fulfilled life.

Can you think of something in your life that you might be seeing through the lens of fear and how you could address it?