RE: ScaredyCatGuide Asks - Where Does Your Fear Come From?
@scaredycatguide, this is a very interesting and meaningful post... thanks!
It makes me think of how I grew up in a fear-based household that was ALSO all about greed, where I learned that greed simply is another manifestation of fear... the fear of not having/being enough.
People often say that the opposite of love is hate... I'm more inclined to say that the opposite of love is FEAR. Love comforts and embraces and includes and makes us feel safe, while fear blames, rejects, excludes and makes us feel UN-safe.
Back to the question of the day, my own fear is primarily rooted in "destitution." I have been dead broke (as in "sleeping on a park bench" broke) and I have great fear of ending up there again. The first time it happened, I was pretty much alone and on my own... and I coped. Now? Now there are people who count on me and depend on me and that amplifies the fear. It also amplifies another old fear which is that in the original version of my destitution, all the people who purported to be my "friends" suddenly vanished into the woodwork when I developed a sincere need. Which fueled some of the "worry/anxiety" I was raised with specificaily my parents' lifelessons that "you can't trust anyone or rely on anyone."
Yeah - it's a tough dynamic. My grandfather has a "great depression baby" mindset. A term used here in the U.S. for people born during the Great Depression. So he always thinks he's pennies away from being on the street, meanwhile at this point in his life he couldn't outlive his money.
It was a mindset I had to shake as an adult, but yes when you have other mouths to feed it can be stressful, but you have to just make smart decisions and feel comfort that the odds are leaned in your favor when you do.
We can only control what we can control. The rest just is.