The paralysis of doing the right thing.
I’m seeing this more and more, so much so that it seems to be a new epidemic. People who are so scared of doing “the wrong thing” that they are stuck in the a never ending search for doing “the right thing”.
They seek for it, they desperately desire it, and even if they finally find something that could be the correct thing, they spend their lives in fear that they are somehow “doing the right thing in a wrong way”.
Does that sound familiar to you?
In the last 48 hours, I’ve discussed two cases of this with people. In both situations, someone’s ability to function in society is threatened because that person is so scared of doing the ‘wrong thing’ that they are anxious in almost any social situation, and as such are withdrawn, hiding themselves away from normal life.
In both cases, the person affected is intelligent, kind, personable and without a significant deficit that would prevent them from enjoying life in a normal way.
Yet neither of them functions in the world at the level that they could.
Instead they have chosen to pull away and hide out of a fear of the feelings that they think they would experience from doing the ‘wrong thing’, and in their nervous system, somehow they have come to associate those feelings with death, as if they could die from a feeling.
I know that sounds crazy, but if you’ve ever talked to someone in the middle of an anxiety attack, you’ll have come face to face with someone who truly, deeply and fervently believes they are going to die.
They believe it so hard that their body will manifest the feelings of pain, and their nervous system will manufacture the racing heart, the shallow breath, the tingling in their fingertips and the dizziness and disorientation.
Because what the brain truly believes, it manifests, both good and bad.
When I work with people who have this anxiety compulsion, it usually comes down to a moment of trauma in their life, where for some reason they linked a non-fatal situation to a perception of death.
As I talk to them, and ask them to explain what occurs in the moment where the anxiety takes over, I see them cross that threshold from knowing/language into the realm of feeling/non-language. They’ll struggle to tell me why they feel that way, and usually end up feeling rather than talking, experiencing rather than explain.
Dying, rather than living.
So today, I ask you to be aware of those people around you who are not living up to their full potential because of the fear that holds them in its thrall. Reach out to them, and tell them how much you value them, and how important they are in your life.
The chances are, they have no idea of who they could become, and just how necessary they are to the world.
It’s up to us to remind them that a little fear won’t kill them, but their eventual regret might.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings