Fear and control

One of my greatest day-to-day challenges is the pervasive feeling that 'things aren't quite right'. More specifically, that my approach to the daily events in my life isn't quite right, and nowhere is this felt more strongly than when I am with my children.

But what I do is try to reassure myself (or worse still, listen to the reassurance of others) that I am being good and kind, helpful and undemanding, and, too frequently, that my desires are not actually that important, especially when these conflict with those of my children. In this I suspect I have much in common with many mothers.

And I am coming to see that for much of my life my response when I don't feel so good inside is to run away, mostly by becoming absorbed in my thoughts but increasingly as my children are growing older and it is more feasible, by leaving the physical environment where the 'heat is greatest'.

Yesterday I returned home after three weeks away. The house and offspring were unwelcoming and I was met with queries regarding tasks I had undertaken to do while away and requests for further, and immediate, assistance.

Did I feel good about being needed? Have I ever really felt good about being needed? I was very tired, and I am starting to notice that when I am tired, even when I can attribute it to a poor night's sleep or heavy physical exertion, my tiredness can generally also be related to my 'holding in' a lot of emotional responses, to 'putting the lid on' my deeper feelings in order to maintain what often does feel like a facade of being a good friend and mother. Why otherwise does one not feel tired when one is excited and happy, or having a genuinely good time?

I had a restless night despite my tiredness, feeling mainly that 'brick wall' feeling that whatever I'm doing about my nonspecific unease, it doesn't feel like I'm getting anywhere. And, as often happens to me in the night, it occurred to me what I suspect others have been trying to tell me for years, that I am being controlled. Or at least, that's how I feel.

But I'm no longer a child. If I'm feeling controlled it is actually because I'm choosing to do what is asked of me, even when I don't want to, for fear of being rejected or of feeling disapproval. Fear of that awful childhood feeling that I am not loved unless I behave in a certain kind of way. It's a subtle feeling at this stage, because I have spent so many years telling myself that it is a good thing to be kind and helpful, forgetting completely that it is quite a bad thing to be unkind to myself in the process.

So my brick wall dissolved just a little, as I realised that what I'm doing as I go along my way is living in a state of fear. Fear of feeling disapproved of, of feeling like a bad person. I know by now that the way through this is to 'do the fear thing', just give in to the feeling. For me it is also a big aspect of how I currently see God, with my being loved only on condition that I follow the guidelines. But the one lifebuoy I hold on to is that continuing to pray to God even when I'm surrendering to my fear, even while I feel God is least available to me, will get me through all this. In this process of surrendering (at which I'm still very much an amateur) I feel I have no control at all, that I'm stupid even to believe that God would listen, but that's how I find it is for me. If I take the step of allowing myself to feel like a small child quivering in fear that if I'm not good I will be rejected, if I go through the blackness of this actual feeling, afterwards God is more palpably there for me.

Some time ago I was inspired to write this, and the imagery helps me when I don't want to feel my fear.

Fear is like a big black cloud

Impenetrable from the distance

But go right up, there's nothing there

Walk right through; you may not see

More than a foot or two ahead

But still the ground is firm

And mostly all you get

Is sparkle-droplets sticking to your hair

Or even less, perhaps a gentle breeze

Will dissipate it, then the view is clear.