cliodhna’s wave

Fear is a shapeshifter, it has no concept of size or occasion and does not learn from new examples, once is enough and the fear has understood. Thereafter the fear always has the original example in mind and when a new situation comes up that is different to the first but maybe has some common element the fear changes shape to suit the occasion.

My dog fell into water when he was little, it terrified him and I had to find where he was hiding after he ran for his life when he reached the shore and comfort him until he stopped shaking and crying. Puppies are such babies, pure emotional response to their surroundings and they respond like babies or young children. Anyway since then Cubo (who by the way is now a huge heavy marshmallow of a Rottweiler) is afraid of water. Doesn’t matter what shape or form, a puddle, a small stream, a flow of water across the road, anything except his drinking water in his bucket.

It took lots and lots of visits to the nearby stream until he was relaxed enough to start playing in it and even then only up to his ankles. Lots of walks in the countryside and dragging him across streams to keep going and even now he stops and whines and looks desperately for some other way across.

We all have common sense in place, basic survival instinct, don’t stick your hand in fire it will hurt or don’t eat that plant over there you will die, but the fear in us takes it all one step further. It becomes like a guard dog who won’t let you out of your own house because you might get run over (ever see the movie I Robot?) it parades as for your own good but really would prefer if you climbed into a box and threw away the key.

Fear has no sense of size. A little fear is the same as a big fear, open the gate just a little and it all comes rushing out. A fear of death becomes a fear of dogs, spiders, water, losing our partner, whatever is our own personal fear, and it takes a hundred or a thousand examples of something is ok to erase the original agreement of fear.

The interesting thing also, watching my two dogs is that the younger one is also learning to be afraid of water. She learns from Cubo and when he won’t go near the water she won’t either.

So I ask myself how many of my fears have been passed directly to me by my parents or peers without me even assessing them or deciding whether I want them or not and I ask myself what am I afraid of that does not serve me anymore? What agreements made long ago now hold me back from being who I am?