Being Unafraid of our Fears

All of therapy and recovery is about coming to terms with fear.” Patrick Carnes

The reality of fear dominates life in recovery: fear of exposure and abandonment lingers, fear of loneliness or boredom, fear that I can’t be enough or will never get better. If any and all addictions are a kind of emotional anesthetic (as Gabor Maté suggests), the great underlying reality needing to be numbed is fear. And it is not only on the side of the addict. A couple facing into recovery has an enormous weight of fear: fear that the other will not get better, fear that I can never trust him again—or fear that I am starting to trust him again. Fears can locate around my body, my community, my children, my work, my reputation. Everywhere we look we can find a reason for fear. That is the nature of the world in which we live, and our own nature as we try to walk the path of recovery.

            Among the many aspects of our fears, however, lurks an often-neglected gift: that our fears are a clear opportunity for intimacy. Fears arise out of the loves that we carry, and emerge from that soil as a result of hurts and wounds. I am born with a love of being included. It’s in-built as a love God has created to exist in us. We are “pack animals,” bearing the mark of the Trinitarian life of God—which is to say, we only live as fully human when we find ourselves included in a community. Our common fears around inclusion only emerge after we experience the hurt of exclusion. One who has no hurts will have no fears. In other words, fear is the clothing that love wears on the far side of hurt. Your fears embody how vulnerable you are in the world, shouting your vulnerability at you. You are vulnerable to another’s disapproval, to their betrayal, to their rejection. Yet all such fears are born out of your love of inclusion being violated or disregarded.

            In a healthy relationship, whether friends or lovers, fears can play the role of binding us closer to one another. Not because another person is able to allay all of your fears—only One is powerful enough to do that—but because vulnerability stands as a key part of intimacy. To say that I have a fear around being excluded is to say that I know my love of inclusion, and know the hurt that arises when that love is disappointed. If we are able to be patient with our fears, tease out of them the loves from which they were born, then we are able to walk with another as lovers of good things. And as those who have seen those loves injured. We are able to offer space to another as a witness, a support, and a comfort.

            Leonard Cohen, in some of his most famous lines, writes:

Ring the bells that still can ring,

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack—a crack in everything,

That’s how the light gets in.

Our world being what it is, saturated with grief, sin, and loss, we have to expect our loves to take the shape of fear. Yet the grace of God means we need not be afraid of our fears. As with so much else that is broken, that’s how the light gets in.