Conquering Fears

Everyone has a fear. Some people fear spiders, or heights, or as someone mentioned to me the other day; fear of falling - not heights. There are countless websites devoted to phobias. I've gotten to a point that I'm tired of dealing with some of my fears. I feel the need to conquer them. Some are common fears - like heights, and others are not so common - like clowns. There are others that are a little more complex - like fearing being comfortable with someone, or fearing that something may actually work out.

Clowns - this is how it happened. A long time ago, my grandmother gave me and my sister these ceramic clowns that played music. We couldn't really play with them, so they made their way to shelves where they were kept. Then it happened...In the middle of the night, these clowns - which hadn't been touched in months - begin to play music, as though they had been wound up. To a child, this was really traumatic. This also happened to be around the time that Poltergeist came out. So we were convinced that there were ghosts in our room. We tried really hard to ignore it, but every so often, these clowns would just start up on their own. After a while of this, we couldn't take it anymore - they were as good as gone! Even though the clowns were gone, the fear didn't leave with them. Everytime I see a clown, I am almost reduced to tears, and my first instinct is to run.

Having children makes this fear a little more difficult to manage. They've been invited to birthday parties that were with a clown theme, they've never been to the circus - all because of me. I've got to work through this. Not really sure how yet, but I'll work on it.

I also have this fear that things won't work - like relationships. I've always waited for things to go bad, for things not to work out. I'm not really sure why I'm like that. Maybe its because I didn't really see relationships working out as a child; hell, my dad's been married 5 times! Going forward, I want to work on a relationship. I want it to work, I don't want to look for the problems in the relationship, but at the same time, I don't want to overlook problems. I cannot constantly wait for the other shoe to drop, for him to turn into the jackass that I knew he always was. I want to know that I have a good man, one that loves me and is there for me, one that is confidant in himself, and trusts that I trust and support him.

"Each time we face our fear, we gain strength, courage, and confidence in the doing."