January 7: Overcoming Fears

Fear is a funny thing. It can often be crippling to one's life if it becomes an uncontrollable obsession, but also motivating, and perhaps even a safety mechanism, when managed properly. As an adult, we like to think that most of our fears become manageable, until something like parenthood comes along and we inherit a whole new set of fears focusing on our kids, their health and their safety. This recently came to the forefront of my life when my wife and I discovered that my daughter has a tree nut allergy. Thankfully, it isn't a severe allergy, but the entire experience of discovery was frightening nonetheless; especially to my daughter who now is feeling the lingering effects of her fear in the form of anxiety when she's in a situation in which any kind of nuts are involved. The latest being shortness of breath when she sees or smells peanut butter; ironically to which she's not even allergic. This whole situation has resurrected my biggest fear as a child, primarily because of I've shared the stories of that fear with my daughter in an effort to help her understand that all kids are afraid of something, and to make a pact with her that we both overcome our fears together. Kind of a Daddy-Daughter support team, if you will. My primary childhood fear that still haunts me to this day: shark pictures. Yep, the big fish with souless eyes, sharp teeth and those aerodynamic fins. Hilarious, huh? I have a fear of shark pictures. There, I said it. The first step is admitting it, right? As foolish as it may sound. I trace the fear back to one day at the eye doctor's office where, while waiting for my Mom and Sister to see the doc, I came across a horrifying photo of a Great White Shark, taken from the inside of a shark cage, with it's mouth gaping open against the cage. To compund this terror, the book was an oversized Time-Life book of animals. So, it was a very large photo. Since that moment, I have not been able to turn a single page in any book involving sharks or the ocean. And, when leafing through any magazine from "Entertainment Weekly" to "Sports Illustrated" to "Real Simple" (although, as a guy, I don't ever read that one...jeez), I cautiously flip each page holding my breath in fear of that photo being on the next spread. It probably didn't help that through adolescence my Sister use to terrorize me by chasing me around the house with shark photos she found in a magazine; but I'll save the details of that story for another time. Anyway, so back to group therapy with my kids. To show my daughter that fear can be defeated, and hopefully help her cope with her own nutty fears (literally), I agreed to turn 5 pages of a shark book that my Mom bought me years ago as a tool for overcoming my fear (as you can tell, that never worked, but she had good intentions). And, you know what, I did it! In fact, driven by my kids' supportive cheers, I actually turned 10 pages. It scared the hell out of me to do it and, in hindsight, we probably should be thankful I didn't drop from a heart attack. But, I did it. They say "love can move mountains", and, in this case, it moved one Father a step closer to getting past old fears and trying new things for the sake of his kids.