How to conquer your fear of abandonment (and horses)

Part one, by Séamus Anthony

I recently went trail-riding for the first time and I must say that before I was within 100 kilometers of a horse I was shaking in my boots. Actually I didn’t have any boots so I just wore my old sneakers, an issue that was just one more fearful thought thrown into the nervous jumble spinning in my mind as I drove towards the farm. Would I make a fool of myself in front of the tough ranch cowboys and my girlfriend? Would I fall from the horse and be badly injured? Would I get kicked? Bitten? Or simply hate the experience so much that I couldn’t stop whinging and moaning for the entire three hours proposed?

Yet despite this fear, I went along. In fact, I didn’t just go along, I instigated the trip. Sure, my girl mentioned several hundred times over the last few years that she wanted to go riding again, and even showed the website of ‘Uncle Nev’s’, the trail riding place, but it was me who picked up the phone and made the call and set aside the time to go and do it. Why? Because I wanted to face my fear. Because I don’t want to be some boring guy who never does anything he is scared of. Because I refuse to continue to allow excessive, irrational fear rule my life.

I was seeing the whole venture in analogous terms before even setting out. Recently I have been enthralled to the point of naval-gazing with the goings on of my inner-world. What is this mingle-mangle of thoughts, fears, voices, images, patterns, sounds, fantasies and projections that swirl around inside ‘my head’? I keep imagining that I have an eyeball in the centre of my (apparently brainless) skull, swiveling around, observing the swirling ghosts that shriek and zoom through the dark empty cavern of my mind-space.

What effect are these thoughts having on my life? I have no doubt they are having a massive, and very often unfortunate effect. I also believe that I am lucky enough to have a lot of positive effects stemming from this uncontrolled activity, but still, there seems to be plenty of stuff happening that would be better somehow steered in a different course. I have begun attempting to keep track of my internal dialogue – not just when I am meditating, but throughout the day. It started when I began (not for the first time) reciting my positive affirmations in the car each morning on the way to work. It seemed like a good way to use the 45 minutes of otherwise-hell stuck staring at the belching exhaust of the car in front of me, especially seeing as my car stereo doesn’t work. So I began running aloud through my list of carefully worded affirmations, some of which are already true, others of which sound like blatant lies when I recite them, so diametrically opposite to my current situations are they.

I noticed a very strange thing happening – when I recited the affirmations that were the least ‘real’ in my life, my guts would tighten up and a flurry of negative thoughts would quickly negate the affirmation.

For example, my positive affirmation: “I easily receive all of the outside help I need in order to meet my objectives”.

My involuntary physical response: My guts tighten up like a wet tea-towel being wrung out.

My involuntary internal dialogue response: No you don’t. That’s not true. Nobody cares about helping you out at all. In fact, that’s a big part of the reason that you haven’t ‘made it’ yet – the record company didn’t sign you, the publishers didn’t choose your book…

And so on. And yet if you asked people, I am quite sure they would say I am apparently a confident, optimistic, positive-thinking guy. And so I thought. But the more I observed this phenomenon, the more troubled sub-consciously I realised I was. I have been a meditator for quite a few years now, and indeed have waxed lyrical about the positive difference it has made to my life – not inconsiderable – but I have long been aware of a tightness about my guts that has remained with me throughout the ‘awareness experience’. I can temporarily ease this via breath-work, but it never really seems to be cured for good.

Driving along, noticing all of this, I began to see a clear theme emerging – fear. Long term, sub-conscious level, deeply entrenched fear. But of what? Well, of many things (although I suspect all of these fears stem from one Granddaddy Fear).

For example, I seem to be as afraid of success as I am of failure – in fact, more so. I am reasonably comfortable with obscurity, but looking back I can see patterns of self-sabotaging my various and not inconsiderable successes until they were left gasping and dying by the road of my life, as I wandered off arm-in-arm with my old friend – failure.

Also, I have noticed that I freak out whenever troubles rock my romantic boat. I think most people have this issue: one wistful comment from our beloved about the colour of the grass on the other side of the fence and we trip out. “Aagh! She/he is going to leave me! Aaaagh!” But why the panic? Our partners are treasured and special, and we don’t want to lose their affection, but we all know the sea is choc-a-bloc full of fish, should the need to pick up our … ahem … fishing rods …. cough … arise again.

I’d never heard of fear of abandonment until my boss here at LivingNow magazine, Elizabeth, brought it up one day. I guess I’d spent all my contemplative time considering Eastern philosophical notions and had never really considered the worth of the Western idea of healing our inner-child before. Then I read an article we recently ran in the magazine, cleverly titled (and appropriately themed for mention in this article), ‘Have We Put Descartes Before the Horse’ in which Larry Alboher said that we (Westerners) need to consider these notions and undergo emotional healing before we can expect to advance along our personal paths towards greater enlightenment.

On hearing Elizabeth say the words ‘fear of abandonment’, I felt something shifting inside me over a series of days. Rolling about as I was in the middle of some rocky mid-winter relationship-blues, this was making me feel even more unhinged again, so I sat down to meditate on the situation.

BAM!

Memories came flooding back, as if they had been crowding around the door waiting to be released from the back rooms of my mind. Several key incidents from my childhood, that I had either never remembered or never given any weight to, sprung up and for the first time I saw the effect that these incidents, trivial by adult standards, had had on my childhood psyche. I realised I have spent my adult life thus far, walking around with a scared-stiff child inside me who takes over and freaks out every time he perceives a repeat of past feelings of abandonment and fear coming on.

Further, because I have sub-consciously been focusing on this fear, I have of course been attracting it into my life. Basic law of metaphysics – right? No wonder the same stupid, distasteful things keep happening to me!

It’s amazing how we can know the theory – and yet be blissfully (or not) unaware of how the reality of these ideas are actually at play in our lives. Conversely it is truly wonderful how, bit by bit, as we grow through life, we can empower ourselves as we recognise issues and confront them.

But what about the horses? (Ah yes, the horses…)

My point is not to claim that I have identified all the fear-issues in my life and conquered them, but to draw the analogy between my experience of horse riding for the first time and the issues we all face with conquering fear.

We arrived at the stables just in time to join the short queue out front of the lean-to office by the corral. A jovial bloke informed us that we would need to sign our ‘death certificates’ before we embarked on the three-hour trail ride, and pushed a disclaimer form under our noses. It read in large bold type: Horse Riding Is Dangerous and May Cause Death or Serious Injury.

“That’s reassuring”, I muttered.

Continued in Part Two

Seamus Anthony is a writer, musician and entrepreneur from Melbourne, Australia. Check out loads more of his writing at Rebel Zen.