An Evil and Corroding Thread: The Pervasiveness of Fear. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Fear: Secular and Spiritual Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Fear as a Concern-based Construal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Fear and Anxiety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Fear of Loss and Failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
The Denial of Fear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155
Healthy and Unhealthy Fear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .158
Taking Inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Self-centered Fear: Possessive and Demanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Self-centered Fear: Excess and Disorder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .161
Self-centered Fear: Self-sufficiency and Self-reliance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Self-centered Fear: Chief Activator of Defects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Emotional Sobriety: Freedom from Fear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
The Basic Antidote . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Humility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Courage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Gratitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .173
“Sometimes people in the rooms talk as if Step 4 in the Big Book is only about resentments. That impression is understandable. After all, we are asked to make a “grudge” list, and the example we are given is about the people “I’m resentful at.” Since we generally tend to gloss over the little table, we may not pay much attention to the other emotion listed. Besides, this emotion is only noted parenthetically, making it seem less important.
An Evil and Corroding Thread: The Pervasiveness of Fear
The pervasiveness of fear is the reason why the emotion is noted alongside each of the “difficulties” listed in the Big Book sample. For a close reading will show that fear is intertwined with resentment in each and every one of those situations. Anonymous John is as fearful as he is resentful. He resents Brown for meddling in his marriage—while fearing he might take his wife and his job; he resents Mrs. Jones for committing his drinking buddy—while fearing his own wife might do the same to him; he resents his employer for being overbearing and unfair—while fearing he might fire him, and he resents his wife for liking Brown—while fearing she may dump him for the man and take the house to boot.
That fear should be so closely linked to John’s anger and resentment is not surprising. Fear and anger are both defensive, protective emotions. Eyeing different aspects of the same situation may alternately elicit one or the other. Anger, however, protects and defends overtly via aggressive, offensive action. Fear, by contrast, protects and defends by holding back and lying low. This renders the presence of fear less evident, and it makes its connection to anger harder to detect when we take inventory. Moreover, pride makes us generally more ready to admit to anger (which we see as a strength and as saying something negative about others) than to fear (which we see as a weakness and as saying something negative about us). In this way too, anger seeks to compensate for and to displace fear—while hiding it from view. Whether or not linked to anger, we are nevertheless urged to “review” our fears “thoroughly” and to write them down in black and white. For fear can cause as much damage on its own and bring us no end of “misfortune” and “trouble” (Big Book, pp. 67–68).
. . .
Fear as a Concern-based Construal
Hence AA’s understanding of fear and emotion in general, an understanding that takes into account our essential freedom as human beings and our innate ability to choose. As we have contended in our exegesis of our two basic texts, an emotion is a construal of how something we value is affected in a given situation. Our freedom lies in our unique ability to impart such value to things. We turn them into matters of personal meaning to us and this forms the basis of our perception of how they may be impacted. With fear, the perception is of threat. When we see a threat to something we care about, we naturally respond with that emotion. Our fear, then, is not triggered by a threat, but—if it can be said to be triggered at all—by our concern-based construal of that threat.
The Big Book sample is paradigmatic. John sees Mr. Brown, Mrs. Jones, his boss, and his wife, as threats variously to his marriage, his job, his freedom, his financial security, and his home. These things are all important to him, and they all seem to be at risk. Hence his fear.
. . .
Taking Inventory
There is healthy fear and unhealthy fear. One prevents harm, the other causes it. The latter is what the AA texts address. When the Big Book talks about fear being the product of a failed self-reliance and the 12&12 about its being the chief activator of our defects, they are not referencing fear in general. They are describing a fear that is a telling symptom of our illness, an emotion that under the influence of our spiritual disease has become seriously disordered. Not fear but “self-centered fear” is the soul-sickness, the evil and corroding thread.
. . .
Emotional Sobriety: Freedom from Fear
Our inventory of fears is intended to help us come to a point in our spiritual journey where we recognize our radical insufficiency and admit our complete dependence on God. That is where the decision we made in Step 3 to turn our will and our lives over to his care is intended to take us. We are naturally dependent beings—“dependent rational animals,” as Alistair McIntyre puts it. That is irrefutable. The question is whether we recognize the true nature of that dependence.
If we don’t, we cannot but default to a false dependence. For depend we must. Bill attributed his chronic depression to his repeated failure to satisfy his unhealthy dependencies and demands. It works like that with fear. Unhealthy dependencies and demands produce unhealthy, self-centered fears. Something has become too important for us. We want it too badly. As we examine each fear, therefore, we need to ask ourselves what this thing is. What are we so needy for, that the prospect of losing or failing to get it fills us with such apprehension? What are we so hooked on, so attached to, that it renders us so possessive and demanding? To what extent are we relying on this thing for our self-esteem and our self-worth, for our significance and security, to fulfill our needs for meaning and purpose? To what extent have we become dependent on these things for our happiness?”
– From Part II: Emotions, Chapter 9: Fear and Anxiety, pp. 147–148, 150, 159, 167
For more PTP4 Excerpts, please click on link.