I used to be scared of a lot of things. Now, well, I�m still scared of a few things, but not as many as I used to be. When those pollsters you hear about go asking a bunch of people what they�re scared of, the most popular answer is �Public speaking.� In fact, public speaking outranks death in most people�s hierarchy of fears. That�s one that isn�t among my particular worries. I have to confess this, I�m an attention hound. Every time I see a microphone, I secretly want to be the one talking into it. It would be a bad habit to go around actually grabbing microphones and talking into them, though, especially if I made political speeches at karaoke bars, which is something I have always wanted to do but my friends always stop me from doing.
The worst fear I ever had was my fear of medical stuff. Even walking into a hospital made me feel faint. When I actually had to get blood drawn, I freaked out and had to be talked through the whole process while reading a book and looking away from my arm. This quickly became a problem for me when I got pregnant. Even with a very understanding and non-scary midwife, I had to go through a bunch of mental gymnastics before I could sit still for a blood test. Naturally I planned a home birth. I would rather do anything, even vomit (#2 on my list of phobias) than go to the hospital. When my labor started, it hurt but I could deal with it. Average first labors are about twelve hours; I figured I could stand anything for twelve hours, right? Twelve hours passed. Twelve more hours passed. The pain was getting to the please-shoot-me-quick level as I did things like walking down the street, trying to speed the process along. Yet another twelve hours passed, and I decided that I�d rather be scared with pain relief than be not-scared and hurt like hell. So I went in and got an epidural. Though the pain quickly subsided, my brain was still swimming in endorphins, which now had nowhere to go. I quickly became very high�absolutely blissed-out. In my ecstatic state, a powerful paradigm-shift occurred. While before I had always, at least unconsciously, viewed it as me versus the medical professionals, suddenly the struggle became me and all of them against Pain. I didn�t have to be afraid any more. Now I can even donate blood regularly, when I weigh enough. (A full meal and a couple quarts of juice will usually put me just above their lower weight limit.)
After I accidentally got over my worst fear, I tackled arachnophobia. Since a paradigm-shift worked before, I decided to make friends with spiders. I read about them, both fact and folklore. I started talking to the spiders in my house, naming them�I know it sounds weird, but this made them less threatening. Since orb-weavers live all around my house, and there are multitudes of spiderlings every spring, I decided that these orb-weavers were �mine.� I know how silly all of this must sound, but it worked! Within months I was able to hold a tarantula. Her feet felt non-scary, a lot like the feet of June bugs and other beetles. She would lay down a silk trail as she walked across my hands. (Less happily, I developed a mild allergy to the little hairs tarantulas shed, and went around with tarantula-rash for quite a while.) My friends were amazed at how quickly I lost my fear, and so was I. But I guess I have discovered the basic secret to overcoming fear�a change in relationship to the feared thing.
I�m still scared of barfing. It would be just too unpleasant to practice it until I could do it unafraid. I�m also still scared of heights, falling, and drowning. They seem like sensible things to be afraid of, anyway, so I�m not sure I need to stop being scared of them. Otter wants me to ride rollercoasters with him. Yeah, right. Not after seeing that show where a rollercoaster got stuck upside-down for hours! Nor do I intend to go skydiving, another foolhardy thing Otter wants us to do together. I just can�t imagine taking that step out of the airplane and into the air. Every time I imagine it, I�m unable to get out of the plane�I always chicken out at the last minute and go running back, as far from the door as possible. Sorry, Otter; if you want to take a long fall, you�re going to have to do it alone. I�ll just stand on the nice solid ground and watch. Besides, in my opinion anyway, the ultimate proof of my bravery is that, after the abnormally long labor I had, I went and had another baby anyway. Now that�s courage.
