Breaking the Cycle of Fear Based Conditioning

by Beverley Paine, Dec 29, 2018

My first New Year resolution is to remove fear from my choices. It's not the kind of fear that we all feel in moments of stress, when stuff happens that we'd ra ther it didn't, etc. The fear I'm talking about is the background stuff that we've been conditioned to experience from birth. As I observe my behaviour around my children and grandchildren I am aware that so many of my actions and habits arise from these conditioned fear, many of them resultant from the incessant pressure to conform to arbitrary societal 'norms'.

As a very young person I watched my sister, at odds with many of these 'norms', 'disciplined' frequently and did my utmost to avoid the same fate, embedding fear at the core of many of my reactions, responses and habits.

Over time I began to distrust my abilities and understanding - I can actually remember moments from my childhood where this happened. Desperate to fit in and be accepted, I tried to become the person others wanted me to be, and when that wasn't possible I retreated into my imagination and the wonderful world of other people's imagination via books. As an adult it has been easier to avoid social situations.

One of the fears carried over from my childhood that haunts me the most is fear of getting something wrong, not doing it right, of making mistakes, stuffing up, and causing waste or damage as a result. That's a big one. I see adults chastising children for the little mishaps they have, especially young children who are their most experimental, happily and busily exploring the world, deeply engaged in usually urgent or compelling learning to fully understand the implications of the outcomes of their actions. I find myself doing that too - it's a hard habit to break - this fear that things will break or make a mess or cause waste. And I continually challenge and question it because my inner child rebels...

I'm glad that inner child found her voice when my first child was born - rocking my world with her grief and confusion and declaring very loudly to me "no more!" I am glad that I listened and learned from the lessons my children brought to my life, heeded my at first hesitant desire to go against social norms and be a different kind of parent. I'm glad I sought out advice from authors such as Penelope Leach, John Holt, Alfie Kohn, Jean Leidloff, Wendy Priesnitz, and in more recent years, Freya Dawson and others.

I am heading into my seventh decade and I am still working on breaking those fear based habits. So many of us are unaware that a lot of the small daily choices we make each day are determined by habits that were cemented in place by fear during our childhood.