Beyond Fear. Dorothy Rowe

reality - what went on inside him or what went on outside him?

      He said, ‘Internal reality is far more real. I tend to believe that far more than my external reality.’ He went on to say that while he wanted approval, when he did actually gain it it no longer meant anything to him. ‘I think the difference is, if I’ve got things sorted out and I know I’ve done a good job, I can reward myself, but if it’s on the periphery of that, if I’m not sure whether I’ve done a good job or taken the right direction, then it’s very important and I really appreciate it.’

      ‘So getting approval makes things more clear for you.’

      ‘Yes.’

      If extraverts are left in isolation they are in danger of being overwhelmed by the emptiness within them. Under stress they continue to perceive their external reality as ordinary, but it becomes dangerous. If introverts are left in isolation they are in danger of retreating into their internal reality and losing the ability to distinguish internal from external reality. Under stress they find that external reality becomes increasingly strange.

      We need other people to help us structure ourselves and our world, but it is other people who threaten the structures we create. When they disappoint, leave, reject or betray us they show us that we were wrong in our expectations. When they criticize and correct us they show us that our meaning structure may not be an accurate picture of what is going on. When they press their ideas upon us or try to force us to be what they want us to be they threaten us with annihilation. We have to learn ways to defend ourselves.

A Choice of Defences

      As our meaning structure establishes itself it builds defences so as to hold itself together. We create ways of conforming to society’s demands while at the same time resisting such demands. If your parents sent to you to a school where each child had to wear an identical uniform you conformed but you defended yourself by wearing your skirt a fraction shorter than regulation, or you battered your hat and wore it at a rakish tilt. If you were expected to sit quietly through long, boring church services you defended yourself by escaping into fantasy or developing private games. When people criticized you you developed a nonchalant air, or a sudden and complete deafness, or a quick wit which stung your critics and amused onlookers. As an introvert you developed methods of organization and control which, when practised, gave you a sense of achievement. As an extravert you developed your charm and gathered around you a host of friends and acquaintances.

      However, defences such as these require considerable self-confidence to create and use. The less self-confidence we have the more vulnerable we are to the encroachments other people make on us. The more vulnerable we are the more desperate are the defences we need. If we lose all self-confidence and we come to feel that we are irredeemably bad and utterly valueless, we have to resort to the most desperate of defences, those behaviours which psychiatrists call the mental illnesses.

      Whatever defences we choose, these defences have both to ward off those encroachments which threaten annihilation and to contain our fear. To create an effective defence we need to know just what we are defending against. An army commander collects all possible information about his enemy before he decides just how he will defend his position. Similarly, we need to be clear about the nature of the threat to us before we construct a defence. However, sometimes the threat is so frightening that we cannot bring ourselves to acknowledge it. For instance, some people cannot bear to acknowledge that those they are closest to and on whom they depend are a major danger to them. More frequently, the threat that cannot be acknowledged is the fear that they feel. Many of us find fear to be too fearful to acknowledge, and so one of the defences we can choose is to deny that we are afraid.

       Chapter Three Fear Denied

      We cannot live without denying. We have to shut things out. We have to say to ourselves, ‘No, no, that’s not there. It didn’t happen. I’ll take no notice.’ If we did not do this we would be overwhelmed by the multitude of things going on around us and inside us.

      We ignore the noise of the traffic outside our house while we concentrate on watching television. We ignore our sense of tiredness while we push on to finish an important task. We ignore our fear as we rush to save someone else from danger, and when we are commended for our bravery we say, ‘It was nothing. Anyone would have done the same.’

      We all know that such denial is necessary in times of stress. By denying painful facts and emotions we become brave. However, such denial is just for a brief period of time. Later we can acknowledge the noise of the traffic, or our tiredness, or, in the privacy of our own home, feel the fear unfelt at the time of danger. Now our experience accords with reality and all is well.

      On the other hand, if we do not do this, if we go on and on denying what is happening, then we start to get into difficulties because our experience accords less and less with reality. Denying the aggravating noise of the traffic, we might get angry with our children for being unruly because our denied thought is ‘I bought this house and I’m not going to admit I made a mistake’. Denying awareness of tiredness, we refuse to rest and so become ill, all because our rule for living is ‘It is my responsibility to see that my family are perfectly happy all the time’. Denying awareness of fear, we feel pain and breathlessness, suspect a faulty heart and await imminent death, but we tell ourselves, ‘My father would despise me as a coward if I admitted being afraid.’

Denying Fear as ‘Character’

      Long-term denial puts us further and further out of touch with reality. If we start this kind of denial early enough and practise it assiduously enough we forget that we are denying, and we see the ways in which we deny fear as fixities, part of what we call our personality or character. The long-term denial of fear produces a number of different kinds of ‘character’.

      There is the person who is always practical, sensible and down-to-earth. Such people never indulge in fantasy or consider those questions for which there are no practical answers. In my years in the National Health Service I met these characters frequently. There were the administrators who divided the number of patients attending by the number of staff in a psychotherapy unit, decided that the resulting figure was ‘uneconomic’ and closed the unit, all without taking the trouble to find out what actually went on in such places and without balancing the cost of such a place against the cost of each person who, deprived of his attendance at the unit for one or two days a week, became a long-term in-patient. There were the psychiatrists who would assure a frightened, depressed woman that she had a good husband, a nice home, and that she should count her blessings, without once pausing to consider what it must be like to be forced by an unwanted pregnancy and poverty to share a house with a man who beats you up on a Friday night and enjoys his marital rights on a Saturday night, and to know that such a future stretches ahead with death as the only escape. I have tried to explain the subtleties and complexities of such matters to such administrators and psychiatrists, but it is like trying to explain colour to the innately blind.

      There is the person who is always busy keeping busy. This is not a successful denial of fear, because the busy person is well aware that stopping being busy means becoming frightened. However, rather than face this fear, the busy person keeps dashing around, doing things, often at the expense of loved ones, who would dearly like to be given a generous share of the busy person’s time or be allowed to order their own lives, and their bedrooms, in their own way, not the busy person’s way. Busy people dash around doing things at the expense too of their own needs and health.

      Betty’s husband Roy had come to see me because he could not work. Betty was surprised when I asked whether she would come along to one of our meetings. There was nothing wrong with her, but if it would help Roy she would come. So she did, and talked about herself.