Of course I'm afraid of things jumping out at me in the dark or falling from a large height, but two of my greatest fears are much more intangible.

I have a panic disorder, and what I really fear is the fear itself. One minute I'm fine, and the next something happens - you often don’t what sets it off coming - and the fear rises to a level that I'm paralyzed by it. Literally. I can't move, I can't breathe. Then I become hysterical. If someone is there with me, or if I'm out in public, it's so much worse; unless they know about the disorder, they have no idea why I'm frozen or why I suddenly start yelling at them or crying apparently out of the blue. They think I'm high-strung or rude or just plain unbalanced, when what I'm really seeking to do is to find the balance, the solution, that will let me be myself again. How do I overcome this? Brute force. It's the only way. Each time something happens, I have to will myself 1) not to respond hysterically, and 2) to push past the incident and move forward. Always move forward. It takes a lot of practice (years sometimes), and you have to be very vigilant. If you give in to the fear even one time, it opens the door for many more paralyzing encounters.

The second is losing my hold on who and what I am, beginning down the path to dementia. I NEVER want to be in a position where I don't remember my name or my husband's face, where I can’t craft words, and where everyone else has to watch me wither away until I'm just an empty shell. I am writing up an advanced directive to that end. If I should find myself in that position, I hope that someone will help me make a graceful exit and not prolong any of our agony. All I truly own is myself; I want to have control of that person until the very end.

#overcomingfear #challenge

When there were things as Malls - real malls, not the strip malls they have now - I would sweat and get nervous when I got passed the opening and into the center courts or escalators. When I got to these vast areas and I could see down or up to the high levels, I would almost faint or drop to the ground.

It was the wide open spaces and the unnatural urge to leap over the railing that made me want to hug the floor. But I couldn't just hug the floor, so much to the chagrin of whoever I was with - I would hug the walls. Sweat coming from my forehead and a hand on the wall to ground myself from giving into the urge to leap over.

That was the way it was for me since I can remember as a kid. But I think I was in my early twenties when I started facing my fears. Because these fears I had, and I had a lot, were stopping me from doing things. I didn't want that in my life. And this was the first one to get over.

So, this is how I started getting over this fear of heights. I chose to break it apart. I started with railings from second floors in malls at first and then everything after that...just in small steps. I just started telling myself over and over that I could do it. And I would start walking closer to the railing on the second levels. Til I had one hand on the railing.

Then two hands...then a little while later, standing right next to the rail looking down. This wasn't over night, this took literally years. I just willed myself over there, taking things one at a time till I got past these fears.

But every now and then, it came back, like at Disney's Contemporary resort when I looked over the side in the main building... thought I was going to be sick. I don't think we conquer our fears, I think we just learn to face them.