Men and Fear
Readers of this column may remember a previous article entitled “Men and the F Word”. Judging from phone calls, it was well received. The topic was FEELINGS and one of the major points in that article is that given healthy coaching, men are eager and willing to consider their feelings and express them appropriately. Several months later, I wrote “Men and the Other F
Word: FUN”. The essence of the article is that we men have lost the little kid in us who knew how to and wanted to have fun. For us men, the boundaries between fun and leisure and work have blurred greatly. So much of our leisure time, ideally directed towards fun has become time spent producing goals or services or enhancing our work world. So much for that F word. Now, in this article, come more F words. Five more, to be exact, but one is the basis and origin of the other four. That word is FEAR (False Evidence Appearing Real). I think that most men can relate to the fact that it is exceedingly difficult to say “I’m afraid of…” Fear isn’t something that men (or boys of a certain age) are supposed to feel. In fact, we spend a lot of energy trying to fool ourselves and others, both men and women, into thinking that we’re not afraid. Often we don’t even know we’re afraid and thus can hardly admit it. I just spent a solid half hour looking through the index and table of contents of about ten books that deal with men and men’s issues. I was looking for anything relating to fear and men. I found absolutely nothing, yet this does not correspond to what I have experienced personally regarding my own fears and what I have witnessed professionally listening to men talk about their fears. Maybe we share them with the women in our lives, but this is often under duress or in crisis moments. How- ever, we’re so used to keeping our fears to ourselves that when we finally make a crack, the floodgates open. What are we men afraid of? The following is a very partial list that I have been honored to hear men talk about: fear of losing our wives or girlfriends, fear of our bodies changing, fear of being alone, dying, fear of our fathers, that we’re not good fathers, fear of not providing financially, of not being a man, fear of not being good enough.
Unless we know what our fears are and can take the risk of putting them into the light of day, we will conduct our lives acting or reacting badly to the myriad events in our daily lives at work and at home. How do we react to the fears? More F words: fight, flight, freeze, faint.
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Fight is the most obvious. It’s more than putting up our dukes and saber rattling, though many men do that too. Fight response also involves arguing constantly, defending and offending. The anger comes out, the voice gets louder, the body tenses and we try to intimidate the other, even if the other is a woman or child. And under- neath all this is FEAR. Freeze is stiffening up, being immobile physically and/or emotionally. If I freeze, maybe they, he, she, it won’t notice me and just pass me by. If we freeze we don’t have to feel anything especially FEAR. Flight is literally turning around and leaving the
scene. We can do this physically by removing ourselves or emotionally: our body might still be present but we disappear into withdrawal or shutdown. By taking our- selves away from the threatening presence, we feel safer. We’ll do anything to protect ourselves by disappearing as fast as we can. And, underneath all this is FEAR. Faint is perhaps the least common of the defenses, but it works well too. Faint could be literal as in losing consciousness and falling down. However, as a reaction to fear, faint really means numbing out, going deaf and dumb and standing there without consciousness. Playing dead works for opossums. Nobody wants to touch or go near bodies that look dead or act dead. I myself can think of three times when I fainted and it all had to do with medical emergencies that I was dealing with. Underneath there was FEAR.
This F word is always lurking and it is especially well hidden under our anger. The next time you’re “triggered” (having an emotional reaction) you might want to identify which of the fear responses you are experiencing. Then take it a little further and ask your- self, “What am I really feeling? What am I afraid of? What am I really afraid of?” We truly enrich our lives as we become more and more conscious of our feelings and what we do with them. We men really do have emotions and it’s our responsibility to get in touch with them for our own health and healing and for the health and healing of those around us.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Joseph Maurino is a Licensed Clinical Social
Worker who practices in Paramus, NJ. He specializes in supporting males of all ages to deal with issues particular to men. Joseph also does couple to couple counseling with his wife, Marina. He can be reached at 201- 261-9129
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