Irrational Fear

It's what paralyses us . It stops us from acheiving , coping, reaching goals, making progress, overcoming difficulties. Given such a bad press why do we allow it to dominate us ? There's the rub . We have no choice. When it came to handing out bravery I must have been last in the queue. You know when people say , when faced with extreme danger , that somehow they just did what they had to do and didn't consider the consequences ? I worry that I don't have that gene in me. I'll be a blubbering wreck with those jelly legs you get in dreams when you try to run and can't. Fiight or flight ? I'd go for the latter every time.

So what's brought this on ? Fear of the unknown. The worst type. My youngest son sat in the dentists chair today at the Eastman Dental Hospital whilst they told me that sadly he'd lose his front tooth having knocked it out last week in a swimming pool accident. It had been expertly re-inserted by our lovely dentist and given every chance of recovery by being stapled to the adjoining tooth for extra stability . But the gum hasn't healed as it should and the tooth itself has dropped considerably , is still wobbly and worse, the gum has clearly started to recede which they can do nothing about . All this means is that we now have to go through the laborious and possibly painful process of having a plate fitted to his upper jaw with a false tooth attached as he's too young to have an implant yet.

And why does this worry so much ? It's not as if his leg's dropped off or they've just diagnosed a life threatening illness. I'm embarassed by my extreme reaction to something which is clearly, on a scale of 1 to 10 of worst things that could happen to you in life, probably only rating around a 2. It's because I don't know what the outcome is going to be . I can't anticipate how much discomfort he will have to endure. I have no way of measuring how this will affect his confidence nor how long the process will take nor wheter it will work. That's why. Fear of the unknown. The worst kind. I'm one of those awful people who has to know how things are going to work out. I can't deal with all the uncertainty.