overcoming fear

September 21, 2025

Where Did All the Bullies Go?

When I was a kid, like all the boys who came before and after me, I learned to deal with bullies. Some fellows fled, others took them on.

One young man-mountain, who was tall and overweight, sat on me once. Another, whose fiery red hair matched the impression that I should stay away, had a beautiful girlfriend whose mother abused her.

She was drawn to such people.

No matter, I stood my ground in defense of one of my brothers and discovered it was worse to be a coward than to take a licking. A few lickings.

At my pugilistic best, I knocked the air out of a classmate named Ernie. It was terrifying to watch him on the ground, writhing and gasping for breath. There is no satisfaction in doing harm, no matter the justification.

As I got older, I discovered that I did better with words than fists. I didn’t always prevail, but I became the person I wanted to be over the course of years.

Matching wits in cross-examination as an expert witness is exhilarating and exhausting, but informs you who you are if you don’t already know. I excelled at it, though it wasn’t a large part of my practice.

Bullies are still present in the world, even though I am well past the point of a street brawl. And while I am not a joiner, you will find me at some rallies and marches. The cause is just, and the exhilaration of a courtroom joust is not so different than joining others for a worthy cause.

The photo above is somewhat like a man in an empty suit. He tries to scare you, but there is really not much to him.

Life is full of tough guys, and we all encounter frauds like the Wizard of Oz, but when you check behind the screen, the loud boasting reminds you of the kids who used to push you around if you let them.

I am old, and I got tired of being afraid some time ago.

As the Stoics of antiquity remind us, tests offer opportunities. Seneca wrote: 

Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths.

Only then do we discover who we are. 

I am not very pleased to take on such contests. I wasn’t, either, as a kid, but it was necessary then, and it is needed now.

I have grandchildren, you know.

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The “Ghost Sculpture” was sourced from James Lucas on Substack. 

 

 

July 20, 2025

The Things We Fear, the Things We Overcome

If I Knew the World Ended Tomorrow, I Would Plant an Apple Tree Today by Herakut in Berlin.

—

“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Do not become bitter or hostile. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble. We will find a way to make a way out of no way.” John Lewis 2/21/40 — 7/17/20

The fears listed below can be overcome. Not always, but with time, patience, effort, and a helping hand. Not always, but with hope, courage, resilience, and an awareness of your previous triumphs over adversity.

Here are some of the usual suspects:

A broken heart.

Failure.

Revealing ourselves to ourselves.

Opening up.

Breaking down.

Watching our parents age.

Incapacity.

Fear of abandonment.

Nakedness.

Speaking in public.

Confronting change.

Change in those to whom we are close.

Mortality.

The death of those we love.

Friends who move away.

Fear of being thought of as too sensitive.

Others who take us for granted.

Ingratitude.

The unknown.

The Great Challenge by Nicholas Lavarenne at Antibes on the French Riviera, sourced from James Lucas on Substack

What others say about us.

Not having enough money.

The weight of responsibility.

Those who expect too much.

Being forgotten.

Fear of fascism.

Being remembered for our moments of humiliation.

Those who see through the masks we wear.

Being thought of as fake.

Being alone.

Being with others.

Groups.

As children, the slowness of time.

As adults, the speed of time.

Holding the gaze of another.

Being unseen.

Silence in conversation.

Speechlessness.

Signs (like the other yawning) that you interpret as your fault.

Having others visit your home.

Believing you are a coward.

Making phone calls.

Regret, especially in old age, or when the regretful action can no longer be remedied.

Fear of losing your job.

Triple Play by Fan Ho.

Fear of staying in your job.

Fear of looking for a job.

The criticism of a parent or a boss.

Taking a public position, in speech or writing, in a politically challenging moment.

Fear for the well-being of your children and grandchildren.

Being shamed.

Commitment.

Fear of doing nothing.

Loneliness.

Fear of going to a therapist for the first time.

Fear that we don’t know what or who to believe.

You fear you are not

strong enough to do

the hardest thing

only because you don’t

yet know that doing

the hardest thing

is exactly what will help

you know your strength.

Andrea Gibson 8/13/75 — 7/14/25

If you appreciated Gibson’s poem, try watching them perform “Ode to the Public Panic Attack.”

May 4, 2025

Finding Your Voice

Many struggle to fathom why they fail to act when it would benefit them. They might recognize the pattern, but do not understand where it originated. “That’s just me,” they think, or “That’s for someone else to try, not I.”

Thus, self-assertion takes the shape of a mountain in the distance, intimidating to the point of premature defeat.

Such a life is fear-based, explained in the language of rationalization.

The composer John Cage created a piece entitled “4’33.” It consists of a performer coming on stage, sitting down, and waiting four and a half minutes without making a sound, though he holds his instrument. 

Only then does he bow and depart. As Cage wrote in a poem, “I have nothing to say, and I’m saying it.”

“4’33” is one thing. Letting your lifetime pass is another. This is the time to speak, as it always is, as it always has been.

Be careful of small talk when it becomes too small. People are increasingly afraid of mentioning anything controversial. If you want to be interesting, you might have to say something worth considering, perhaps after some study.

You can view this as a threat or an opportunity. Individuals with worthwhile and well-expressed ideas may not be invited to the next party, but could be the show’s star.

If you see the world as a place full of adult-version playground bullies, you have a problem. It’s not that they don’t exist, but that we assign them unwarranted credit.

Would-be bullies think of themselves as the Big Bad Wolf, able to blow down any home. The reverse can be true. Most of the blowhards can’t take a blow.

Practice saying no. No is a complete sentence, not requiring explanation. Learn to repeat it and take back your life. If you want some reinforcements, find the growing number of people who realize fighting back is the antidote for anxiety.

Walking together is enlivening. Sometimes, around disagreeable or threatening people, prepare to walk away. Again, no words are required, but try to have transportation nearby.

Living in dread of a repetition of what has happened, what is happening, or what might yet happen offers unhappiness and a self-fulfilling prophecy. Past, present, and future are compromised thereby.

The anticipatory anxiety squeezes out all room for joy. Make friends, collaborate with both the nervous and the unafraid. Some will be buddies with whom you laugh a lot.

You have been here before. Do you wish to be subservient the rest of your life? Part of life involves taking things on. The only question is which ones and when.

Hiding is no escape from worry. Those who seek shelter from our chaotic world discover unkind bosses, dismissive parents, unfair competitors, teachers who are petty dictators, and abusive mates who still invade their path.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ — Eleanor Roosevelt

Consider being scary periodically. It is another antidote for terror.

The point here is to take control of something, however small or intimidating, and find agency within. Do not wear a “Kick Me” sign on your back.

Remember what you have told your children.

Imperfect action takes you anywhere you want faster than perfect inaction.

The old saying tells us, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

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The top image is Norman Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech from The Four Freedoms. Below it follows Eleanor Roosevelt, from 1949. Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

April 3, 2025

Spinning Beyond Our Fear

 

Reverend William Sloane Coffin could put a spin you hadn’t thought of on an idea you believed you knew all about. Imagine him playing with a top, the well-known child’s toy, and flipping it so that it moved in a fashion that defied gravity. He took on grave matters that terrify us, turned them around, and offered hope.

Jaw-dropping and sometimes joy-enhancing.

Here is his definition of patriotism, split into three:

There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good. The bad are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover’s quarrel with their country, a reflection of God’s lover’s quarrel with all the world.

Savoring this will expand its meanings. In Coffin’s words about being good citizens, he speaks of the human tendency toward thoughtless admiration on one side and finding too much fault on the other. Love of country and the lover’s tenacious effort to establish “a more perfect union” were closer to what he believed was “good patriotism.”

Coffin was a fearless advocate and activist in the latter effort, “putting his money where his mouth was.”

As Winston Churchill said to rally the British people in World War II:

“This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” —Harrow School, 29 October 1941.

Here is a successor to those great men, a woman, who has picked up their baton and run with it. If you don’t know who she is, you soon will. She offers a way forward and speaks not least for those who are afraid. The lady in question, Mallory McMorrow, is fearless:

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The top image is called Gyroscope Precision. It is Lucas Vieira’s work, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

June 22, 2023

“Do One Thing Every Day That Scares You”

The title by itself is scary. Will you read the post, or are you already put off by the possibility it will unsettle you?

After all, your flesh is not a suit of armor, and the daily news carries enough trouble before 10:00 a.m. to fill the whole day.

The problem with anxiety is that it waits with infinite patience. Hiding from it means it will pop up on its own schedule as an uninvited companion, knowing it can have its way whenever it wants to. Terror is like a schoolyard bully who smiles when he reads the “Kick Me” sign on your back.

I’m guessing the name Eleanor Roosevelt is not familiar to the majority of Americans, but she is the person who said, “Do one thing every day that scares you.”

This woman was scared as a child, friendless, terrified of the dark, and much else. Did I say she became the wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the U.S. President from 1933 to 1945? The Chief Executive had his own challenges, including confinement in a wheelchair from which he couldn’t escape without assistance.

His future spouse, who would survive her husband by 17 years, was timid, unattractive, and lonely growing up. The early deaths of her parents left her with a severe, rejecting grandmother. Yet, she recreated herself as something more than a hesitant ugly duckling: “No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and loyalty are stamped upon her face all will be attracted to her.”

Mrs. Roosevelt achieved world fame as more than the country’s First Lady. She took advantage of her position as a champion of civil rights for African Americans and brought dark-skinned guests into the White House. As a widow, Mrs. R. was appointed the spokesperson for her country as the U.S. Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. 

The insecure child molded her fragile self into a fearless spokeswoman for her husband and on behalf of causes in which she believed. Not satisfied to vanish into a man’s shadow, her voice was heard everywhere. 

In a conversation around 1957, the interviewer asked her about dread and the courage to overcome it:

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. Your are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

This woman did not take her privileged life for granted, nor did she glory in jewelry or high fashion.

The influential and wealthy family she was born into believed in noblesse oblige. These two French words describe the obligation of all those at the highest reaches of life to display generosity to people in need.

Might you wish to employ this woman’s suggestion about overcoming fear?

Act. Don’t wait. Take small steps. 

Make the phone call you dread, ask the favor you expect to be rejected or say no to someone who never reciprocates your kindness. 

Take an elevator to the top floor of the tallest building you can find, ride a roller coaster, or eat something new. 

Tell a joke and defend yourself when the bully shows up.

Fashion your own list of uncomfortable situations, such as eating in a restaurant alone or visiting a part of the city unfamiliar to you. Rank the items and begin at the bottom, the easiest.

Think of your day as a chance to experiment, to play with your life like a game. The crowd won’t remember you if you stumble. These spectators are far too preoccupied with themselves.

The Chinese word Weiji speaks to the issue of managing the kind of discomfort the former First Lady had in mind. The term is comprised of two characters. The first means dangerous or precarious. The second refers to a change point. In effect, we must adapt, remake ourselves, and overcome situations in our power to master.

As Eleanor Roosevelt conceived of life, each day carried many possibilities. Each person’s job was to use them.

Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.

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All but the July 1933 photo of the 48-year-old Eleanor Roosevelt are the work of the wonderful photographer/artist Laura Hedien, with her permission: Laura Hedien Official Website.

The top image is a Supercell Storm Near Springfield, CO, on June 16, 2023. The Bald Eagle Along the Mississippi River, IL, was taken in April of the same year. Finally, a Grain Elevator Reflection, Nebraska, May 2023.

April 24, 2022

Outgrowing Our Problems

At our best, we don’t so much solve our problems as outgrow them. We add capacities and experiences that eventually make us triumphant over many of them.

An example: the luckiest of us sustain few losses early in life. With time the balance begins to shift, often with the departure of friends, but most of us can discover and recover the ability to flourish.

We persist. Moreover, according to Spinoza, the drive to persist appears to be built into us — part of our essence.

Those who understand the conditions of human existence realize tests of our competencies don’t end. These require the development of self-assertion, controlling our emotions, discovering how to persuade others, making and sustaining friendships, and giving up the dependence on defenders because we believe ourselves incapable of self-defense.

The unhappiness following disappointment and loss can stop us if we allow it to become a permanent limitation.

Life gives us many challenges and chances to learn from such situations. Backing off as a strategy invites severe consequences. The problem dominates us, and the impediment grows. The failure and trepidation wait for us to find the bravery inside. They are supremely patient.

If we reach the point of taking on that which defeats us, the dilemma recedes. The Goliath-like stumbling block shrinks, and our strengths increase.

We have grown out of the trouble, taken confidence from victory over the internal issue, and moved on to greater assurance in the capacity to master what comes next. Life may begin to appear less threatening.

Our scope has widened. We are no longer children competing with older kids or adults or humans confronting imaginary giants. Thanks to self-enlargement, our vision might even recognize happiness in the distance or present.

People have no choice but to make peace with life’s demands. Acceptance, gratitude, and the necessity of action are fundamental. Knowing when each of these fits the moment is essential.

The demons within exist side by side with the knowledge to surpass them, awaiting our discovery.

Success needn’t be defined as the acclaim of a crowd. Owning shortcomings and facing what we must do to overcome them achieves self-generated wealth in human, not financial terms: a gift we earn ourselves.

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The photo called Happiness is Wellness is the work of GiftedLydia and sourced from Wikimedia Commons.