The Dark

"Feel shame only where shame is due. Fear only what is fearful. See evil only in what is evil. Lest you mistake the true way and fall into darkness."

Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandmother. She subscribed to the guilt and fear model of parenting in order to "protect" us from the world. In this world there were "drug fiends" on every corner just waiting to inject us with heroin and get us hooked. There were strangers who wanted to give us poison candy before kidnapping us. If I didn't look two ways before crossing the street, I would surely end up like my grandmother's childhood best friend, wrapped around the front tire of a delivery truck.  For a period of a few hours, I literally believed that Hitler lived in my neighborhood and that I had to find a good hiding place for when the SS came knocking on our door. If I wanted anything, I was spoiled. If I didn't want something, I was ungrateful. Cab drivers and movers will always try to rob you and so on. And all of this information was communicated to me by the first grade.

I had my first experience with anxiety the summer between first and second grade. I just woke up one day and didn't want to get out of bed. I had a tightness in my chest and a knot in my stomach and just didn't know why. I felt guilty about things that had nothing to do with me, like news items that I pictured I was somehow implicated in. Looking back, I can see the connection between my grandmother's "schooling" and how I internalized it.

What finally got me over that first episode was my father repeating Roosevelt's words: "There is nothing to fear but fear itself."  Sure, it might sound trite, but for a second grader hearing those words for the first time, it was quite comforting. It brought me back to the fact that there was nothing really to be afraid of or feel bad about.

If we look at the things we feel shamed about, are afraid of, demonize and question those thoughts and underlying assumptions, I think we'd be surprised that there's nothing to back them up: "There is nothing to fear but fear itself."