Unwrapping Fear

When you think of something that you’re afraid of, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Maybe it’s a fear of snakes, or a fear of the dark, or a fear of small tight spaces, or a fear of heights. Maybe its something more complex like a fear of abandonment, a fear of commitment, fear of failure, or fear of pain. Maybe you’re afraid of circus clowns, or flying bugs, or maybe you’re afraid of being vulnerable. Maybe you’ve experienced life altering circumstances that have left you fearful of the world around you. The truth is we are all afraid of something, big or small, and anyone who tells you that they are fearless is simply being dishonest. Now, I want you to think about your strongest fear, the thing that first comes to mind when you think of the word ‘fear’, and I want you to think about a moment in your life when this fear held you back. Maybe you avoided going on a roller coaster with all of your friends because you couldn’t handle the height. Maybe you ended a relationship too soon because you were too scared of where it was going. Maybe your fear of failure kept you pushing for your future successes instead of allowing yourself to enjoy your present successes. Maybe your fear of social interactions kept you from forging meaningful friendships. I guarantee you we all have at least one moment in our lives where we held ourselves back because of fear when in retrospect, we wish we hadn’t. 

So what is fear? By definition according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. It’s almost as if fear is our own internal alarm system that goes off as soon as a threat is identified, and this is usually when our fight or flight response is initiated. But the problem is that something we have once identified as a threat may not always remain a threat. And how much control do we allow this alarm system to have over our mind? How often do we feel the heart racing, sweaty palm sensation of fear and willingly allow it to catapult us into a moment of judgement, hatred, anger, frustration, or isolation? Or, in my personal case, how many times do we allow fear to distort our reality and make us think we are somewhere that we are not? Maybe I’m afraid to admit to you that I am socially anxious, so I will just isolate myself and not respond to any of your messages. Maybe I am afraid to admit I’m afraid to be vulnerable with my partner so instead of communicating these feelings, I’ll lash out and end the relationship. Maybe I’ll make a joke about my fear to deflect from the important conversation of why I have that fear in the first place. When we are in the moment of letting fear take the wheel, it seems like the easiest choice, like we are protecting ourselves. But almost every time I have practiced this in my own life, I have felt defeated, guilty, and disappointed that I allowed fear to drive the car. 

Fear and anxiety go hand in hand, and they both controlled a large part of my life for a very long time. The truth is that I had been feeling a deep seeded fear and anxiety ever since I could remember, I presently cannot recall a single time growing up or in my early adult life where I truly felt safe and comfortable with myself. But the home that I grew up in did not exactly promote safety and self expression. Many of you are probably not familiar with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and I wasn’t either until this last year. Everything about me was constantly criticized, the way that I dressed, the music that I listened to, the friends that I kept (when I had friends), the heavy footed way that I walked, the movies that I liked, the sweaty palms I get when I’m nervous, the fact that I liked sports or that I was a tomboy, the way I bite the inside of my mouth when I'm nervous, the way I wore my hair, my sense of humor, how much I weighed, the way that I spoke, the facial expressions I would make, I could go on and on. Outward appearances were always important, at one point I was told to never leave the house without putting on makeup and getting ready. “Even if you’re just going up the street because you never know who you’ll run into.” I was brutally lashed out at if I faulted on my appearance in her eyes. I used to skip recess in the 3rd grade to scrub the grass stains from earlier in the day out of my pants with my teacher so I would not be screamed at when I went home. I lied in the 1st grade and said I was being bullied and was pushed in the sand because I was terrified to admit I was playing and had gotten sand in my own hair. It went all the way up to the principal, and ultimately I ended up telling the truth. The other little boy and his family were there and once he was in front of me, I couldn’t go forward with what I knew was a lie. But this was not before all of my teachers and most of the other kids knew me as a liar and tattle tale for the rest of my time at that school. I remember one Thanksgiving when I was about 10 or 11 years old where I was yelled at in front of the whole family (about 20-30 family members) because I had ripped a hole in the $100 Seven for Mankind jeans I had been made to wear while I was playing flag football with my cousins. I started bleaching the hair on my arms and my upper lip when I was in the 3rd grade. She began highlighting my hair in the 4th grade, and there was one point in the 5th grade where she had messed up my hair and it had come out an orange brassy color. She made me go to school anyway and said it wasn’t that big of a deal, I was laughed at profusely by my classmates and given the nickname ‘Blondie’ for the rest of my time there. And when I hit a rebellious streak after moving cross country in middle school and experiencing a falling out with my father (yet another story for another day) I started dressing the way I wanted to with skinny jeans from Hot Topic and band t-shirts. I would even go to school with my hair wet because that’s how much I subconsciously hated having to keep up with my appearance. I was constantly told how the jeans made me look fat, how I was trying to ugly myself down, how I looked like a ‘frumpy fucking mess’, and the real kicker, that I wouldn’t have had such a hard time with bullying if I’d tried a little harder. 

And appearances were just a piece of the pie. I might make one wrong comment and as a result receive silent treatment as a punishment for the rest of the day. If she accuses me of something, I must immediately take responsibility because denying it could be construed as ‘talking back’ and a slap to the face. I must dress the way she wants, do the activities she wants, behave the way she wants, have the friends she wants, listen to the music she wants, or endure her passive aggressive remarks. God forbid I blink when she’s talking to me because she’ll think I’ve rolled my eyes and that will result in more punishment. Don’t even think about talking to anyone about these fights and ‘airing our dirty laundry’ because that would be the ultimate betrayal. And above everything else, she must come first. Before school, before friends, before family, before responsibilities, before myself. I remember sitting across from one of my therapists back in 2016 and she said that I was not responsible for taking care of my mother. I laughed in her face, got defensive and angry, and said you just don’t know my mother. 

My whole life I was taught that her love was conditional and could be gone in an instant over something as little as a comment said the wrong way. As a child, it was incredibly confusing. At a very young age, it made me violent towards those around me, but I outgrew that quickly and as I got older, it just made me hate myself. Words are everything when you’re a child, and her vicious verbal abuses that happened every single day on a whim basis did not make me stop loving her, it made me stop loving myself. I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong, or why I would elicit her wrath in such a way. I would lie for fear of how she would react if I told her the truth, then would receive even more punishment and would earn the name of a ‘sneaky, dirty liar’ on top of it. The summer before 4th grade I was accused of hitting my little brother, which I did not do. But my mother has distrusted me for as long as I can remember, and because of my violent streak when I was 5 or 6, she has never believed me in these situations. She got less than 2 inches from my face and was screaming so loudly I could feel the spittle from her mouth spraying me. She was looking down on me and I was terrified, its probably one of the most vivid memories I have from my early childhood. I was grounded for that entire summer. And when I say grounded, I do not mean the typical way you would think of grounded. I was not allowed to leave my room. I was not allowed to have toys. I was given supervised visits to the bathroom, and after a few weeks of ‘good behavior’ I was given an hour of ‘free time’ to go about the house. The thing I remember the most was how dark my room was except for the lamp from my desk. That was the summer I started to read Harry Potter, something I was praised for in the coming years for reading such heavy material at ‘such a young age’. I built a lifelong love and solidarity with the boy who lived in the cupboard under the stairs. I would cry in my room and ask myself why I couldn’t just be good, why I couldn’t just be silent and perfect. 

Allie, age 18, senior portrait taken by Clayton Jenkins Photography

This resulted in deeply embedded existential fears that I didn’t even identify as fears until I was much older. I had never held a healthy relationship with trust, so I did not trust anyone. I grew up in an unstable environment, so I craved stability and had a fear of losing it. I learned to not depend on anyone, so I feared being in a position that I couldn’t handle alone. I craved love, but deeply feared being vulnerable. I feared what people thought of me. I feared what I thought of myself. I feared losing control because my life had felt so out of control for so long. I was deeply afraid of being alone, and even more afraid of being in a crowded room. Most of all, I was afraid of not being worthy of love. For years, I called myself fearless. When I moved out at 18 and moved across country 3 months later, I told myself that I was not taking any of this ‘garbage baggage’ with me. My therapist said this was just a way to armor myself so that I didn’t have to deal with the fears that had implanted themselves, and would control my life for 6 years after that. I spent less time at home because I was terrified of repeating the same mistakes with my daughter. I would throw myself into work because if I was doing well at work, it made me feel worthy. I drank A LOT to deal with the crippling social anxiety I felt every day. Retrospectively, I know that I was numbing myself, and it took me hitting pretty close to rock bottom back in 2016 to take myself to therapy for my depression, anxiety, and the rest of the iceberg of my trauma that I didn’t even realize was trauma at the time. 

Its painful to think about now, because my heart will always recognize just how long it spent incased in fear. It was hell to let go of these fears, like weeds that no matter how many times you pluck them they grow back in some smaller, different form. And at times it makes me sad for the younger version of myself. The hole that she carries from having spent so many years alone without love, validation, or acceptance at home or in school is a weight that I know I will carry with me for the rest of my life. But each day that weight feels a little lighter as at the young age of 27, I am finally learning what it means to love yourself, to forgive yourself, and to accept yourself as you are. I tell her everyday that you do not have to be worthy to receive love, we are all worthy of love NO MATTER WHAT. I tell her everyday that she is not defined by mistakes that she’s made or things that people do not like about her. She watches me everyday practice forgiveness, acceptance, and unconditional love with my own daughter. If I truly wanted to let go of the fear of abusing my daughter, I had to do the one thing my mother never had the courage to do, I had to take responsibility. I had to own my mistakes. I had to forgive myself for my mistakes. And I had to face my loads of baggage, unpack them, and overcome them. I had to ultimately face every single fear that was holding me back, I am being the mother to the younger version of myself that I never received. It was hell to get here, but now that I’m here, I couldn’t ever imagine not putting in the work to bring myself here. 

Its honestly crazy to think about Allie circa 2010 and Allie circa today. As this past decade drew to a close, I was drawn to look at the last 10 years in a new light. To outline absolutely everything I’ve overcome would require me to write an entire novel. Maybe I will one day. But the big things that stick out to me are that I left my abusive household 2 weeks after high school graduation in 2011. I was demanded to leave for the 3rd time that year in the middle of the night and was not allowed to grab any of my possessions, including my shoes. And when she called the next day asking me to come home, I said no. I gave up college and an internship with the athletic director at Colorado State University. I worked 3 jobs that summer to make ends meet, I started the day opening for Buffalo Wild Wings at 8am, I would grab McDonalds on my way to the mall where I would work a 4 hour Hollister shift, and I would busboy at Macaroni Grill in the evenings until about 11pm. I moved across country with my stepfather who had been in my life since I was 2 years old in the fall of 2011. I wanted to start fresh somewhere besides Fort Collins, somewhere where I didn’t have to worry about running into familiar faces at the grocery store or on the road and worry about what I would say. I will always be grateful to him for allowing me that opportunity to get out of dodge when I needed it most. My stepfather was working the majority of the time and was gone for small chunks of the year, so I worked my butt off (when I wasn't driving to see TJ in Maryland) because honestly it was the only thing I felt confident doing. Most of the time I ate the to-go food I would bring home from the restaurant I worked at; I had never been taught to cook even simple things like scrambled eggs or macaroni and cheese so most of what I ate up until a few years ago was processed. I never went anywhere besides work because (unbeknownst to me at the time) I had no idea how to function with the severe social anxiety I had brought across country with me. I was obsessed with earning money. I even stripped at a joint in Springfield, VA at one point to see if the lucrative earnings would make the less than favorable job worth it. Spoiler: it didn’t, for me at least (kudos to all the women who do make this profession work). I spent time with my father for the first time in 7 years, and began to rebuild our relationship that had been torn apart when I was younger. I moved to Maryland to go to community college closer to TJ, got my first apartment, and 3 months later became pregnant with our now 6 year old daughter Madison. I made the decision to move across country again to be closer to my father than I had ever been in my life and to accept his and my stepmother’s help in guiding me to raise my daughter. And of course, those of you who have been following along with my blog know how much my drive to the false idea of success and the toxic coping mechanisms I was carrying with me barely kept me above water for 4 years after that (if you haven’t yet, go check out that blog post for a whole other discussion). 

I experienced a mental breakdown in 2016, and that was the first message from my higher self telling me that it was time to ‘deal with my shit’. I couldn’t go on living the life that I was. I felt like a trapeze artist walking across the rope while balancing several plates on my arms and hands. I held it together longer than I expected to, but once one plate fell the rest came tumbling down. I began going to therapy, I stopped going out to the bars every weekend and was completely sober for 7 months of 2019, I quit my corporate job for one that brought me happiness, I took a year and a half break from Facebook and a 6 month break from social media all together. I taught myself how to cook. I taught myself how to budget and manage finances. I began to read more. I learned how to deal with my anxiety, PTSD, and depression, and began taking CBD oil daily to help. I spent more time with my daughter. I began doing yoga and I taught myself how to meditate. I developed a deep love for camping and the outdoors. I faced my biggest fear of all when I made the decision to distance myself from my mother. As I began to foster these new paths in my life, I slowly began to feel the intensity of my strongest fears falling away. The self doubt and self loathing that had lived inside of me for as long as I could remember was becoming quieter and quieter. And I feel that all of these practices helped to prepare me for the terrifying accident TJ experienced in June 2019. Everything went from being in my control to out of my control in an instant. Future planning was not only not optimal, it wasn’t possible. Fears that I hadn’t even considered, like the fear of losing the love of my life, came to the surface. The past several months have been filled with lots of unconditional love and acceptance. And I truly believe that everything that has happened in my life up unto this point has been empowering me to learn to let go, to live in the moment, to not take a single day for granted, and most importantly, to stop letting fear hold me back from my life. 

Which all leads me to the most pivotal point at the end of my decade. I had been thinking about skydiving for the last couple of years. It was something that began as a daydream in my mind; I would imagine myself falling through the sky and my heart rate would pick up at the thought of doing something so liberating and out of my comfort zone. I would imagine how the air would feel on my hands, or my feet, and I would picture the smile on my face. I would hear certain songs on the radio and I would imagine myself at that point of no return at the edge of the plane. It was a thought that lived in my mind as a wonderful possibility, but was barricaded behind a wall of anxiety, fear, and self doubt, much like most of the healthy thoughts and habits that I have had to climb over that wall to establish in my life. 2019 was a big year of me stepping into my power, and it was earlier in the year that I looked at TJ and told him I wanted to skydive for my birthday. I told him it was something that terrified me down to my core, but every time I felt that fear rise to the surface of my mind, a louder thought would overpower it. I knew that I had to skydive in order to reach the next stage of my life. I knew that if I was truly going to embody all of the lessons that I had learned and had begun sharing with others, I either needed to walk the walk or get the hell of the kitchen (its a mix of sayings but you get my point). 

Well the wonderful man in my life that I am lucky enough to call my partner surprised me with a skydiving package over the Grand Canyon for my 27th birthday. He said he was going to wait until the day of to tell me (in retrospect, I’m glad he didn’t!) but that he wanted to talk to me about this experience because the specific company he was looking at scheduling me with had experienced a fatal accident just 3 months before my birthday. At first, this made me hesitate. But only for a moment. A part of my journey these last 10 years has been learning to accept that everything in my life is perfectly orchestrated. Everything I have experienced in my life has brought me to this moment and the person I have become. I have stopped believing in coincidences. So no, it was not coincidental to me that the very company that I was looking at skydiving with had experienced the most terrifying experience you could skydiving just a couple of months before. It felt like the universe was hand delivering me an obstacle and was saying “What are you going to do now?” If I was going to overcome my fear, the universe was making sure I was going to OVERCOME THAT FEAR. I told TJ that if I let anything deter me from this experience, I was letting fear win. And I went forward with the jump. 

Me before the jump at Paragon Skydive the Grand Canyon November 13 2019

The day of was a day full of nerves and jitteriness. I couldn’t sit still on the 2 1/2 hour drive up to the Grand Canyon, and I was blasting music and singing to myself as I always do when I’m feeling nervous or anxious. I checked in, watched a safety video with the other person jumping that morning (a middle aged man from Hong Kong who had been scuba diving but was absolutely terrified to jump out of an airplane), suited up, and waited for my turn. Of course I ended up being the first to go. My instructor Troy strapped me into my harness and we walked out to the small prop plane. This plane was big enough for 4 people maximum, no joke, and I was sitting right next to the see through door on the plane. You could feel the dips in air as soon as the plane left the tarmac, and I knew in that moment I was committed. During the whole set up I had been a chatter box, but in the plane as we continued to climb higher and higher, I was completely silent. Troy kept trying to get photos of us smiling on his GoPro and every single photo I looked nervous out of my mind! 

The plane leveled out at 17,000 feet above sea level. My face was tingling like it was going to fall asleep from the lack of oxygen in the air. Troy tightened the harness, tapped my shoulder, and moved me towards the door. I had to sit my bottom just on the outside of the door so it was hanging over nothing, while I was bending my legs back in a scorpion like motion with my feet touching the bottom of the plane. For a solid 5 seconds, I was hanging out of the side of an airplane looking down at the Grand Canyon thousands of feet below. If some of you were wondering why my eyes were closed on the initial jump, that’s why! Troy pushed my head back against his shoulder, counted to three, and we were out. The sensation felt like the initial decent on a high hill of a roller coaster, except you never reach the bottom. After a few seconds, I opened my eyes and I was falling. I spread my arms out as you’re supposed to do and the sensation was truly indescribable. You are so high up that your mind doesn’t grasp how fast you’re falling because the view beneath you isn’t rapidly changing. It truly feels like you’re floating. I remember catching a glimpse over my shoulder, and I saw the plane hundreds of feet above me and I saw MY feet gliding through the air without anything attached to them. My body was above the horizon line, and I felt this overwhelming light radiate through me and it was honestly as if my tandem instructor wasn’t even there. I began to scream in elation at the top of my lungs:

“I AM FEARLESS”

“I AM POWERFUL”

“LOOK AT YOU ALLIE”
“LOOK AT WHAT YOURE FUCKING DOING!”

“YOU ARE INCREDIBLE”

Me free falling 17,000 feet above the Grand Canyon with Paragon Skydive

I was fist pumping the air and my cheeks hurt afterwards from how large my smile was. I was genuinely surprised when Troy pulled the parachute and our minute and a half free-fall was over. Gliding over the Grand Canyon was an experience I will never forget. Seeing the Earth from that perspective has a way of making you and your worries feel insignificant and small. I was able to fly the parachute into landing position which was AWESOME. And we took out the instructor waiting on the ground upon landing and landed flat on our butts. I remember laying there in the rubber pit and just looking up at the sky laughing. I couldn’t wrap my head around what I’d just done, and of course once I stood up I threw up from all of the adrenaline. I couldn’t believe that the girl who was too scared to call the pizza guy, who had such a hard time making friends because she was scared of what other people thought, who had suffered debilitating anxiety attacks that made it so she couldn’t move or speak, had just jumped out of an airplane. I JUMPED OUT OF AN AIRPLANE. A part of me still can’t believe it. 

It’s not like skydiving completely took all of my fears away. I still wake up in the morning and feel anxious. I still have to pep talk myself to talk to customers before I go into work. I still have to remind myself in an argument or confrontation that its not the end of the world. I still have to reinforce what I know to be true every day, and I must not allow my anxiety to distort my reality. If you guys were hoping to read this blog post and find a fool proof way of dealing with your fears, I’m sorry to say that is not the purpose of this piece. We are all different, our fears are different, the way we see the world because of those fears is different, and the way that we heal and overcome those fears is ultimately different. What was powerful about skydiving for me is that I was able to prove to myself that I can feel my emotions without being consumed by them. That my fear, my anxiety, and my depression do not have to control my life. In a moment where fear is pulsating in my mind, through strengthening my healthy thoughts and the trust within myself, I can rise above the fear. I can diffuse the alarm. And quite honestly, how can I ever chicken out of something ever again when I know I have fallen through the sky at 17,000 feet and landed safely on the ground? 

What I have learned about fear, anxiety, and all of the emotions I used to look at as ‘problems’ is that they will always be a part of me in some shape or form. The goal is not to expel fear or to be fearless. The goal is to learn to coexist with fear. To coexist with sadness and frustration. It’s when you learn to allow yourself to feel these emotions without judgement or expecting yourself not to that they begin to not feel so heavy. When I tell myself its okay to be triggered into anxiety instead of trying to stop myself or prevent myself from feeling anxious, the anxiety comes and then it goes. If I tell myself its okay to feel fear, I can asses the fear and where its coming from. I allow the emotion to serve me in whichever way it needs to in that moment, and I let it go. This hasn’t just changed the way I deal with my day to day life, it’s changed the way that I parent. It’s changed the way that I see others. It’s enabled me to be more compassionate, understanding, and forgiving. And isn’t that what we all want, in the end? To understand each other better? To ultimately be able to move through life without feeling crippled by fear? To be happy? 

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” - Joseph Campbell