Being afraid of being yourself

Worldnetdaily ^ | January 31, 2004 | Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

[StilettoRaksha]

All our fears boil down to one simple thing: our fear that we're not special. We're afraid that we're replaceable, one of a crowd, that there's nothing unique about us. And we're afraid, as a result, that we won't be able to meet whatever challenges life presents us with.

And while this fear is ancient, it has been greatly exacerbated in the modern era because of our culture of lovelessness. If you're not made to feel in your earliest years that you are of infinite value, then you will usually spend the rest of your life trying to prove that you are.

Bad and distracted parenting is one of the principal causes of the culture of fear in which we all walk. When kids have to fight for their parents' attention, when they see it is not them who brings their parents happiness, but rather good news from the office, they internalize a mentality of valuelessness. The fear that results from that sense of valuelessness can often animate their actions for decades to come.

This is constantly reinforced by our culture, which tells us that we're nothing. The designer tell us, "You're nothing, unless you're wearing my jeans. Your own name is utterly unrecognizable; nobody's heard of you. I am somebody, while you're a nobody. So you better have my name on your butt."

The culture tells us: "You're nothing – unless the plaque on your desk says 'Vice President.' You're nothing, unless you jump into bed with this rich and powerful guy. You're nothing, unless people will pay to buy a magazine that has your naked photos in it."

And so our individuality is under assault, every minute of every day. A woman looks in a mirror and instead of seeing the lines on her face as souvenirs of all the adventures and triumphs and tears and laughter that have marked her life, she sees an old hag, one that compares unfavorably with the Hollywood actress in the advertisements for an expensive skin cream. What makes her unique are her experiences; shallow lives lead to shallow lines. Celebrating her difference, her uniqueness, is really the way out of her insecurity. But her fears – of being undesirable, of being abandoned – lead her to try to conform to an ideal, a cookie-cutter stereotype. Soon she's got needles in her face, as if poking your head with sharp metal objects is going to make you forget your fears.

Fear is the emotion of conformity. If Abraham Lincoln was correct that we all come into this world as God's original but usually depart as man's copy, then nothing is more responsible for the erasure of this dignity than fear.

Of all the fears that currently plague our lives – from the fear of terror and death, to aging and illness, to professional setbacks and public humiliation, perhaps none is more tragic that the simple fear of being yourself. Wow – just take a moment to think about that and to fully grasp how serious that is: You're afraid just to be.

I counseled a 20-something woman, who had already experienced multiple rejections from men, and she told me that she had become so uncomfortable in her own skin and so depressed about her life that she was even self-conscious around her own family. As a result, she avoided family celebrations and holiday get-togethers.

"My whole life involves my being whatever others want me to be. I have no self-confidence, so I have no backbone. I fear every new day, and I'm cowed before every new experience."

From my own experience, I certainly know what it's like to be afraid just to be. When I was a boy of 8, my parents divorced and we moved from L.A. to Miami where I was enrolled in the fourth grade of a Jewish day school. The boys, who had formed a clique since nursery bullied me endlessly as a newcomer. The experience made me afraid not of them, but of myself. I couldn't for the life of me understand what about me was so hideous that they so forcefully rejected me.

I remember well the experience: the terror of being myself. I did everything to conform, everything I could think of to fit in. I laughed at their dumb jokes, shot spitballs at the uncool fat kids who were rejects like me. And while I had a mother to comfort me, I did not have a father in my immediate vicinity who could give me backbone and inspire me to be myself and find a better circle of friends. My father loved me, but he was 3,000 miles away in Los Angeles. The situation got so bad that – I'm embarrassed to say this even as I write it – I started buying these boys gifts just to be my friend.

It wasn't until the seventh grade that I developed the courage to do my own thing. I knew I was a better person than they were. Maybe not as cool, but more compassionate. I didn't want to treat other kids like garbage. It didn't make me feel good about myself. I rejected these miserable, mean-spirited bullies, and the contempt I developed for them made me unafraid, because they were now beneath me. I made a point of getting to know the new kids who came into our class, and I treated them like they had been there for years. In the process, I came to know that the bullies in my school were even more afraid than I was and could only feel good about themselves by passing on their fear to others.

So when my 10-year-old son recently went through a bullying experience, I told him neither to fight them nor to simply ignore his tormentors. "Rise above them," I told him. "Look at them and determine never to become like them. Be everything they're not. Reach out to the kids in your class who no one else takes an interest in, and soon the admiration you earn will make you a leader in the class."

How tragic it is to be afraid to be you! A leading New York attorney told me that she disagreed with my philosophy of fear.

"When I was in eighth grade," she said, "I had a teacher who hated me and always put me down. She always said that I wouldn't amount to anything. And it was that fear of failure that spurred me to work so hard. I graduated top of my class at law school and became the first woman partner at my firm. Her comment was always in the back of my mind, and it motivated me: I always wanted to prove her wrong."

I responded, "That's ridiculous. Instead of a bitchy teacher to react against throughout the whole of your life, you could have had a loving parent to make you believe you had a gift to give to the world. Instead, you were lead to believe that you had something to prove to the world. When you're inspired by fear and a need to show that you matter, you may eventually get to your destination, but one thing's for sure, you'll enjoy neither the journey nor the view once you're there. There are many things that can motivate our success, but when it's motivated by fear, it is always accompanied by suffering."

So we hide. We're afraid that if we let our real selves – our real beliefs, likes and dislikes, our thoughts and hopes and dreams – show, we'll be rejected for them, and that we can't bear. It's too much exposure. It's easier to go with what the culture tells us we should like and do and think. As I said, most of us lead lives that are predominantly motivated by fear. We'd rather rely on pundits to tell us what to think, on style mavens to tell us how to decorate our homes and on advertisements to tell us what to wear. We'd rather surround ourselves with what's cool than with those things that address our individual needs.

You can see the catch-22 at work here. We're afraid that we're not inherently special or unique, so we willingly cooperate in eliminating the things about us that make us special and unique. This is how fear actually exterminates the part in us that is most worth saving. Fear causes us to conform, when in fact, the thing we should be most afraid of is losing ourselves. If you're not going to be yourself, why come into this challenging world in the first place? And what do we really lose when we pretend to be someone we're not?

Let's say that you never show your true face to your spouse. You hide your insecurities and preferences and deepest self from him or her because you're afraid of rejection. What have you really gained? Your husband or wife is in love with a stranger, a construct. Is there anything more lonely than the knowledge that you're not loved for who you are? You're really more alone than you would be if you showed that person your innermost self and got rejected for it. Then at least you'd have the courage of your own convictions. So you have someone to watch television with in the evenings. Congratulations.

I counseled a husband who has an addiction to pornography. He came to see me because of my well-known opposition to it and its destructive consequences for marriage and relationships. He was hoping through our conversations to wean himself off the corrosive addiction. When he told me how bored he was with this marriage and how desperate he was for an erotic thrill, I asked him, "Have you ever discussed your erotic needs with your wife?"

"I'd never do that," he told me. "She'd think I was a sicko." I have met countless husbands in the same boat. They're terrified that if they expose their male libidinous needs to their wives, they'll be rejected. So instead they develop a subterranean and damaging erotic life, one that pulls them further and further from their marriages.

Our greatest fear should be not that we will lose our lives, but that we never lived because we became somebody else.

I am certainly no stranger to the desire to conform out of fear, and I have struggled with this problem over and over again in my own life and work. This fear is sometimes magnified when you're part of a close-knit religious community.

When I first published "Kosher Sex," a book whose success in many ways changed my life, I never expected it to appeal to my own religious community. I wrote it for the world at large, to teach them how their physical lives could become more intimate and redeeming.

I was amazed by the number of staunchly religious people who wrote to me secretly, sometimes with fictitious names, telling me of their moribund sexual existences within marriage and asking for counseling. In most cases, the people writing wrote secretly, in the fear that their spouse would discover that this was an issue of importance for them. They were embarrassed: They thought spiritual people shouldn't be so eager to fulfill a "base" physical need. It seems incredible to me that we can be so fearful in our lives that we tremble even before the person with whom we share our children and last names.

A woman who had conducted a secret affair, regretted it and was desperate to reconnect with her husband asked me what she should do. I told her, "It's essential that you tell him what happened. You have to right the wrong and regain his trust."

"Impossible," she blurted out. "I'm terrified of his reaction." "By being afraid of him," I answered, "you wrong him doubly. It's bad enough that you betrayed him. Now you wish to betray him as a human being by portraying him as an ogre with whom you cannot share a confidence."

As we talked further it became evident (as is often the case), that the principal cause of her unfaithfulness was her deep marital dissatisfaction – and her inability to talk about that dissatisfaction with her husband. Finding a lover seemed a lot less frightening than confronting the problems in her marriage.

Another woman wrote to me that she is convinced, two years into her marriage, that she has married the wrong man.

"I know that in your books you're completely opposed to the idea that we might have married the wrong person, saying that if so, we must have had the wrong children. But I'm convinced that in my case it is so. I was raised in a traditional home and did what was expected of me, including dating and marrying the son of my father's old schoolmate, whom my parents adored. I did not have the heart to let my parents down or challenge their presumption to know what's best for me. But I do not love or respect this man."

This woman's fear of standing up for herself to her parents made her passive in the face of the most important decision of her life.

[Rytwyng]

bookmark to read later

[MissAmericanPie]

This seems to be saying to me that some people cannot rise above what happened to them in grade school. Now that is pitiful. Where is their inner compass? To thine own self be true is more than just a motto, it is the backbone of being comfortable in your own skin, and liking who you are.

[proust]

"All our fears boil down to one simple thing: our fear that we're not special. We're afraid that we're replaceable, one of a crowd, that there's nothing unique about us."

It's not a fear, it's a fact. Anyone that disagrees with this, list three things that make you different from anyone else on the planet.

[wwcj]

The most sincere critics of male behavior have often failed to see that men have clung to the macho image and remained violent and alienated not because these traits define masculinity, but rather, because they mask a shameful wound in men today which crosses all socio-economic, ethnic, and political boundaries.

[cyborg]

I was severely bullied in school. I never let it bother me because I knew I was smarter than the other kids were. Now that I'm an adult I have a harder time dealing with guys who won't go out with me for a whole host of 'guy reasons'. I hardly carry on a conversation with the average person because a lot of people DO laugh, mock, downright tear to shreds what I have to say. I have a handful of friends who wouldn't do that to me. I've never conformed to what 'society' or the people around me THINKS I should be. I find it much easier to live with myself being honest than to be everything to all people.

[wwcj]

Most men today have seen fathers and other men deal with anger in only two ways: either by stuffing it and withdrawing, or by lashing out violently--as the ineffective wimp, or the raging monster. Few have seen Dad express anger without being destructive--either outwardly, toward others, or inwardly, toward himself. Not wanting to be a wimp, the man is left with violence as his only apparent option when angry; if he renounces violence as well, he has literally no place in the world to go.

[StilettoRaksha]

Good for you. :)

[wwcj]

We're not trapped in shame because we keep falling. We keep falling because we're trapped in shame.

[cyborg]

You're right. Some folks may think 'shame' is psychobabble but those don't have a clue. Shame is a HUGE reason behind a lot of inaction/indecision/bad decisions,etc.

[JoJo Gunn]

Has anyone ever told you that you are profound? That never in Eternity was there you before, and never will there be again?

Discover that first, and answers 2 and 3 will follow in it's time....

[wwcj]

Rejection has been harder for me than to just know I am smarter than those that dished it out. My own opinion of myself could never fill the need that I have for other humans. You're either a time bomb waiting to happen, extremely unfulfilled, or one that has gotten a lot of grace and mercy by being protected from God the Creator.

[MissAmericanPie]

I wonder how much of this is passed down from father to son? My husband use to coach little league, we had a great little team that held together for several years, 32 consecutive wins, a hundred wins seven losses. If I may brag on my husband, he never allowed there to be a "star".

Everyone got a chance to play every position, he would not put a kid in harms way, if it was obvious a kid could get creamed in a postion he didn't put him through that. Every kid felt himself a vital part of the whole, every childs ego was stroked, we celebrated each childs birthday as a whole, skating parties, etc.

Some of the teams we played did not share this philosophy. The coach's son would be the pitcher, there was alot of Type A aggression being taught to their little players. It robbed the joy and the fun of the game from those kids and made baseball something they didn't really want to be a part of.

I saw one coaches son, the pitcher, break down in tears and refuse to play because of the life or death pressure put on him to perform. I really can't blame bullies for being bullies, if it's a learned behaviour.

[cyborg]

No I'm not a time bomb waiting to happen. I just had a half way decent family, and few nice friends and a nice dog.

[cyborg]

There could be a whole psychiatric specialty devoted to parents and their children in sports activities/stage moms,etc.

[hosepipe]

That Rabbi is obviously a democrat or worse... if a democrat had any sense they would'nt even be a democrat...

[wwcj]

It is not easy for a person to know how important they are, because the wounded person in his/her psyche tells themself it's safer not to know. That is, to know how important you are, you must remember and confess how important your own caregiver (the one responsible for your own nuturing) was to you. And that is like facing giants. It's not just changing your mind about your beliefs. It's having to deal with real pain.

[cyborg]

If God thinks I'm unique and worthy to breathe air that's good enough for me.

[P.O.E.]

IMHO, God put you here on earth to be you. Just like Mr. Phelps, your mission (should you decide to accept it) is to be the you that's "you". Not to say just do whatever you feel like, but to be the fullest person you can, in your own special way.

[FourPeas]

Fascinating read on a topic I've been contemplating recently.

[wwcj]

As if to de-claw the tiger, the world proclaims that fathers aren't that important after all...But a disabled tiger only becomes a man-eater... A man taught that the father is not important will act accordingly when he becomes a father himself. Emotionally, if not physically, he will abandon his children.

[the invisib1e hand]

I think I'd be a whole lot more afraid of being you. ;)

[TalBlack]

Uhhhh, just out of curiosity: why THREE things? Wouldn't ONE thing that differentiates one person from any other be enough. If not WHY NOT?

I've created MANY things, from nothing at all, that not one of the billions of people on this planet could have done if they had a billion years to do it.

I've SEEN many things that have come frome the mind of their maker that NO ONE else could have concieved.

Get out of the house and look around, dude!

[wwcj]

A nun working in a men's prison.

One spring, an inmate asked her to buy him a Mother's Day card to send home. She agreed, and word traveled fast; soon hundreds of inmates were asking for their own cards. Resourcefully, the nun contacted a greeting-card manufacturer, who obliged with crates of Mother's Day cards, all of which she passed out.

Soon afterward, she realized Father's Day was approaching, and, thinking ahead, she again called the card manufacturer, who responded quickly with crates of Father's Day cards. Years later she still has every one of them. Not one prisoner requested a card for his father.

[templar]

All our fears boil down to one simple thing: our fear that we're not special. We're afraid that we're replaceable, one of a crowd, that there's nothing unique about us.

I am replaceable, I am one of the crowd, there is nothing unique about me. I am not special. Why should I fear any of these things? I enjoy being the same old average guy day after day. In fact, if I were to fear anything, it would be being special. I do not envy all those unique, special. irreplaceable people I see in the news everyday.

[cyborg]

It's too bad that the same society that embraces metrosexuality, calls a man a homo for hugging his son,etc.

[cyborg]

The world is full of people who had notions of 'being special' like Hitler for instance. Also, you have a point about the vapid, the intolerable hollyweird crowd.

[StilettoRaksha]

I wholeheartedly agree!

[FITZ]

That surprises me --- on here you seem pretty cool --- self-confident --- not real mockable. Something is wrong with the people around you who would do that.

[FLAMING DEATH]

I tend to think most people are so bogged down in our culture of altruism that they have little time to make themselves happy. Thus the fear of "being ourselves".

We tend to sacrifice our own wants and needs for the good of others. While society tells us that we should feel noble and happy for placing others first and ourselves second, most people instead are terribly upset most of the time because they can't fulfill their own desires, even the most basic ones.

The girl marrying a guy she didn't like, or the guy who, instead of approaching his wife to tell her of his needs, just covered them up and choosing destructive outlets to fulfill his desires are examples of this. We are too hung up on not hurting others' feelings, so we just hurt our own instead. Bad things happen when frustration is allowed to continue like this.

But, society has told us that selfishness, in any form or amount, is bad, and altruism is always good. I, too, subscribed to this philosophy at one time, and it didn't work for me at all, especially in the area of relationships.

After a particularly bad relationship, I finally figured out that I was sacrificing myself to make others happy and not worrying enough about my own needs. A lot of problems that I had went away almost overnight. I'm no longer afraid to tell people "no" and I don't worry about what people will think when I tell them flat out that they are wrong. And, for the most part, I don't give a hoot about what anyone thinks of me.

The change in the quality of my life has been dramatic. My self confidence went through the roof, and the amount of worrying I have done for the past few years has been almost nil. It took me a long time to figure it out, but, for the first in my life, I can truly call myself "happy".

[FLAMING DEATH]

Your idea might well be true, but even so, it doesn't matter. It sounds like liberal psychobabble, but the only thing that's really important is to be the most important person to yourself...and if you measure your success in this by figuring out what others think of you, then you're doing it all wrong.

[cyborg]

A lot of people are survival mode where I live. They don't want to hear about travelling to other countries, learning something new,etc. A lot of people just want to hear that you are scrapping by just like them, miserable just like them,etc. Something IS wrong with the mentality, but that's another thread in itself.

[FITZ]

That's probably true of almost anywhere --- but it is worse in some places. The worst way of being would to be to have to live like them, follow their ways of thinking. It's definitely easier to not really care what others think and not have to be a crowd pleaser.

[JoJo Gunn]

No, it isn't easy. I've been there. I've had a lot of losses, what sometimes seems/seemed like crushing weight.

But one day it dawned on me that for it to be such loss, it meant they were profound to me, that I must have loved them more than I realized. Am I not also profound for feeling that way, for acknowledging their one existence, their impact? If you're able to recognize my halting attempts at words to explain what's "beyond all understanding", aren't you?

So many of us have gone through Life never really feeling that we make a difference in our world, and to those in it. Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones, to be able to have even a taste of this that I can't describe.

[FLAMING DEATH]

Definitely. I used to feel guilty for telling people that I don't worry much and that I'm satisfied with my life, because that's not what most people want to hear. They become resentful of you because of the fact that you might just have your own life figured out.

Many times, people not only have problems, they actively thrive on having the controversy and drama in their lives that results from them. So, whether consciously or unconsciously, they keep making idiotic decisions to keep themselves exactly where they are. And, they tend to be angry at you for not doing the same, because that shows them that many of the problems they have are a direct result of the things that they do.

[FLAMING DEATH]

True. How else are you to get people to throw off their sense of self and pull their weight for the "common good"?

[cyborg]

you got it

[Agnes Heep]

It's not a fear, it's a fact. Anyone that disagrees with this, list three things that make you different from anyone else on the planet.

I'm not too sure I can think of three things, but there's at least one. It's the sum total of your life's experiences, colored by your unique genetic makeup, which combine to give you a truly individual perspective on the world. One of the reasons humans employ art is to share that unique perspective with others. When the art is really good, then bingo, you're actually seeing the cosmos through another person's eyes.

[freedox]

Awwww, come on, hosepipe........it's easy for you to scoff because you really are special! How many other people have achieved the title "Duke of URL"???

[MissAmericanPie]

Now that is sad, my son worships his dad, the first question out of his mouth when I pick him up at school is, "how's Dad?".

[hosepipe]

[ Awwww, come on, hosepipe........it's easy for you to scoff because you really are special! How many other people have achieved the title "Duke of URL"??? ]

Hi Doxy;
ALL BE SEATED... (removeing cape, twisting baseball cap to the side ) d:-)
Well, when I was 20 I was the most special guy on earth and smart too... since then I've grown increasingly less special and much dumber... and am looking forward to being a complete moron soon.. and with recent republican policy machinations not a moment too soon either.. retards are such happy people generally..

[Twinkie]

1. I lecture my cat, Romer.

2. I lecture my cat, Leo.

3. I lecture my dog, Dixie.

Dixie is the only one who listens. Other people talk to
their animals. I tell them things that CAN improve their
little lives if only they will listen. Animal Lecturer.
I know of no other in the world.

[Wilhelm Tell]

Many times, people not only have problems, they actively thrive on having the controversy and drama in their lives that results from them. So, whether consciously or unconsciously, they keep making idiotic decisions to keep themselves exactly where they are. And, they tend to be angry at you for not doing the same, because that shows them that many of the problems they have are a direct result of the things that they do.

That is so true. That is so very true. I know people who seem to do nothing but make themselves miserable and then try to impress others. It would be a lot easier if they would just do things for themselves they could be proud of (in a healthy sense) and forget about impressing people who are almost strangers. For example, I know people who are almost spending themselves to bankruptcy just to "keep up with the Joneses," and I know a guy who ignores his son and yet spends many hours every week trying to impress members of a club he belongs to.

I think some people are more afraid of success than they are afraid of failure. It is difficult, trying to succeed at something. Often, even good plans fail. Often when you do succeed, it was more difficult than you imagined when you started. You can really grow from facing a difficult challenge. Some people miss the sense of inner-peace one can get from knowing from experience that one is competent to get through a difficult situation or learn a difficult skill. It is easier to blame others for one's failure and just sulk and not do anything than it is to figure out what one can learn from a bad experience. Sometimes, one might be very alone when one is trying to accomplish something -- opposition may appear from all corners. It is safer to use your best judgement even if it means being opposed than it is to appease people who don't have your best interests at heart anyways. No one guarantees success or "fairness," -- that is just how things work so one might as well get used to it.

[Wilhelm Tell]

I noticed something that I found very disturbing as I was flipping through the TV channels the other night. I saw a promotion for the show "American Idol," and it disturbed me that all the promo had were young people trying to impersonate "stars." It all seemed so pointless. It reminded me of a "Saturday Night Live" skit years ago making fun of bad Elvis impersonators. It disturbed me that these young people were expending much effort to look or sound like someone else, rather than thinking of something original. If you are "just like" someone else, then you don't have much of a purpose. I think it is sick how some people seek to live vicariously through others rather than being themselves and perhaps contributing something new and unique (and what is new and unique may or may not be "popular").

[Teacher317]

All our fears boil down to one simple thing: our fear that we're not special.

So one's fear of fire is because they think they're not special? Their fear of heights? Their fear of death? THeir fear of Muslim terrorists?

[gcruse]

A lot of people just want to hear that you are scrapping by just like them, miserable just like them,etc.

"It isn't so important that you succeed in life, as it is that your friends fail."

[Quix]

I think it would more accurately be called

FEAR OF REJECTION

fear of loss, pain.

Having been born a 'bird of very rare plumage,' I have had little choice but to grow in accepting myself. It has been a long road.