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Practicing with F.E.A.R. - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 07, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Practicing with F.E.A.R.

Welcome, welcome everybody. You're welcome to move around if you'd like, sit in a chair, move chairs, or come up front. We put chairs out not really knowing how many people would be here, so I just want to let you know to move to where you'll be comfortable. [Applause]

I don't know if you were like me, but somehow when I first started meditating, I had this idea that it would just be relaxing, and all those pesky emotions would just go away, offering an opportunity to just be quiet. It turns out that didn't happen, and maybe that's been true for you too. Especially if we have a regular meditation practice, or a commitment that we're going to sit every morning, for example. Some mornings we wake up and we're cranky, so we meditate with crankiness. Or maybe we feel sad, or we still feel tired or hungry—all these types of things. Sometimes you sit to meditate and feel really easeful, relaxed, and steady. Then, a memory comes up, bringing emotion—fear, anger, or sadness. Or maybe you're thinking about something in the future, and fear and anger arise.

Meditation and emotions definitely go together. We might even have this idea that to be awakened means not having emotions, but that's not how it works. It's not that we get rid of emotions. Instead, the suffering that we add to emotions just doesn't exist anymore. Sadness might still arise, but it's not a problem; there's no suffering associated with it. Anger might arise, and it's not a problem; there's just no suffering associated with it. It arises and passes away. It might be of short duration or intense, but it's just, "Oh wow, this is what anger is like."

So, in order to find some freedom, ease, and peacefulness with whatever is arising in our meditation and in our daily life—which, of course, includes our emotional life—we have to look at our relationship with those emotions. Most often, we want to talk about the difficult ones: anger, sadness, fear. We want to keep all the love, joy, and happiness, of course. It is true that we tend to talk more about the difficult emotions because they are difficult, but also because there is a way in which we collapse, shut down, and get stuck with them. Then, a strong sense of self gets created. I'll talk a little bit more about this.

In contrast, when there is love, joy, and happiness, we tend to be open. When we are open, there can be more shedding and letting go. This opening and shedding is the direction towards more freedom, as opposed to feeling collapsed, tight, and thinking, "I have to figure it out; I have to make it go away." That's often why we talk more about difficult emotions. Happiness and joy are an inherent part of practice. The Buddha¹ himself talks about how joy and happiness are factors of Awakening², so they are definitely part of it and arise naturally. I don't want to only focus on the difficult ones and not acknowledge that there is so much beauty. The most beautiful experiences of my life have definitely been associated with meditation.

But how can we find freedom with our emotions, recognizing that they're not going to disappear? They're a part of our life—our meditation life, our daily life, our work life, our personal life. How can we find freedom so we don't feel overwhelmed by them, or feel like we have to try to avoid them? Instead, how can we have the confidence to say, "I'm going to do this, and I'm probably going to feel fear, but I will find a way to do it anyway." To have those difficult conversations, to be able to support somebody.

I often give this example because it's really touching to be able to just hold space. I've had this experience a number of times, when someone shares a terrible diagnosis, a terrible breakup, or a heartbreaking family situation. To be able to just be with the difficulty of that and not collapse, blame, or lash out, but to offer some steadiness that supports everyone else—we shouldn't underestimate how powerful that is. How different this world would be if more of us could hold the difficulties.

Relationship to Emotions

To find freedom with our emotions, we don't get to say, "I'm not going to have any." Instead, freedom lies in our relationship to the emotions: how we respond, how we react, how we feel about them. Emotions will come and go because life brings us things we don't get to choose. Practice is really about our relationship. Often, we don't even notice what our relationship to an emotion is because we're overwhelmed by it. We're most likely trying to push it away, manipulate it, or change it.

There are two categories of relationship to emotions that we can work with. This might be a gross simplification, but sometimes I like to use these as little hooks for our thoughts. We can think of them as two levers we can pull or dials we can twist.

One is to look at our resistance. I'll talk about this more, but it includes pushing away, turning away, or saying, "I want this to go away." Resistance shows up in so many ways in our lives.

The second is being identified with the emotion. "I'm angry. I'm mad. This means I'm an angry person. I shouldn't be an angry person." We might beat ourselves up a little bit, or we might feel that because we're angry, people will respond to us in a certain way. We might think, "I can't go there because I'll lash out," or we expect others to be mad at us. We take on these emotions as part of our self-definition, viewing them as a part of who we are. It is true that we are experiencing anger—there's no denying that—but it's the meaning we attach to it that matters. The meaning we make is very often about what the emotion says about us as a person.

This shift away from identifying or making an emotion mean something about us is important. When we say, "I'm sad," naturally that comes along with the memory of all the other times we've been sad. We fear how long we're going to be sad, and we don't want to be sad again. We think that because we are sad, we can't do this or that. Especially these days, if you look on social media, there's this false image that everybody is portraying. We start to feel isolated because our lives don't look like that and we have difficulties. Of course, nobody is putting their difficulties online, so false lives get broadcast.

We can shift away from thinking, "I'm sad," to recognizing, "Sadness has arisen. Sadness is here. Sadness feels like this." I know this is clunky language—it isn't the way we normally speak to ourselves or others—but I have found it to be so helpful. If we can remember to make this little shift in how we verbalize it to ourselves: "Sadness is here. Sadness is being experienced. Sadness feels heavy on my shoulders, and I feel this pressure behind my eyes like I'm going to cry." That undermines all the story-making and meaning-making. Instead, it allows us to honor our experience and know, "Sadness is like this."

Resistance

A big shift also happens when we notice our resistance. Resistance shows up in many subtle ways that we don't even really notice. We might find ourselves really tangled up with a particular emotional experience like anger, and we feel like we just can't get rid of it. Part of it may be identification. I remember one time, years ago, I was really angry. I hadn't been that angry for a long time. I was surprised by all the energy that came with it, and I kind of liked it. All of a sudden, I felt really powerful. But it turned out to be so corrosive and awful. That was a good learning experience. We assign a "me" to the emotion, thinking, "I am powerful because I'm angry," or "I can push things away."

Resistance also shows up subtly. Part of what keeps anger around can be our resistance to it. We think, "Why am I angry? I don't want to be angry. I shouldn't be angry." Often, women get this message that we shouldn't be angry. If we are, we think, "Oh no, I hope they didn't see that. I might have to apologize, and I don't know how, or I don't want to." All this stuff gets tangled up with the anger. I'm just using anger as an example; this could be sadness or fear as well.

If we don't have resistance, an emotion like anger simply arises. We might feel heat in the face, a sense of energy, or power. Or it could be a collapse: "I'm so mad, but I don't want to be mad." But if we simply let it arise, experience it, and acknowledge it, it passes away. It's the nature of these difficult emotions to pass away.

The F.E.A.R. Acronym

To support working with these difficult emotions, either with the meaning we're assigning to them or our resistance to them, I'm borrowing something that Gil Fronsdal³ offered a couple of years ago. I liked what he offered, and I'm altering it slightly for our purposes here. He offered it as a way to work with fear, but I'm using fear as an example for any difficult emotion. We can use the acronym F.E.A.R.

F is for Friend

The first letter, F, is for Friend. Technically, we would probably say "befriend," but these days you can just "friend" something online. To friend the experience is to stop pushing it away. This is the opposite of having resistance.

I'm remembering now that I lost my train of thought earlier; I wanted to say a little bit more about resistance. Resistance can show up in subtle ways. One way is through the prolongation of an emotion, but it also shows up as general avoidance. We want to distract ourselves, always picking up our phones or doing something other than what needs to be done. Often, what we are trying to avoid is an uncomfortable experience. Sometimes our resistance takes the form of telling ourselves, "I just have to get awakened, or have some spiritual breakthrough, and then all these emotions will go away." We might have this story. It's true that the trouble or difficulty of emotions can go away, but emotions themselves don't go away. We don't stop being humans.

To friend a difficult emotion like fear is different from being aversive to it. It's different from being ashamed, trying to fix it, attacking it, or analyzing it to figure it out. When a child is afraid, we don't do all those things. We don't yell at them more. Instead, we take them into our lap, hold them, and comfort them. We pay attention to them. We act as a friend, parent, aunt, uncle, or grandparent—whatever is appropriate—and we are present for them.

Can we be present for that part of ourselves that is experiencing fear or sadness? Can we acknowledge and respect it? So much of this practice is about becoming whole, and stopping the ways we try to excise or cut off parts of ourselves. Does the fear feel safe to just be fear? This isn't necessarily easy, but can we acknowledge it's already there? There is truth in the saying, "What we resist, persists." We must simply recognize, "Fear is here. Sadness is here." Mindfulness practice is all about meeting whatever is arising in our experience with attention and care. Jack Kornfield⁴ often talks about mindfulness as "loving awareness." Can we bring this loving awareness to the experience of a difficult emotion? So, F is for Friend.

E is for Explore

E is for Explore. There are lots of different ways we can explore. One is to feel it in the body. This gets us into the present moment and disrupts the momentum of the resisting, thinking mind. It also creates a little space between us and the emotion. If we are collapsed into the emotion and completely identified with it, we are overwhelmed. This happens in the mind and the body, but the mind is often promoting or supporting the overwhelm. Asking, "How does this feel in the body?" creates space between what is being looked at and the looker. That little bit of space is where we can find some freedom.

Exploring how it feels in the body requires a stance of curiosity: "What is this? What is going on?" The point is not to find answers or figure it out; the point is to question. This is different from how we usually operate in daily life, where we try to find answers and figure things out. Of course, it's fun and rewarding to do that, but here we cultivate a sense of exploration.

Feeling it in the body can also help clarify the difference between the fear itself and the resistance to the fear. That might not always be clear. For example, maybe the fear feels like a lump in the throat, while the resistance feels like activation—a sense of restlessness or energy wanting to jump up and run away. Sometimes it starts as a big jumble of uncomfortableness, but we can explore: "What does fear feel like? What does resistance feel like?" It might not be immediately clear, but asking the question creates space around the experience and disrupts the momentum of meaning-making—the thoughts telling us, "Because I'm afraid, it means I'm weak, and I was hoping meditation would make this better."

We can also turn our exploration toward the object of the fear. What is it that we're afraid of? Part of this inquiry is recognizing that some fear is appropriate. If we are in imminent danger, or if we fear we may harm ourselves, harm others, or compromise our integrity and do something we regret, that fear is healthy. But there is also unhealthy fear that diminishes our quality of life, keeps us from living fully, or causes us to lash out.

Then, there are fears we just can't talk ourselves out of. I've tried to talk myself out of illogical fears, but I have them anyway. For example, I have a fear of crossing the street outside of a crosswalk. I'm getting better at it, but I have this memory of being yelled at when I was five years old: "Don't cross the street!" So now I always feel like I have to use a crosswalk, even though I'm an adult and can look both ways. Even when I try to talk myself out of it, there's still a little uncomfortableness. Some of my friends tease me, and some just force me to cross anyway. I haven't been run over yet!

When we explore the object of fear, we might recognize some is healthy, but some is just anxiety that we can't talk ourselves out of. By exploring the object, we respect the fear instead of dismissing or chastising ourselves. We acknowledge, "Yes, the fear is here. Let's explore it, let's not ignore it."

There is another exploration that can be deeply helpful, though not necessarily easy: Look for what feels threatened inside. What is it that feels threatened? Sometimes our fear doesn't have a real basis. We might have underlying beliefs that we don't acknowledge, and these beliefs are what sit underneath the fear. For example, we might have the belief that everybody has to like us all the time. When asked to do something, we fear saying no—even though it crosses a boundary, or we'd have to sacrifice sleep—because we're afraid they won't like us.

Or maybe we have an image of ourselves as the "wise, funny one." We fear that if we speak up, or go to an event, or don't go, people won't think we are wise anymore. These hidden views we hold about ourselves often feel threatened when fear, anger, or sadness arises. We can ask, "What is fearing? What feels threatened?" We might discover that these threatened identities are just bits of imagination, ideas, and concepts we hold about ourselves. They are ephemeral. They aren't tangible things that will always be there. That which feels threatened is often just another identity. So, E is for Explore.

A is for Allow

A is for Allow. Allowing means noticing the resistance and, as best we can, softening it. It also means noticing the identification—the way we think the emotion means something about us—and recognizing, "Nope, this is just an experience. The fear is here, but I am not the fear."

If the emotion is very strong, it can be wise not to jump right into it. Instead, feel it in very short bouts and then back away. Do not explore or allow it for long periods, because strong emotions can tip us into overwhelm. When we are overwhelmed, we lose access to our wisdom and tools. So with really strong things, just touch into them. Friend them, explore them, allow them for a short bit, and then pull away. Come back another day. Slowly approach and back off. If you are meditating and a strong emotion arises, one thing you can do is open your eyes while staying in the meditation posture. Look straight ahead and orient yourself: "Okay, I'm here in this room. I'm sitting. I can feel the pressure of my body." This can interrupt the overwhelm and stabilize you. You can keep meditating with your eyes open to help back off from the intensity.

Inherent in this movement of allowing is a sense of trust. It is trusting that our inner life knows how to take care of itself. We don't have to make it be different, and we don't have to fix it. It's impressive what can happen if we make room for things to unfold on their own. It's not always easy, because it feels like unknown territory and is uncomfortable. But allowing makes space for an unfolding that is often unexpected, and sometimes the most beautiful thing that can happen. A different kind of metabolism takes place.

I should add that not all fears are going to go away. We have existential fears as part of the human experience. The fear of death is a big deal for many of us. It might not be front of mind, but it's there when we are in a dangerous situation or a loved one is at risk. Allowing is part of learning to be with what is, rather than trying to make it go away. It might not go away, but can it not get in our way?

We can practice allowing with small discomforts. I didn't know I was practicing this at the time, but I used to do Yin Yoga. You take a posture and hold it for a long time. In the beginning, it's perfectly fine, but after a few minutes, it becomes uncomfortable. You're not hurting yourself, but choosing to stay with that physical discomfort gave me confidence that bled into other areas of my life—like being with difficult emotions.

R is for Released

Finally, R is for Released. I'm using "released" in the past tense, as opposed to an imperative like "release" or "let go of." If you could just let go of it, you wouldn't need all these other steps! You would have just let go and gone on your merry way. I don't want to give the impression that you have to do something to release it.

What happens is that if we shift our relationship with the identification, the meaning-making, or our resistance, the fear just gets released on its own. That is its nature. As the resistance abates, the fear abates. As the identification softens, the emotional intensity softens. When we look and realize that what felt threatened was just an underlying belief with no substance, the fear is released.

The key to release is working with the relationship. If we try to get rid of the emotion itself, it's like the tar baby⁵, right? We push it with our hands, and we get stuck. Then we try to push it with our feet, and our feet get stuck. Then we push it with our head, and we're completely stuck. But if we work with our relationship to it, we can use F.E.A.R.—Friend, Explore, Allow, Released. It doesn't necessarily happen in that exact order, and it's not just for fear; it's a way for us to work with our relationship to any difficult emotion so we can find freedom. When emotions arise, they don't have to be a problem. They are simply what's happening in the moment. I'll stop there and open it up to see if there are any questions or comments. Thank you.

Q&A

Questioner: I went to school in San Francisco, and I was always afraid to jaywalk there too, because it's so loud and with the hills you can't see if cars are coming! But in San Jose, where I'm from, it's no problem. I'm talking about fear, and I think emotions are normal. I have friends who show the whole gamut of emotions. But for me, when I notice fear coming up, I think, "Oh no, I've been here before, this is not good," or "I don't like this feeling." That's the part that throws me off. Then I'll try to Monday-morning quarterback it afterward. I'll think, "I didn't do well, I could have done better in this area." I don't know if it's maybe a more practice thing, or what would you say?

Diana Clark: Can you tell me a little bit more about what the Monday-morning quarterbacking feels like? What is the nature of it? What is the tone or the attitude?

Questioner: Afterward, when I'm debriefing with myself or a buddy, I'll ask, "What would you have done in this situation? Oh my goodness, I totally messed that one up." It's foot-in-mouth syndrome. I'm hard on myself afterward. It's not about saying, "Oh, I see I was triggered, but I couldn't figure it out, maybe next time." It's more extreme, like, "Dang it, I'm never going to get this, I'm always doing this."

Diana Clark: That is so common, right? The inner critic gets activated when we're trying to make changes in our behaviors or the way we show up. There are a few things we can do.

When you have a difficult emotion, get tangled up in it, and later do a postmortem or Monday-morning quarterbacking, first recognize that you are trying to make changes, and it takes time. You're trying to do something different, and it takes time. Recognizing this helps with the inner critic, because the inner critic is just another form of resistance. It's another way of getting tangled up.

There's a way we can soften the inner critic. We can say, "Yeah, of course I had difficulties, and of course the inner critic arose. It takes time, and we have to see these things over and over again." Unless we can get to a softer place where the inner critic is quieted, we'll keep repeating the cycle, because the inner critic is just resistance showing up in a new form. Softening the resistance looks like saying, "Oh okay, yeah, I see this is a pattern I have. I know it takes time to undo patterns. Let's see what I do next time." Can you have a different shift, a different attitude? Does that make sense?

Questioner: Yes, thank you.

Diana Clark: Anybody else have a comment or question? [Silence] Okay, well, may you not have any fear walking out to your car, even if you have to cross the street. I'm wishing you all a lovely evening. Thank you.