Should I enter… or better play safe and walk away? For a person in a potentially dangerous situation there is a lot on the line. Entering: one step closer to victory. Not entering: also one step closer to victory. Both decisions might lead to more self control and confidence. Fearless everyday-life is at stake.

Well, I decide not to enter. The fear of the unknown is being washed away by the warmth that one experiences taking a hot shower. In control and enjoying the experience. Wonderful. No danger. No pressure. I will try again some other time. Tomorrow will be fine. Or the day after. I am in control! I decide when I enter… the day of tomorrow will decide if I enter. Pseudo-control.

Now, I do enter. As this is not an everyday happening, I am alarmed. Will I manage? Can I remain in control, or will my body be taken over. How much trembling and sweating is bearable? I am inside. I see faces, I hear noise… people all over the place. Where is the exit? Remember the exercise: take some deep breaths, focus on relaxing the muscles. You are in control. Where is the exit? Focus on breathing calmly. Look back. How can I exit? I cannot. I cannot exit. Breath calmly. Breath calmly. Did I manage. Did I manage to keep a bearable level of unpleasantness while I was inside? Well, then victory was mine. I am controlling the biggest part of the monstrosity that goes by the name “Fear”.

Even though entering equals the work of an 8 hour working day, you might think it is the best thing to do. Entering leads to salvation. Peace forever. When you believe this, I guess you have never met Fear. People move on and show what might be considered disloyalty, but Fear, Fear never does. Fear is… well, to a certain extent it becomes your closest friend. Fear pays attention and makes sure you will not hurt yourself. But Fear’s aims are not what they seem. It protects you because of a selfish motive: it thinks it alone is entitled to harming to you.

Think of a swimming pool. You are swimming towards the floor of the pool. Before reaching the bottom, you run out of air. You continue diving because you want to reach that floor. You touch the tiles, and push yourself away from it. Somewhere half way between bottom and surface you have run out of breath. You panic. Fear generates these conditions when you are not in a swimming pool, but let’s say… in a train. I must admit, it is not as unkind as I depict: it lets your breath your lungs out. So plenty of oxygen, no dying, only suffering.

As it does not kill you it wants something in return. More pain, more pleasure for Fear. Imagine that a part of your skin is between the two moving ends of a cramp. As long as you can control this, it might be even an enjoyable experience (not my cup of tea though). Fear wanted some compensation for not killing me. It decided to use the cramp to pinch the lower part of my intestines. Intensely long. Endlessly. Every time I bit my own hand to cancel out the pain, Fear came back and pinched harder. At the same time it put a venomous poison into my brain. My brain washed out, body shaking, aching and short of air. Death would have been pleasant, but Fear is not a life-taker.

So… imagine a job interview… no, no… imagine a ride by bus… no, no… imagine a queue in the supermarket. Cinema, airplane? When there is no exit to flee through, Fear will know where to find me and toy with me till I am reduced to living dust. Should I enter a place where it can do that to me? Once the ghost is out of the bottle… it is floating around freely. Fear is on the loose. How do I guide it back inside the bottle?