Is it time you questioned your fear?

When I was about 8 years old I became convinced that something truly terrifying was living under my parents’ bed.

Weirdly, I was never afraid of the terrifying Under-The-Bed-Lurker during daylight hours but wherever it was time for me to go to bed I became gripped by an almost paralysing fear.

The fear began when we moved from a flat into a house and to get to my bedroom I had to go up the stairs and past my parents’ bedroom and along the landing to my own room at the end.

I still have a vivid memory of my parents’ bedroom door gaping open like the entrance to a dark menacing cave and an unidentifiable shape lurking in the shadows beneath their bed.

And I can still remember how my pulse would quicken and my throat would tighten as I prepared to run the gauntlet past the gaping door of doom and the horrors within to the safety of my own bedroom at the end of the landing.

It got so bad that at one point I started leaving my pyjamas half way up the stairs so I could get changed there, then hotfoot it up the remaining stairs, past the lurking monster and into my room, plunging into the safety of my own bed and pulling the covers up over my head.

Thankfully, this era of terror only lasted about a year or so, then my youngest sister was born, necessitating an entire family room change in which me and my other sister moved into my parents’ room, and my parents and their terrifying bed monster moved to the end of the landing, meaning I never had to run the gauntlet again.

However, a year was still a very long period of time to dread going to bed every single night.

But never once during all that time did I think to question my fear.

Firstly, I was way too embarrassed to tell my parents. I saw myself as a worldly young woman of eight by that point, and far too old to still believe in monsters. I’d started reading Judy Blume books for godsakes, and I was creating increasingly grownup romantic storylines for my Sindy doll. Essentially, I had the maturity and sophistication of a much older child - I was a 10-year-old trapped in an 8-year-old’s body. So how could I possibly admit to such immature night terrors?

And there was no way on God’s green earth that I was going to pluck up the courage to pass through that dark gaping bedroom door to investigate the strange shape lurking inside. I might have had the worldly wise maturity of a ten-year-old but I still considered myself way too young to die.

I share this with you today because it’s come to my attention that, as adults, we can still fall into the trap of not holding our fears up to the light to see if they’re really true.

We might not believe in monsters under the bed any more but still - when was the last time you really questioned any fears you might have to see if they’re really, one hundred percent, categorically true?

When I embarked upon my solo travel adventures back in 2023 I decided to keep a journal as I went, in the hopes that I’d have some fun and interesting things to look back on in years to come.

I ended up journaling voraciously over the next two years, so much so that I ended up filling 15 notebooks! This past week I’ve been dipping back into some of them and it’s been a lot of fun revisiting my musings and experiences - and also identifying a couple of overarching themes.

Two years of adventures and challenging fears

The biggest one being that over those two years, I ended up confronting and conquering several fears.

Fears that, like the monster under my parents’ bed, I’d never really challenged before.

Let me give you an example…

From the moment my marriage ended when my son was four and I became a self-employed single mum I had this morbid fear that my work would dry up and my son and I would end up homeless.

I never stopped to question the validity of this fear.

I never stopped to consider the fact that I’d created multiple different income streams - writing, editing, coaching, running writing workshops, public speaking - and so the chances of them all drying up at the exact same time and rendering us homeless were highly unlikely.

I never stopped to consider the fact that I had some wonderful, super caring friends who would never see my son and I on the streets and would always be prepared to provide us with a roof over our heads while I came up with a Plan B.

Essentially, going back to the monster analogy, I never put the light on to look under the bed to discover that the sinister shape was in fact some of my dad’s clothing - or whatever the hell it actually was. (And please don’t comment that it might have actually been a monster as that will ruin my entire argument here!)

But also, I never stopped to challenge the thought that having a home is the be all and end all and that without one a person’s entire world will unravel.

So when I got rid of my home and all my worldly goods in 2023 it was incredibly liberating.

I realised that us humans need a lot less than we think we do.

And that attaching our emotional security to material possessions can end up becoming a huge source of insecurity.

I love the fact that, even though I now have a (rental) home again for the time being, the happiest I’ve ever been in this life of mine was when I had no home at all and I could fit all my worldly goods into a suitcase, and spent most of my time staying in very small spaces.

Another fear I’d failed to challenge before embarking on my solo travel adventures was the fear of swimming.

When I was about ten years old, and just healing from my monster under the bed era, my friend’s dad offered to teach me to swim.

Although I was a little nervous in the water the lessons were all going swimmingly (‘scuse the pun) when he decided to push me in at the deep end WITHOUT ANY PRIOR WARNING, reckoning that, if put in a sink or swim situation, I would magically summon up the ability to swim.

Reader, I did not.

When put in a sink or swim situation having been violently shoved into the deep end by a grown man (ah, the joys of a Gen X childhood!) I sank. And I choked. And I almost drowned.

And so from that moment forth I told myself that I had a fear of swimming and swimming pools and I was not going anywhere near a body of water that was bigger than a bath (or a hot tub).

The years racked up. I went on resort holidays where I sat by the pool but never set foot in it.

I moved to a town on the coast, with a beach just minutes away, but I sat by the sea and never set foot in it.

And I never once challenged the fear that I’d mentally set in stone at the age of ten - I had a fear of swimming because I might drown.

But then, when I was staying in Paris during my solo travel adventures, a friend of mine there messaged to ask if I’d like to come and hang out with her in the pool in her apartment building.

I was a good few months into my adventures at this point and had pushed myself so far out of my comfort zone by that point that I was saying yes to just about anything.

So, for the first time in decades, I said yes to going to a swimming pool.

And what happened there became one of the happiest memories of my two years of travelling.

Firstly, I was very fortunate in that no-one else came to the pool the entire time we were there. And because it was a private, residents’ pool there were no members of staff either.

It was just me and my friend and a fun selection of armbands and floats.

And as soon as I tentatively lowered myself down the ladder on the side of the pool and into the water something magical happened.

It wasn’t just that I wasn’t afraid, it was that I bloody loved being in the water!

I’m not kidding, being in the water felt as natural and pleasurable to me it was as if I’d transformed into a mermaid.

And because there was no-one else around there was no reason to feel self conscious about not being able to swim and I was free to experiment with floats and those long tube things that I can’t remember the name of.

We stayed in that pool for about two hours in the end, and I could have quite happily stayed for longer.

Because it was so wonderful to discover that this thing I’d been so afraid of for so long actually felt like something I was born to do.

Just like my revelation about my fear of not having a home, I discovered that the thing I’d been terrified of was wonderful. I mean, what are the chances?!

Sooooo… with all that being said, I’d like to now turn this over to you.

Is there something you’ve been afraid of for what feels like forever but reading this has made you realise that you haven’t actually taken the time to really question your fear?

Maybe this is something you could journal about or ponder. If so, here are some questions to get you started…

• Firstly, is this fear absolutely, categorically true (ie would you actually drown if you set foot in a swimming pool / can you be absolutely certain there’s a monster under your parents’ bed?)

• Secondly, is there a way you could gently (and in a way that feels safe to you) challenge your fear, if only just a little? I’m thinking the equivalent of turning the lights on and cautiously peering under the bed.

• And thirdly, is there something you could do this week as a first step towards overcoming the fear? Preferably something fun and light-hearted.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on this, either in a comment or reply. And until next week, here’s to finding the courage to face our monsters!

Siobhan