Fear of Fear: Jan. 11th, 2002
01/11/2002 04:42 p.m.
I am scared.
But I can sustain this moment. The fear is not here.
The fear is there in my past, projected into the time not yet present.
They might come and harm me.
The fear is the fear of a possibility of getting harmed.
The fear of the fear is the projected thought that they might come and harm me.
I am in the grip of a fear. A projected fear is the fear of fear.
Once upon a time I was scared of traveling in Air Planes. Three Planes crashed with in a month, the month I traveled most in planes. In the following ten years I almost did not travel in a plane. I overcame this fear psychosis by adopting to the psycho-therapy of PARADOXICAL INTENTION, as brought to the practice by the propounder of the third Viennese school of Psychology, none other than Dr. Victor Frankl. Needless to say that I always travel in a plane with the intention of dying and I am still alive.

One of my friends, who was suffering from somnambulism for the last so many years, dozed to a deep slumber at 10 pm, paradoxically intending to remain awake till morning.
One of my friends, who stopped moving out of his house, scared that a moving vehicle, while crossing the road, would hit him. I made him change his intention paradoxically from not wanting to get hit to wanting to get hit. I made him cross a heavily trafficked road with the intention of getting hit by a moving vehicle. Obviously he was not to get hit if he was not to get hit. He laughed on his scared self the fifth time he crossed the road. When he laughed he got detached from his fear gripped obsessed self. He was out of the fear Psychosis.
I remember, (if my memory is not befooling me) Frankl quoted a case:
A wealthy couple walked into his clinic. The woman was scared going through a market always scared that she might brake glass penal of a particular store by throwing some object. The thought of going through the market used to make her uneasy, increased her pulse rate and adrenalin level and she used to start perspiring at the thought of going through that street.
Frankl asked her to change her intention from not wanting to break the glass panel to wanting to break the glass penal. He brought her in front of the store, handed her a piece of rock and asked her to break the glass penal. The woman just couldn’t do it. Despite the intention all her attempts( it’s a way of saying, since she never attempted) failed. She, otherwise, would never have done that. She could never.
She had projected a fear and got obsessed with it, by constant repetition of the fear- thought, effect of some cause (suggestion) in the past, in all probability, in her formatory age. Well, Frankl never believed in any Psychoanalysis. He used to say that the Psychoanalysis is like saying that the cause of depressions are the under water reefs which are visible when there’s depression in the sea. Well, this is another issue.
Frankl made the woman laugh. This is the most important part of this therapy. One has to laugh every time the paradoxically intended happening doesn’t happen. When you laugh on your self, you are laughing on your obsessed self, detaching the scared self from your normal selves.
OK. Paradoxically I am changing my intention. Now I am wishing them to come. I shall wait for them to come.
If they ever turn up, this would be a happening and I know I am going to face them like I have faced all the so called ‘harmer’s’ in the past. If they will not, I will laugh.
Laugh?
I don’t remember when did I laugh last. A hearty and natural laugh.
I am scared again. I cannot laugh.
OK. I will change my intention paradoxically. I will cry instead.
Ha! Ha! Ha!





I am currently Detached