Hello! Welcome to Fear Blocks Love, a more spiritually inclined psychology podcast, where we discuss the various ways that unconsciously avoiding fear blocks us from acting with compassion towards others and ourselves.
I'm Dr. Tara Deliberto, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and recovering academic. I'm flying solo in today's episode as your host, to introduce the general concept of fear blocking love. Here, we'll first discuss the process by which this happens before getting into specific examples of this in later episodes.
So let's get started!
We've all done some things that we later regret in the process of trying to protect ourselves from the experience of feeling fear. So for instance, we might hurt people by pushing them away to avoid our fear of being rejected, we hurt our bodies with crash dieting to avoid the fear that other people might judge our bodies. And we also do things like failing to intervene against injustices to avoid the fear of making a scene or being unliked.
So it's not that we're engaging in behavior with the goal necessarily of intentionally hurting another person or ourselves, but that's the outcome. And it's important to acknowledge that outcome, because it is an outcome that lacks compassion. Therefore, when we are acting or reacting to our fear, we are failing to put compassion first.
The goal of this podcast is to put forth an assert the central thesis that: fear and love are on opposite ends of the same spectrum; and to some extent are mutually exclusive. So if in a given instance, a person is unconsciously reacting from fear - whether or not the intention is to hurt - the outcome is one that lacks compassion and, therefore, has the potential to varying degrees to hurt other people and one's self.
Now, that's not to say that if you're a person with an anxiety disorder, that you're a total asshole. I mean, that's not what we're trying to say here. Plenty of very compassionate people are also very anxious. It's not the case that in a person's lifetime, if they experience fear, then they're not compassionate. In fact, it's quite the opposite... but if you take a very thin slice of a person's behavior and you analyze it... I would argue - as I am on this podcast - that if there are aversive outcomes in which other people or one's self gets hurt, that avoidance of fear is at the root cause of that behavior... and that person in that moment was not prioritizing compassion over the process of protecting themselves from fear.
An example of this could be for instance, a parent who is anxious about getting to work. And so if their toddler is throwing a tantrum, a parent might be rough with a toddler or rude or yell. And in those moments, the fear of not getting to work on time is pushing out the goal of behaving compassionately to that child in generally. So this is a moment-to-moment kind of an issue, where even if in our minds our ideal is "behaving compassionately," we lose our way when we're experiencing fear in the moment.
And so the idea becomes to set the ideal to behave compassionately as the ideal above other ideals (such as achievement and thinness and wealth and even people pleasing), and to slowly over time, shape our actions, to be more and more and more in line with that ideal of compassion. The goal then becomes - if we wanna live more compassionately - to put compassion first.
Of course we're not doing this by avoiding, because avoiding fear is what got us into trouble in the first place. So we're not taking club drugs in order to avoid fear and then behave more compassionately. You know, that's not how it works, right? There needs to be a concurrent process occurring in which a person is noticing the fear, maybe even experiencing the fear. Right? Because we don't wanna avoid the fear. The opposite of avoiding the fear is: experiencing the fear and putting compassion first and behaving with compassion.
And a really interesting thing happens when you start to experience fear and put it aside and put compassion first, which is: all of these goals that are tied to the avoidance of fear (e.g., having a thin looking body or having a fit, looking body to avoid other people's judgments or to avoid potential abandonment if you didn't look a certain way), fall away. They're not important because they're not in line with compassion. What becomes important is acting compassionately so that if you are experiencing fear and you choose compassion. You are already achieving your highest goal.
So your whole life starts to transform because all of these things that seem to matter so much, really, really come into focus as not mattering at all... and only mattering insofar as they were lessons in what not to do. And they are lessons in why compassion is so important.
The case is made here that where anyone is suffering, the formula of: experiencing fear, choosing to put it aside consciously, and also leading with compassion.. well, that's it! That's the whole goal.
And so what we're gonna do here on Fear Blocks Love is look at all of the different content areas, where people are suffering and applying this formula, experiencing fear, putting it aside, choosing compassion. Content areas that we might be examining are for instance, body image or high achievement and burnout, the compulsive desire for wealth and the like. Some other areas might be people pleasing or avoiding emotions more generally. And so again, we'll look at all of these different content areas in which fear is blocking love.
So in short, the way in which our lives can transform is putting compassion first and experientially living how this is so much more fulfilling than anything fear-based can offer us, because anything fear-based is going to be hurting ourselves and others in the process. So we essentially have to cultivate the bravery and the fortitude to experience that fear, put it aside and put compassion first.
I hope that there was something here in this very first episode of Fear Blocks Love for you that you found helpful and informative. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or concerns. I'd love to hear from you. And we'll see you next time on Fear Blocks Love!