Ghoulies and Ghosties and Long-legged Beasties and Things That Go Bump in the Night

Halloween is a strange mixture of celebration and fear. Its origin is the Festival of Samhain. The Celts believed around this time of the year, the wall between our realm and the world of ghosts and spirits thinned. It marks the harvest season as well as the return of less daylight. This suggests to me that this is an excellent time to, sans costumes and candy corn, look at banishing our fears.

Examining Our Fears

Almost everyone has seen a version of this: Fear is False Evidence Appearing Real. Okay, but how might we deal with this? It’s time to shine some light on fears and see what happens. First, ask coach Byron Katie’s key question – “Is that true?”. Often a moment of reflection, including examining the evidence, its source and its reliability is sufficient.

When clients can’t shake a fear, I often suggest playing with it fear by suggesting that they ask, “and then what?” seven times. For example, women often have a lurking fear about not having enough money. The exercise would look like this:

I’m going to lose my job.

What would happen?

I wouldn’t be able to pay my rent (mortgage, maintenance).

And then what?

I’d try to stay with friends or family while I looked for another job. But they might get tired of me.

And then what?

I’d keep moving around until I run out of friends. And I’d look for temp work so that I could pay them or rent a room.

And then what?

I’ll run out of friends and won’t get work.

And then what?

I’d have to go on Public Assistance, hope that they’d help that they’d help me find a job or training and find me someplace to live.

And then what?

I’d have to live in a shelter.

And then what?

I would use my time to write a memoir about my experience.

And then what?

I’d get published and have money again and maybe create a program to help other women and have lots of money.

If you do this, either you’ll have a solution – or hints of a solution or you’ll be laughing hard enough to realize that most of your scenario is unlikely to ever happen.

I had a friend who was sure that going on a cruise would not leave her enough money to last the rest of her life. We never got past “Is that true?”.

We did the math and discovered that, if she went on this wonderful, expensive cruise – a wine cruise of Australia – she would only have enough money left to live to 104, excluding interest accrued between her current age, 65, and 104, not 105.