Introduction

Fear is not new to any of us. We all have something we fear or try to avoid and this starts from when we start reasoning up until death. There are alot of common fears which is not restricted to just one person but alot of people. Things like fear of death, fear of going to hell, fear of losing a loved one, fear of poverty etc. These are examples of day to day things people fear and I strongly believe there is no one out there who fears nothing or no one. In this contest I'm going to be talking about my biggest fear and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.

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How It Started

When I was about the age of 10, I had this really really close friend who I spent all my free time with. He was my first and only friend and an only child. His parents were working multiple jobs struggling to make ends meet and due to the fact that they only had more son, they were able to do just that until one really sad Saturday morning his dad passed away in his sleep. I didn't really understand because I was a little child but my friend felt to impact to the fullest. Being the only child he was pampered and now something we never had to worry about unexpected happens. As time went on my friend became this lonely, empty and cold person and we drifted apart as time went on. I sat down one evening gazing into the moonlight as random thoughts went through my head. Then the thought of waking up one day and hearing that my dad has passed on. I immediately got scared and ran into my room to go and sleep. Over the night, I had this terrible nightmare about not having any parents or siblings. I was left alone to fend for myself in this cruel world. My uncles and aunts were very cruel to me as if to say they wanted my parents dead. In the dream I went through alot of hardship and after alot of crying and suffering in the dream I wanted to end it all by committing suicide. As I jumped down from the 7 storey building in the dream I immediately woke up from the nightmare all sweaty and traumatized. My mum said I gave a loud shout just before I woke up panting heavily. I narrated it all to my parents after which they prayed over me and told me not to worry.

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Side Effects

The side effects were not really serious but we're experienced often. I was always against my dad doing anything dangerous at work and always told my mum to stop driving so as to prevent accidents. I started hating uncles and aunts and avoiding them each time they paid us a visit. I had the believe that eating out was going to get us poisoned so once the food isn't cooked by my mum we shouldn't eat it. My parents kept going out with their cars so inorder to prevent that I always hid their car keys when they wanted to go to work. Any talk about dying or death brought chills to my spine and I always avoided any such topics. I also had this believe that the angel of death was the one that kill people in their sleep so I stopped sleeping and encouraging people to do so too. Due to all this, I started looking terrible and unkept so my parents took me for counseling.

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Ways I Use to Control my Fears

Due to steady counseling, I learnt the following ways to keep such fears in check:

• Don't figure things out by yourself :-

You are not alone. There are people who care about you who you can share these problems/fears with and you might never know how much help they can render to you and how they can change your life for the better.

• Somethings are beyond our control:-

The major thing about my fear was the fact that we as humans have little control over our own lives and the lives of others. It is as God wishes. A baby can be born today and die the next day. It happens and although it's sad we have no control over such phenomenon. All we can do is accept the will of the supreme being and hope for the best.

• Think positively

Sometimes if things start getting intense just put your headphones on, put some soothing and relaxing songs, take a walk to the park, go down town, go to the stream or riverside, get some fresh air. Focus when thinking positively, always think about things that make you feel welcome, free, safe and loved.

• Train your mind and brain

President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." People often fear or anticipate fear making them scared before they even get to do what they do. I have this fear of speaking infront of a crowd and I always thought to myself that I had stage freight but after the therapy I trained my brain to get over it and I found out that the stage freight was something my brain made me believe. You'll soon realize that it's the fear of fear that you fear, nothing else. And that will eventually become easy to manage after some training.

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Conclusion

There are many ways of getting over of various fears and many approaches but alot of them just require you to be open about them to the right set of people because if we put it all on ourselves we might make some silly and unchangeable mistakes which we could have avoided if we tell someone. Don't get me wrong, telling the right person not just anyone because some people will only make our problems worse

I cordially invite @spyrex, @taziba and @emmanuel-malume to join me in the contest.