What is your greatest fear?
Death, in relation to myself or my loved ones. I’ve always had an exaggerated sense of mortality, even when I was very young. I’m the eldest of six children, and I was always counting heads in the park or worrying about illness. As a teenager, I went through a bad period of hypochondria, with my main fear being that either I or someone I loved had eaten glass. Then after I had my first child, I developed terrible anxiety, in which the whole world felt like a dangerous death trap. I haven’t felt like this for a long time–good therapy and maybe getting a bit older and wiser. But still now if I wake at 4:00 a.m. my mind will play with illness and death. I cannot stand the thought of either being left or leaving behind the people I love most, which maybe has quite narcissist roots, in that I mentally have put myself at the centre of these lives? I’m not sure where it comes from, as I had a happy, stable childhood, although my father is quite neurotic and was often overly protective or worried. As the eldest child maybe I absorbed some of this?
What is your earliest childhood memory of fear?
One Halloween when I was probably 7 or 8, my mother put a cut-out of witch on our front door. It had movable arms and legs, was as tall as an adult human and, looking back now, a real work of art. The next day she said it was so pretty she couldn’t bear to throw it away and pinned it to a cupboard door on the landing outside my bedroom. I had to walk past it to get to the toilet at night, and it completely terrified me. I would lie in bed trying desperately to hold in my pee and then, when the need became urgent, I would race past the witch, trying not to even look at her. Funnily, I told my mother about this recently and she was mortified, saying she couldn’t believe she’d put it there and wondering why I’d never said anything. It seems crazy that I didn’t just say something, as Mum would have taken it down, but as kids I think we totally internalise fear, which of course is not the best lesson for later life!
Is there any fear you’ve overcome in your life?
The anxiety that I was talking about in my first answer was the worst fear I’ve felt in my life. And it went on for years. At first, I tried to ignore it because I felt embarrassed. I also had a baby who needed looking after. But fear doesn’t like to be ignored, and I ended up avoiding things and feeling generally dreadful. I finally started therapy when I began to find it hard to go to the supermarket or take my son to the park. It was a long road, but it totally changed everything. For many years now I would say I’ve had a healthy relationship with fear. I know my limits, I don’t put myself knowingly in dangerous situations, and I have a perspective that helps me to rationalise what’s worth getting frightened by.
