Fear and Love

My husband and I watched a documentary last night on the 1%.  That is the top 1% in wealth in the U.S.  It was made by the grandson of the Johnson and Johnson founder.  The film maker was taking an insider look at the disparity in America.  He interviewed a granddaughter of Warren Buffet.  Mr. [[Buffet after learning of his granddaughter's participation in the film wrote a letter to her disowning her.  She said in response to this that people are motivated in life either by love or by fear.  She saw her grandfather as being motivated primarily by fear.  She seemed completely without fear of any kind herself when she spoke.  She seemed open and honest and not critical in any way of her family.  I did not hear her say anything that was negative or disparaging.  She certainly said nothing for which disowning could be construed to be warranted.  She opened her life to the camera.  She lived a simple life in New York as an artist and nanny.  She seemed happy and content with nothing to hide.  She expressed hurt about her grandfather's wishes but not anger or fear.  Most of the elite 1% in the film seemed by contrast angry and fearful or hopelessly out of touch.  Certainly people in both rich and poor circumstances can either be angry and fearful or happy and content and at different times and circumstances act from different motivations.  Yet it also seems to be true that one's overall current of  life either can come from a place of love or of fear.

Have you ever heard the motivations of  life put in such a meaningful and simple way, "Either you are motivated by love or by fear".  The words repeat in my head.  The statement is so simple that it seems self-evident.  Perhaps I am displaying my own previous lack of insight.  When I reflect on this I think about my own life's motivations.  One year ago in January as I was contemplating suicide in a time of great stress and shame I realized that most of my life to that point had been about trying to gain acceptance and validation from others.  But even attaining a respectable profession did not seem to fulfill the validation I needed.  It's an elusive goal, validation.  My most salient source of fear and shame in life is failure.  Until recently I never failed at anything that I tried.  I have been able to with few exceptions been able to achieve all that I wanted to achieve.  I have the diplomas on the wall, but despite this success being judged and scrutinized is extremely anxiety provoking for me even more so than most other people  with similar background and training that I have.  Could this be because I am motivated by fear and not love?

I can test the idea with my imagination.  I consider  what is motivating me. For over six months I have been procrastinating project.  I cannot get myself motivated to work on it.  I always find something else to do.  I feel stuck.  I feel bad about myself for this laziness on my part and yet I have this inertia when it comes to this project.  Will it help me to get over my procrastination to consciously scrutinize my underlying motivation?  I never consider myself I procrastinator.  My parents would both admit to being major procrastinators and perhaps there is a genetic component to it for me.  But I'm always one to start the project early and have it done before the deadline.  But if I think about my motivation for being so inclined it comes to mind that perhaps I am doing it all for the the fear of being seen as lazy, incompetent or dumb.  When I began to send my nieces and nephews presents on their respective birthdays I was motivated by pure love.  I would imagine them opening the present and their excitement and joy.  I wanted them to know that I loved and cared for them, that they were special to me.  It was not stressful to buy those gifts and send them because I love them so much.  I wanted them to like the gift but I was not fearful or worried about it.  Now that they are getting older especially my oldest nephew who is 13 years old I worry more about getting his gift because I am not sure if he will be excited or bored or disappointed.  If I think of it that way I could be motivated by fear that he will not like me or will be mad at me.  I notice when I think of it that  many times when I am operating at my worst, when I am anxious, stressed out, and frazzled, my motivation is fear. For example, I'm afraid if I do it wrong or do not do enough people will talk badly about me or that my colleagues will not like me.  I'm afraid I'm not good enough.  I'm afraid of disapproval.  I'm afraid of embarrasment.  I'm afraid.  I motivate myself a lot with fear.  I imagine the disapproval of others and I believe that will motivate me to better performance.  It disheartens me to think that my primary motivation in life has been coming from a place of fear.  Fear that people would one day find out the truth that I am not as smart as they think I am or that I am somehow deeply flawed.   I want to operate from a place of openness and love

My profession

Psychiatry is a funny profession. Many people become embarrassed around a psychiatrist or that's the way it seems to me.  There's always a pause after the revelation and many times a joke about what I must be analyzing in my new acquaintance. I was a dietitian before I became a psychiatrist and people would also get embarrassed when I answered the question about my work especially if I met them at an event that involved food.  People often would immediately self consciously cover their plate or make an awkward remark about how they don't always eat this bad. What's with me anyway why did I chose two professions that make people uncomfortable? Do people get self conscious when they meet a cardiologist or a pediatrician?  Maybe dentists conger up regrets about not flossing enough. But I don't think other professions hit the same insecurity nerve that psychiatry does.  I can understand it. I barely knew what a psychiatrist was before I went to medical school.  Nobody I knew went to a psychiatrist. We only went to the doctor if it was serious such as a painful swollen outer ear infection or a broken bone. Fortunately we were not sick much because we did not have health insurance. My only exposure to psychiatry and mental health growing up was a sinister psychiatrist on the soap opera General Hospital (I actually don't remember how the plot went but he was duplicitous for personal gain of some sort) and the social worker that came to our house concerned about my brother, sister and me being homeschooled. My impressions were not favorable.

But maybe it's not my profession that causes people discomfort though, maybe it's me, my demeanor.  Perhaps I looked at that woman at party who's overweight who had that gigantic piece of apple pie with ice cream as if to say you better lay off or you are going to lose your toes and your eyesight to diabetes, honey.  To the pastor who just welcomed me to his church, perhaps I conveyed a sense of knowing his inadequacies that were made more evident by his sermon's self-revelatory content.  I mean I never thought that I was judgmental previous to my marriage but my husband tells me that he sometimes (maybe more than sometimes) perceives a judgmental attitude in me. I usually tell him that he is wrong but then I wonder what does it mean to be judgmental. Isn't it the perception of the other person what makes someone's attitude judgmental? So then it would be only the other person who could say whether I am judgmental.  But then some people's perceptions are inaccurate.  Some people are paranoid, others have a negative bias and others are influenced by preconceived ideas.