MY BIGGEST FEARS!!

MAGNIFICENTLY MCKINNLEY: Blog #4

Hello All & Welcome back to the blog! I realize I haven't been posing as much as I would like to but I have just started my rotations (in general surgery!) for PA school and it has all been a bit overwhelming, to say the least. I just wanted to say that I have received sooo much positive feedback in response to my blog, even though I have barely posted! I am so so thankful for my readers and am amazed that you all enjoy it so much! I love to relate to you all and share my experiences with you, so I am so glad that you all love it too! I am going to try to be a more dedicated blogger, time permitting, and post at least once a day to the Instagram blog, and hopefully do full blog posts here at least every other day! I want to keep relating to you all and helping you all out, so to do that I definitely have to post more! Also, I would love to know what you guys would like to hear from me; help give me some ideas on what to talk about, because I want to discuss things that you all want to hear about! So please email me, comment, or go answer the Instagram story that I will be posting later and let me know what you all want to hear about!!

Okay so now, let's dive into the blog: Today we are talking all about my BIGGEST fears! Yes, I have manyyy many fears in this life. They range from superficial, to deep, deep fears. We all have fears. As much as we would like to believe that we can get through this life being fearless, we all have something we are scared of. For me, I have many things. I am an over thinker, I contemplate everything I do, say, see, hear. I read too much into the what ifs, instead of seeing them as even ifs. Over thinking just about everything in my life has caused me to have many fears. I contemplate my future constantly and fear what is yet to come, or worse, what isn't yet to come. 

Now, don't get me wrong, I also have superficial fears. I call them "superficial" because these things are tangible things that I fear. Things I can touch and see and control, for the most part. For instance, I am DEATHLY afraid of spiders. Always have been, always will be. No matter how hard I try to tell myself that they are necessary to the environment and tat we need them, I always fear that they are out to get me. This fear, I think stems back to my childhood, which I think most fears tend to stem from. When I was about 2 years old, I still used a binky, or pacifier in real terms. My parents didn't want me to use it any more so they came up with a plan to help me get rid of it. Did you ever see those YouTube videos of parents throwing kids binkies in the trash or in the ocean? Well, my parents set up orange and black plastic Halloween spiders all around the house and put my binkies near them and told me that the spiders took my binkies. And I am pretty sure this is why I feel as if I am scarred for life when it comes to spiders. 

Another tangible fear I have, is my fear of heights. This is a strange fear for me because I am not scared of all heights. I am scared of some heights. I fear very large heights, heights where I look over ledges or stand on the edges of cliffs. I also fear walking up big flights of stairs that are all wood that have the in-between of the stairs exposed. I'll post a picture below so you understand because I am bad at explaining things. I fear that I will slip through the stairs and fall to my death. It is a very odd fear, but every one has their corks! 

The last tangible fear I have that I can think of is movie theaters. Now this fear stems from the type of world we live in today. The amount of public shootings that we face today are horrifying. Most of us live in constant fear of public shootings, we can't even enjoy shopping in malls, going to school, seeing a concert, or going to church without fear that a shooting could occur. For me, this fear manifests when I am in movie theaters. I am constantly watching people, people who are sitting alone, people who get up and walk out, people who walk in. I can't even enjoy movie theaters anymore without that tiny thought in the back of my head that is constantly planning an escape plan for myself and my friends/family if something did happen to occur. It is terrible that we live in fear of things that we used to never fear doing. I hope and pray everyday that this world becomes more peaceful. 

P.S. These are the types of stairs I was talking about. ⬇ (but at a higher height)

Okay, now onto what I call my deep fears, or my intangible fears:

1. My fear of failure, not succeeding, and not being worthy. I have always pushed myself to the limit when it comes to academics and schooling and career paths. As I discussed in my last blog, I dream big dreams and I do what it takes to achieve them, at many costs. I want to be successful in everything I do, but especially in my career path. Being in the health care field, my main goal in life is to help people. I want to make them better, healthier, fix them, and save them. And I want to be incredibly successful in doing so. I fear that if I am not successful, that I am going to destroy other peoples lives. I also fear not being successful in my academics. I want to be perceived as intelligent and to do so, I push myself to the limit. I love to learn but I have come to a point where I have made learning more of a task and not as enjoyable. I never want to fail and when I do, I am devastated. I let my success define me. I hold high expectations for myself and I feel as if I don't accomplish these things, then I am not worthy. To me failure is scary because it is not something I know how to handle or cope with. 

2. My fear of the unknown. Anyone who knows me, knows I am a planner. I have lists of to-dos, tasks, goals, ideas and plans that I count on to accomplish just about everything I do in my life. I would plan just about everything in my life to a T, if I could. I fear not knowing what is coming, or not having a plan for something that has a clear cause and effect. I almost never "wing it" and I don't very often take risks, without weighing all the pros and cons before deciding. I like to constantly know what is going to happen and know how to fix things if they don't go the way I planned. Walking into unknown territory is scary, I don't have a plan and I don't know the outcomes. This is something that scares me the most. I like to constantly be in control of my life and the things that happen in it, so when I look into the future and can't see a clear direction or path, I am terrified. 

3. My fear of not accomplishing everything I want to accomplish in life. I have sooo many plans for myself in the future. I want to travel the world, serve the people of the world, partake in incredible and exhilarating experiences, learn a new language, write a book or two, buy an old farm house and fix it up myself, and open my own mental health clinic or rehabilitation center; just to name a few. I fear that this life is too short to accomplish the things I wish to accomplish. I fear that the demands of reality, of working a job to make enough money to accomplish these dreams, will swallow up these dreams and not allow me achieve them. There is always so much to do and so little time to do them, and I fear that I will not have enough time to achieve everything I wish to achieve. 

4. My fear of not being able to find my true purpose/live my life the way God intended me to live it. I have always had this sense of wondering and not feeling entirely there. I have always felt as if there is something else out there waiting for me, something I need to go and do. I fear that I have not found my true purpose in life. I love everything that I do now, such as working in healthcare and participating in service trips, but I can't help but fear that there is so much more out there for me, so much more that I am not seeing or doing or achieving. I fear that I will never find this purpose in life and that I will forever have this feeling of emptiness in a place where I want to feel complete. 

5. My fear of love and being loved. This is probably one of the fears I struggle with most. I have always feared love. To be completely honest, I don't know that I have ever actually loved someone, in a romantic way. I have had boyfriends in the past that I deeply cared for and still do, but I don't think I've ever truly felt pure love. And this is 95% entirely because of me. I love people in a superficial way. I allow myself to experience attraction and love people for their superficial qualities, but I have never allowed myself to love someone fully, deeply, and passionately. I have walls. So many walls, I can't even tell how far they rise. I don't allow others to get to know me, the true me, the deep me. I wall myself off in fear that if I allowed someone to break down these walls and truly love me, that it would end in pain and sorrow. I have experienced a lot of pain in sorrow in my life and I fear that my heart just can't take that much more. I fear that people won't like me, the true me. That they will judge me or not love me in the same way. I am in constant fear of allowing myself to open up to others. Being vulnerable is incredibly hard. And this is why I have never done so in a relationship, ever. I don't allow myself to become attached to others, I distance myself and push others away in fear that they will do the same to me first. It is easier for me to allow others to love me from the outside, than to love them from the inside. My greatest fear is that I will never be truly in love. That I will be so used to keeping myself emotionally detached from others, that I will never know how to do things differently. I fear that no one will ever love the true me; my faults, my flaws, my weaknesses, my sorrows, my hurt, my fears. I fear greatly that love is not in the cards for me, that I am just meant to lo live this life alone. 

6. My fear of being alone. This fear plays partly into what I mentioned above, my fear of never loving or being loved. As I said, I fear that true love is not in the cards for me. I fear that I will never find someone to share a life with, experiences with, hopes and dreams with. My fear of being alone isn't all about fearing love. It is also about fearing loss, loss of family/friends to be exact. I lost my Dad a few years ago now, and it was the most devastating experience I have ever faced. I still play every moment, every detail of that day and the days leading up to that day, over and over again in my head. A huge fear of mine is my fear losing more family members and/pr friends. I don't necessarily fear death, I fear that void and that loss that I experience when a loved one passes on. The fear of never seeing them again, never talking to them again, never hugging them again. I fear that losing family members will ultimately leave me alone and unloved in this world. I fear that I will lose all of my family and friends before I pass on. I know this fear is a bit farfetched but it is something I do truly think about from time to time. My family and friends are everything to me, and the loss of my dad at such a young age has instilled this great fear of potentially losing everyone around me, and in turn, living this life alone. 

It is normal for us to experience fear, whether they are superficial fears or deep fears. It is how we handle this fear that truly defines our lives. We can choose to live in constant fear of what is to come or not to come, or we can face our fears head on, and trump them with fearlessness, power and faith. To escape fear, you have to go through it, not around it. I go through my fear with the power of faith. I trust in the Lord that all things will work out in my life and pray that he helps me to get there. I don't fear the future, I prepare for it and trust that God will guide me through it.

"Purpose, fulfillment, and freedom are waiting on the other side of fear. Preparing for the future is moving forward despite fear, but worrying about the future is immobilizing. Where do you need to remember God's holding your hand helping you?"

Isaiah 41:13

Remember: "what if" = fear, but "even if" = faith. 

Sincerely, McKinnley ❦