FEEL THE FEAR & ...

This week BBC Radio 4 serialised the story of adventurer and explorer Ralph Fiennes  and how he's faced and dealt with fear in his life. His  reading  of his own work was without drama or exaggeration. He told us about how he coped with a phobia of spiders, although clearly terrified, and in a situation where to scream would have endangered the people he was with, he pretended that he didn't have a phobia and brushed the venomous creature off his leg. It worked! He cited other scenarios of terror and fear-while on expeditions and in battle zones.  Admitting to your self that you're terrified rather than denying it is the first step in dealing with it. When the body is in adrenaline overload, our emotions take over and being able to think clearly and rationally is extremely difficult.
     As a counsellor I have worked with clients with a range of fears and phobias but that doesn't stop me forgetting everything I know I'm supposed to do to calm down-breathing, distraction, self talk, self soothing.  Most of my phobias relate to animals, particularly dogs and birds flying at me in a confined space. (I had that particular one before Alfred Hitchcock made his film, The Birds).
    Fear can also hold you back from having adventures and engaging in life. This week we spent a couple of days in Norwich and took a train out to Hoveton & Wroxham, where The Norfolk Broads are easily accessible.
     Where does fear and just being a wimp start and end? We had the prospect of taking out a small cabin cruiser on our own for an hour. Neither of us had ever driven a boat but we both drive cards. We made up every excuse to each other why taking that boat out was a bad idea- there was no-one else out on the water, it was windy, we might break down, Rhys can't swim (although there were life jackets), it was cold etc etc. The fact was we were both scared but wouldn't admit it. The aftermath for me of not taking the opportunity to try something new is always regret and if only...   This was hardly white water rapids and the speed limit was only 5mph! We did the safe thing. Imagine if we'd felt the fear and done it anyway?
  

ICH BIN BERLINER?

 I've just come back from a long weekend in Berlin. I was last there 17 years ago as guest of the British Ambassador and his wife. Their colleagues seemed intrigued as to how on earth a woman with a south-west London working class accent could receive an invitation to stay in the British Residency.  My oldest school friend was a diplomat there and also happened to be married to the Ambassador and they really made an effort to give us a great time.

         My daughter and I slept in the bedroom used by the Duke of Edinburgh on a previous visit with the Queen and were guests at a NATO dinner. The dinner included politicians and people of influence. Some assumed we were also important until they found out better and then lost interest. The Residency's phone bill must have been astronomic that weekend as my daughter in her first year of uni kept her new boyfriend frequently updated on our goings-on. 

        Many of the museums were closed for renovation and the newer ones not yet completed. The most memorable site for me at that time was seeing Glienicka Bridge- a point of exchange during the Cold War for secret agents of both political systems who had been taken prisoner. I recently asked my daughter to recall her most prominent memory of that weekend. It was walking up the red carpet at the German premiere of the film 'Billy Elliot'- the story of a young boy from a mining town in the north-east of Britain who became a ballet dancer.. .

        Fast forward 17 years.  No British Residency for us. Our friends are now both retired. We stayed in an apartment in Mitte. The museums -new and renovated- are open for business and crowded with tourists. There are many more monuments to the atrocities committed in World War 11, the Holocaust and in the Cold War.   You have to admire the Germans for their willingness to own the darker side of their history. By making some of these museums free millions of visitors bear witness to those dark days.          

         In the UK where are the museums or departments within museums or memorials that own the atrocities of the British Empire and enable us to bear witness to our history's shadow side?  I can't think of any. My own father was a prisoner of war for two years in Stalag IV, near Dresden and never spoke of his experiences. My uncle was there at the liberation of Berlin in 1945. 

      What this most recent visit to Berlin did was remind me of the conditions that can lead to totalitarian states. When the Berlin Wall came down I have to admit to a degree of sadness as this was the beginning of the end of communism and an ideology that I was attracted to as a young person. My uncle had a photo of Stalin on his living room wall and as a child he told me it was my uncle Joe. It was only much later that I learnt of the atrocities of Stalin, the mass murders and oppression that took place in East Germany, the Baltic States and Russia from the 1950's until the fall of the Berlin Wall.  

       Visiting the East Side Gallery where murals painted on the remains of some of the original wall mark the 25th anniversary of its fall (1989-2014), I was uplifted by the artists' reminders of  how much better life is today in Germany for the majority under the present system and where freedom of expression is taken for granted. But lest we forget they also remind us that threats to democracy are still there. Capitalism is also an ideology where workers' rights and our environmental interests are being marginalised by the interests of global business, where the media is owned by a few rich men, where 'the outsider' is scapegoated for our economic difficulties and policies, and where the question as to whether we can trust our governments to be transparent and honest is on-going.