Fear

            In my years as a karate instructor, many students have come to me seeking guidance in learning to confront or overcome various types of fears.  The first thing that I tell them is that I am not a psychiatrist, psychologist, or sociologist.  Many of my ideas are based upon the theories and research of true academics; however, I feel that my experience in the martial arts has given me a unique perspective on the issue of fear.  The second thing that I tell to my students is that fear is natural.  It only becomes a weakness if you allow fear to dominate your life or control your actions.

            The three fears that I most commonly deal with are tameshiwari-phobia (fear of breaking), kumite-phobia (fear of sparring), and kobudo-phobia (fear of weapons training).  To overcome any fear, one must first understand what fear truly is.  To me, fear is the most basic mental component of the animal kingdom.  For humans, it is the basis of all our emotions.  You are either afraid or not afraid.  There is no in between.  Happiness can be interpreted as the lack of fear, while sadness indicates the presence of fear.  I feel that fear is literally all in your mind.  It is your brain’s natural reaction to gaps in memory or experience or a reaction to a bad memory or imagined consequence.  In other words, when different situations arise fear is caused by either a) a lack of memory, experience, or information or b) a negative memory or experience (real or imagined) triggered by the current situation.  Take walking into a dark room as an example.  If you have been in that room many times during the day, then you will be less afraid (if you are afraid at all) to walk into the room because you have experienced the room before.  If you have never been into the room, you will probably experience some fear because you don’t know who or what is in there.

            Back to the three main karate fears: breaking, weapons, and sparring.  These fears share a commonality that actually has nothing to do with the activities in and of themselves.  These phobias are based upon the fear of pain, either inflicting it or receiving it.  Of the three fears, sparring is the only one that can be directly linked to another individual.  With breaking and weapons, however, the practioner is almost completely in control of what happens.  In other words, when injury occurs there is no one to blame but yourself or your technique.  That being said, if a student listens closely to their instructor’s advice and practices their technique, then the chance of injury will sharply decrease.  Accidents will always occur.  I know that I have accidentally injured myself during breaking, weapons, and sparring practice; however, when I think back to those incidents, I realize that I was either using incorrect technique or I wasn’t truly paying attention to what I was doing.  In conclusion, if you practice and pay attention you probably won’t get hurt.

            The point of this whole lesson, however, is to help allay some of the fears my students may have regarding tameshiwari, kumite, and kobudo.  My point is this:  We all get scared sometimes.  This is a fact of life, but if you truly wish to succeed in life you must overcome your fears.  You can do this in three ways.  First, you can directly confront your fear.  To do this you must identify what it is you truly fear, intensely study the subject manner, and then place yourself in a situation that puts you in direct contact with your phobia.  Second, you can displace your fear.  To do this, you must simply ignore your fear and focus on an internal goal or target.  Lastly, you can desensitize yourself to the fear.  This is the process of intently studying your fear and exposing yourself to it little by little everyday.  As each day passes, you increase your exposure; thus, you will get to the point at which you will easily be able to displace your fear or negate it altogether.

            All of these techniques are better explained using an example.  Let’s use snakes or ophidiophobia.  Direct confrontation:  You study snakes.  You study everything about them their life cycle, anatomy, and behaviors.  Then you go to the reptile house of the zoo and study and watch each and every snake in the zoo.  Perhaps you even go to an interactive presentation about snakes.  One in which you actually touch the snakes.  To displace the fear of snakes, you would simply go to an area where there are snakes and focus your mind on something else.  Lastly, you can desensitize yourself by studying snakes from a book and then watching a snake video everyday.  You would do this everyday until the thought of snakes fails to bother you.  By doing these things you are filling the gaps in your memory that cause fear or replacing the negative experiences with more benign ones.

            Let’s go back to our karate training.  I have heard that some people are afraid of weapons training because they fear hurting themselves.  This is a valid fear.  Unfortunately, with most everything in the martial arts, injury will always be a risk.  Once you accept this, you must listen closely to your instructor.  If you do so, you will decrease the chance of injury.  What you must NOT do is allow your fear to dictate whether or not you continue your martial training.  Remember, it is OK to be scared as long as you don’t let fear control your life.

            Overcoming fear is what has allowed the human race to develop over time.  Conquering fear is the basis of many of the qualities that we hold dear.  Courage is the ability to overcome one’s fear to perform his duty.  Bravery is the ability to overcome one’s fear to inspire courage in others.