What is fear afraid of?

A few days after my parents left for Seattle, I went back to looking for a job full time. After having no luck finding chaplaincy openings on the major jobs sites, I decided to go directly to the source. I went to the websites of every major hospital in the LA and Claremont area and found one chaplaincy job opening. Only one! Unfortunately, it was at St. Vincent's and it was for a catholic chaplain. Therefore, I really found zero job openings. Sigh

Needless to say, this news totally deflated by "find a job" bubble and kicked up (all at once) all my anxieties about getting a job. I cried for an hour - would have been longer but I had to go to my part time job. I fear that I'm never going to find a job that uses the degrees that I have worked so hard to receive. Then I get angry that I went through so much crap to get one of them and now it's not helping me on my career path. I fear that Jeremy is going to have to struggle to pay more than his half of our bills while he is working to finish his Ph D. I want to work so that he can go to school without the stress of having to make money. Plus, I know that he'll be happy if I'm happy and so I want to be happy not only for myself but for him. Lastly, of course this also started a cycle of internal negativity that goes something like this: I'm upset because I don't have a job, then I think I should be okay with not having a job because I shouldn't define myself by my job, but then I know that I define myself that way (I've always been the job - I've always been a student and student worker), and thus I get upset that I am upset when I'm telling myself not to be upset.

While I know that I shouldn't let my fears run my life - I also know that the fears I state above are not entirely unfounded. California doesn't accredit a lot of its own schools in terms of counseling, so you can imagine what they think of an out of state degree. I'm still working towards ordination in the UM church - an act more easily completed if I would stay in one state for the next few stages. On the other hand, while Jeremy is under a lot of stress with working and school - he probably wouldn't be doing any less even if I did have a full time job.

While I'm still allowing myself to experience these feelings, I have come to some interesting discoveries about fear. Fear is a complicated emotion and I can be fearful of fear. For instance, my fear of not having a job keeps me ever applying because I know that if I don't apply I will never land a job. I don't know enough people out in CA to network my way into a job, therefore applications are my only hope. It's as though I am fearful of the fear that I will never have a job. This fear of fear seems to serve as a motivator. However, fear can also serve as an immobilizer. Sometimes the fear that I'll never get a job leads to the thought - "why bother applying?" On these days it is a lot harder (if not near impossible) to apply for jobs. I fear pain and needles - so while this keeps me away from intravenous drugs it also keeps me from getting regular shots (like tetanus) if I can get away with not having them, of course. When getting a shot I have to convince myself that I am more fearful of the disease I am being vaccinated for than I am the needle itself.

This has affected the way that I talk to people about fear. What does it mean to face fear? Is it just not feeling scared? It seems that I face fear with fear. I used to think that fear could be quantified ... fear in small doses was probably helpful but more inhibiting in larger doses. I'm not sure that recent experiences are falling in line with this theory. The question has become, how do I tap into the motivational fear and not be inhibited by fear? Maybe fear is only afraid of itself?