(Photo, after the 24 hour storm, light, from the house, from the moon. Cold can be beautiful to see.)

A divinity school professor told me once that the first task of a minister is to make men and women aware of their predicament.

I believe that is also the first task of anyone who wishes to understand and live with fear and anxiety. As is apparent to almost anyone reading this, anxiety is an integral part of modern life. We worry about our bills, our retirement, our health care, our paralyzed government,  our children, the economy, about identity thieves and hackers and trolls, violence terrorists, refugees and immigrants, even our dogs and cats, who bring us as much worry as joy.

The minister, the professor told me,  is given the task of healing those who are sick, and those who don’t know they are sick. I know many people who live amidst so much anxiety they have no idea it is an illness that can be helped, even cured.

We have no magic powers to heal ourselves, we often need help. The predicament is that  the anxiety we feel takes us over, we lose sight of reality and trust and believe the voices inside of us that are lying to us, that are telling us we can’t take care of ourselves, can’t manage our lives, find love, make enough money, be secure, live safely and meaningfully in the world. Be at peace.

Anna Freud wrote that panic attacks occur when people are lying to themselves, the attacks, are the alarms of the subconscious telling us we aren’t seeing the truth clearly. Panic attacks are an alarm, not a reality. Fear is sometimes healthy – we feel it when we are in real danger, when our house is on fire, or the brakes fail in our car or when someone is hurting us.

But any therapist will testify that most fear is neurotic fear, not real fear. We fear things that are not real, that are not dangerous,  not true. I often lied to myself when I told myself I couldn’t find love, I couldn’t wrote books, I couldn’t handle money, I couldn’t take care of myself. And I had a lot of panic attacks.

I had a friend who was terrified she would screw something up in a health care job that would kill or injure someone. She had worked in this field for decades and had never harmed anyone, it was very difficult for her to see that the fear was not real, her panic attacks were a symptom, not the reality. No one could convince her that her fears were founded. She is getting help, and it helps.

People live in dread of harming their dogs and cats. Every time I put up a photo of a dog riding in my car in the summer, I get a slew of e-mails from people scolding me or warning me to be careful, dogs die in the heat. I feel bad for dogs these days, so many people are terrified of taking them along, something most dogs dearly love to do.

I won’t succumb to that kind of fear, my dogs ride with me all year. I pick my anxieties carefully.

I don’t have panic attacks any longer. Mine were terrible, often quite physical.

I had a small one when the water shut down last week, but that was quite real, especially this week. In the movies, fear is often cured by what I call the “holy moment,” when a caring shrink shakes the patient and they suddenly see the light.

That was not what worked for me, or for most people in the real world.

Fear is the predicament of our time, and I had to understand what it was and how it worked before I could heal.   I had to think about it and talk to people about it. I am a living monument to talk therapy, I talked myself black and blue about fear for decades, I suspect I finally bored it to death and caused it to flee.

Treating it required help that I  had to get. I relied on people around me who are in reality and can help me get back to reality when I lost sight of it in a panic. Maria and I bring each other back to reality all the time.

The ancient prophets and healers believed that fear was a demon that needed to be cast out. Cures were based on magic power and magic self-suggestion. I think many people still look for that. I think it’s a good way of looking at it.

One of the ways I healed from my fear was to see fear as a demon that I needed to cast out and kick over the hill like a soccer ball. You know what? It worked.

But I have to speak the truth now, it took me decades to cast out my demons, I just kept getting help and more help until the help helped. Sometimes I think I just smothered it with talk. I wish there was a quicker or easier way for me, or for my friends.

Like the professor said,  fear is a predicament. Healing begins with awareness, the first step is always, I think,  into the study of reality.