Is facing your fear always a good thing?

How many times have you heard the phrase “face your fear”? As a social worker, I’ve handed that phrase out many times, and I still hand it out to my friends.

But recently, I was the recipient of this seemingly harmless little phrase, and I didn’t find it at all useful or uplifting.

I was staying on a farm in the south west of Western Australia over Christmas with my mother. As it was warm and there was plenty of bush on the property, I made a firm statement right from the start that we’d only walk in the open paddocks where it was possible to see snakes, if they were around. I have a huge fear of snakes, which was magnified on this trip because I had Lucy, my guide dog with me. Labradors are pretty clueless when it comes to wriggly things on the ground. I could just see her running up to a snake to check it out.

Well, everything was going well until the supposed marked bush walk we took started to deteriorate. The track actually disappeared, the bush closed in, and we were soon stomping through really dense scrub, over logs - which I imagined were the homes of at least one big snake - and climbing through dense grass trees. Lucy was out front on a long lead. I kept telling myself, as my pulse rose and rose, that if she sensed a snake, she’d stop dead. But at the same time, I felt so responsible for her and worried that she’d get bitten. I high stepped through the grass, stomped my feet hard to make lots of noise and tried walking on air.

One hour and twenty terrifying minutes later, we arrived back at our chalet. Even though we heard no rustlings around us, and saw absolutely nothing in the form of wriggly and bitey things, my fear of snakes has not changed. I have no idea why we escaped without at least a sighting. Maybe someone was looking after us?

That little soiree hasn’t given me any more confidence to walk in the bush in summer. I’ll be keeping away from long grass and dense bush from now on.     

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