There’s good fear and bad fear. Good fear makes me take action. Bad fear paralyzes me.

For me, good fear is frequently associated with competition. I’ll see someone doing something interesting in family law better than I do and become highly motivated to beat that person. I’ve watched myself get crushed by an opposing counsel in a trial and work as hard as I can to return the favor.

I’ll go crazy reading, learning, and researching so I can beat that attorney next time. I’ve attended seminars, practiced in front of the bathroom mirror, and stayed up all night working to be better than I was before. The other thing that pushes my fear buttons is seeing someone marketing better than I do. That makes me BSC (bat-shit crazy).

Those are examples of good fear helping me improve.

Then there’s the bad fear. I get it when I receive a letter from the North Carolina State Bar (our licensing agency) or the Internal Revenue Service. They never write with good news. Something bad always comes from those letters, especially if they’re sent via certified mail. Ugh.

I’ve got bad fear coming from other places as well. My bad fear kicks in when payroll approaches and we’re short on cash. That fear wakes me up in the middle of the night, it makes me tired the next day, and it makes it hard to eat. None of that helps me fix the situation. That kind of fear slows me down, debilitates me, and creates a little cesspool of depression for me to wallow in.

I spend considerable time talking to myself about fear—not out loud in a crazy way. I have these conversations in my head where only I know how crazy I am. I try to suppress the bad fear. I’m not sure whether that’s the best plan.

It occurs to me that fear is fear. There really aren’t different kinds of fear; there are just different ways for me to process and perceive it. I see myself using fear to help myself in some situations and hurt myself in others. I wish I could figure out how to make it work for me and not against me all the time. So far, that’s a struggle I haven’t yet figured out.

I will say, however, that talking to you about fear – right here, right now – helps. It feels better to acknowledge that things get scary sometimes. Maybe I’m stumbling toward some answers by talking to you about how it feels.

For now, I guess, I’ll just keep having those crazy conversations – with myself.