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Symbolic Fears

spicy chili sauce: a case study 

A bottle tumbled out of my fridge and cracked hard on the floor. Shit. The top shelf on my refrigerator door had been wonky for a while. Sometimes, when too many sauces, condiments, and pickle jars took up residence on said shelf, it would unhinge from the door and jangle loosely. We had lived here for months and nothing had actually fallen prey to the defective latch. That is, until one unlucky jar of sweet and spicy chili sauce took the first plunge, breaking on my kitchen floor and sending gelatinous paste flying in a small circle. With little pieces of glass perfectly hidden in the already shimmery, orange sauce it was like a prank food, if the prank was severe intestinal damage. Something about it was chilling. Again, I performed my broken glass cleaning ritual, snapping at my boyfriend to stay out of the way. He sulked on the couch until, having cleared the area of sharp objects, I came over to make nice. He couldn’t have known I was just trying to protect him from my weird hang up.

Looking back now, this played out eerily similar to my first memory of broken glass. We were even cooking dinner when it happened. Except in this scenario, I’m the rigid grandmother having a fit about a minor inconvenience. Yikes. The full-circle nature of this experience is something I can unpack at a later date. But the question remains: what is this broken glass type of fear? Why doesn’t it fit neatly and categorically into the other fears I know?

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Broken glass is a rational fear. Best case scenario, you’re left with a mess to clean up and that’s not pleasant. If you’re unlucky, you might step on a shard and slice your foot, and that’s not pleasant either. It manifests physically. Unlike the fear of public speaking or rejection, you experience the negative consequences in a mostly physical way (i.e. a nasty cut). It doesn’t elicit a terror response. It is not a true anxiety. This is all a normal response to the phenomenon of broken glass. Yet, for me, it elicits an emergency response in my brain that is not rational. It diverges from the normal response. It manifests psychologically. Why? Well, not to sound too much like my own therapist, but I have a hunch that shattered glass triggers my fear of the uncontrollable. If you haven’t surmised this yet, I’m a bit of a control freak, and I’ve never done well when I can’t have a tight grip on a situation. Glass is sneaky. It’s translucent—nearly unnoticeable on a floor until you step on it. It is the ultimate chameleon. It has the upper hand.

 

So, where do I set this fear of shattered glass? I don’t ponder it until it happens. It is rational, but slightly irrational in its response. Physical and psychological. Neither horror, nor phobia, nor pure anxiety. This is what I’ve come to call a symbolic fear. Here, the fear itself is rational (broken glass), but the fear represents something fundamentally disconnected from the occasion (lack of control). The response to this fear is then compounded (extreme cleaning protocol and snappy comebacks). It’s like an onion of fear. Or the strange love child of perfectly sensible fear and pesky anxiety. I think we all must have these symbolic fears that have brewed and bubbled our whole lives, waiting for a name.

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