Many people believe that love is the opposite of fear. It is a question often asked on social media, especially in forums and groups relating to emotional healing: what is the opposite of fear? And if you scroll through the answers, you see that most people reply: love. But just because most people say it is love, it does not mean that love is the correct answer. It’s not. And thanks to the recent Covid-19 pandemic, the reason why is not so difficult to see. Allow me to explain.
Among the many fears experienced during the pandemic were the fears: Am I going to catch the virus? Or, if you had someone in your family who was old or who was made vulnerable to catching the virus by having an already-underlying health condition: Will a member of my family catch the virus? These were real and very valid fears.
Now, take the latter example: Will a member of my family catch the virus? Let’s say this family member is one of your parents and that between you and that parent there exists a very strong bond of reciprocal love. You love them. And they love you. Very much.
So, with all this strongly-felt reciprocal love, there shouldn’t be any fear. Yet, there is. If love is the opposite of fear, as so many people say it is, shouldn’t the love just wipe-away all the fear? Yet, it doesn’t. And it doesn’t because love is the wrong remedy for fear.
What will remove the fear in this situation is the knowledge that your parent will be safe and will not, in any way or form, catch the virus. 100%. And this is something you need to hear from someone who is an authority on the subject matter and who clearly knows what they are talking about. This is reassurance. This is being told by a trusted individual that everything is going to be OK. If you are a parent yourself, it is the exact same energy you use when one of your children comes into your room one night, upset and slightly fearful after having had a bad dream. To relieve your child of their fearfulness, you reassure them that all is OK; it was only a bad dream, it’s over now and everything is going to be OK. And because you know it – because you know that everything is going to be OK – you generate a very strong energy of reassurance in you. Then, when you give your child a big hug to let them know everything is going to be alright, they absorb the energy of your reassurance into themselves where it works to dissipate the remaining energy of fear they are still holding inside themselves after their bad dream. The warmth of your reassurance melts the coldness of their fear. It works.
And this is the proof that reassurance and not love, is the opposite of fear.