Does the Big Book say fear is "false evidence appearing real"?
In short:
- No. "False evidence appearing real," and the F.E.A.R. acronym in any form, isn't in the Big Book or anywhere else in our sources.
- The book doesn't call fear false or imaginary. It treats fear as real and serious: "an evil and corroding thread; the fabric of our existence was shot through with it" (p. 67), and "Sometimes we think fear ought to be classed with stealing. It seems to cause more trouble." (pp. 67–68)
- Its account of fear isn't about bad evidence; it's about self-reliance: "Wasn't it because self-reliance failed us?" (p. 68) Its answer is to trust God and ask Him to remove the fear: "At once, we commence to outgrow fear." (p. 68)
What the search found
All our sources were searched for "false evidence," "false evidences," "evidence appearing," "appearing real," "F.E.A.R," "F-E-A-R," and the other common expansions "face everything" and "forget everything," with page breaks joined. None of them is there. "Evidence" appears in the main text only in ordinary senses: the accounting evidence Fred took to Washington (p. 40), the "heaps of evidence" members piled on him that his mind was hopeless (p. 42), "good evidence" for assumptions science lives by (p. 48), the "evidence of our senses" (p. 53), and "every evidence" that women recover (p. 104). None of these is about fear.
What the book does say fear is
Fear first appears in Chapter 5 as one of self's drivers: "Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate." (p. 62)
In the inventory, "(fear)" is bracketed beside each of the four entries on the sample resentment list (p. 65), and the book points to it (p. 67): "This short word somehow touches about every aspect of our lives." (p. 67) It "set in motion trains of circumstances which brought us misfortune we felt we didn't deserve. But did not we, ourselves, set the ball rolling?" (p. 67)
That last point matters for the saying. The book doesn't say the things we feared weren't real. It says fear helped bring about real misfortune, and asks what part we played in starting it (p. 67).
What the book does with fear (p. 68)
- Write fears down, "even though we had no resentment in connection with them" (p. 68).
- Ask why we had them. "Wasn't it because self-reliance failed us?" (p. 68) Self-reliance "was good as far as it went, but it didn't go far enough." (p. 68) Self-confidence "didn't fully solve the fear problem, or any other." (p. 68)
- Trust God instead. "We trust infinite God rather than our finite selves." (p. 68) Just to the extent that we do as we think He would have us and humbly rely on Him, "does He enable us to match calamity with serenity." (p. 68) Note "calamity": the book expects real trouble, and promises serenity in it, not that the trouble is unreal.
- Ask for the fear to go. "We ask Him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what He would have us be. At once, we commence to outgrow fear." (p. 68)
Fear stays on the daily list afterwards. Step Ten: "Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear." (p. 84) Step Eleven's evening review: "Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid?" (p. 86)
Where things went better than feared
The nearest the main text comes to "fear isn't based on the facts" is in Step Nine. "We must lose our fear of creditors" (p. 78), it says, and approached honestly, "the most ruthless creditor will sometimes surprise us." (p. 78) Of going to a man we hated, which is "harder" than going to a friend (p. 77), it says "In nine cases out of ten the unexpected happens." (p. 78), though that passage speaks of reluctance to admit our faults, not of fear (p. 77). In Chapter 11, the man who set out "to tell those he feared what his trouble had been" (p. 156) found himself "surprisingly well received" (p. 156). Even there, the book's point is what happened when they acted on the program, not that fear is false evidence.
What this means
"False evidence appearing real" is a later saying. The Big Book's fear inventory doesn't ask whether a fear is based on real evidence; it asks why we had it, answers that self-reliance failed us, and turns to trust in God (pp. 67–68). For the whole of what the book says about fear, see: What does the Big Book say about fear?
Read it yourself
- Chapter 5, "How It Works" (pp. 62–68): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt5.pdf
- Chapter 6, "Into Action" (pp. 77–78, 84–86): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt6.pdf
- Chapter 11, "A Vision for You" (p. 156): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt11.pdf
- The full Big Book: https://onlineliterature.aa.org
Sources
| Source | Pages | Date |
|---|---|---|
| All our sources (searched): Big Book, pamphlets, history, stories, service | — | various |
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapters 3–6, 8, 11 | 40, 42, 48, 53, 62, 65, 67–68, 77–78, 84, 86, 104, 156 | 1939 |
Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Quotations are brief and cited; the Big Book is © A.A. World Services, Inc.
These pages answer questions about A.A. from A.A.'s own published literature, read in full, with every quote checked word for word against the page it cites. Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. What we read, and when each source was written.