Fear is a powerful emotion!
Rightly so! It is intrinsically linked to our basic survival instinct. In nanoseconds (far faster than we can think about anything), fear can catapult our nervous systems into a full blown “fight, flight, freeze, or all-out faint” response. Fear is a full-bodied response to threat or danger. Our bodies tense; our heart races; our chest constricts; our focus narrows. The blood flow patterns in our brain changes so that we literally can’t think – even while our mind is desperately trying to make sense of things. It feels like a life or death situation. And sometimes it is.
Fear is a sensed threat to our physical, mental, emotional, and/ or spiritual wellbeing (none of which are ever really separated). Fear is a felt threat to our life and to what makes life worth living. We fear rejection; we fear loss; we fear pain; we fear “losing face”; we fear missing out (FOMO); we fear being wrong; we fear seeing others hurt or even the possibility that we might hurt others. How deeply fear affects us is influenced by our temperament, our life experiences, our memories, and the conscious or subconscious meanings we give those situations where we have felt unsafe. When we are consumed by fear, we may react by avoiding situations, by lashing out, or by over complying. Fear can lodge deeply in our mind-body memory and interfere with our ability to be present to what is. We can become so reactive to what we perceive as danger that we can miss what is actually going on.
Advertisers prey on our fears. They know that we are often more motivated by fear of what we will lose that by what we might gain. To close a deal, they often create a sense of urgency so that we don’t have time to think. Abusers exploit our fears. They do so by cutting us off from those very things that support our wellbeing – food security, shelter security, loving human connections and community, meaningful engagement with life and those around us. The earlier that abuse starts, the more insidious it is, and the longer it goes on, the greater the harms and more far-reaching the damage. For any of us, the longer we are cut off from these vital connections, the harder it is to recognize how important these are to life. We live truncated lives. We develop coping skills that poorly serve us. We live in stories that tell us we don’t need connection to our fellow human beings (other humans are scary!) or to a sense of the sacred and/or meaning in life. Even worse, we may live in stories that justify continued abuse or vilification of others.
Just because fear may be “irrational” doesn’t mean that there isn’t real danger. But a chronic state of fear can keep us from seeing and responding to the real danger. We do need to have some sense of safety to begin to quiet our fears enough to notice our other forms of awareness. Most of us recognize and know not to ignore “gut feelings”. A “heart knowing,” related to – but deeper than – emotions, can be a bit harder to tune into if we aren’t used to doing that. Heart (coeur in French or cor in Latin) is the root of the word Courage. As we learn to connect below the anxiety and below the exhaustion to our deep heart, to a sense that we are loved and worthy, to a sense of the sacred and connectedness with others – we begin to see more clearly. We can attend to the here and now. We can find wisdom and compassion to know how to respond and discover the strength to live with authenticity and courage in a world that is not always kind.