A Closer Look at Fear

May 24, 2023

I’d like to talk today about Fear. While it’s both a blessing and curse, being aware of how it can physiologically affect each of us is important to understand.

Fear is a basic, root level, hard wired emotion with the sole objective of survival. Fear is always linked to ideas of survival, however obfuscated the linkages may be. When in a situation ruled by fear, the higher thinking centers of our minds are literally disabled. All energy is redistributed to survival reactions. The higher the level of fear, the more of the thinking mind is shut down. Looking at it from a primeval perspective, this actually makes sense. If you don’t act quickly to the rustling in the grass, by the time the saber-tooth cat attacks it’s already too late. In a modern setting, this quick reaction could still mean the difference between life and death – but it’s up to the waking mind to have discernment about the situation and genuine potentials so that the reactions and outcomes are still acceptable once the thinking mind comes back online.

I’ve said this before and I’ll have an episode dedicated to this – anger is a mask worn by fear. It works the same way in terms of turning off the thinking mind. The biggest difference between fear and anger is that anger is projected outwards and demands action. I’ll reference fear primarily here, but know that anger is a very very close cousin if not an outright mask.

Knowing that fear can shut down thinking while promoting knee-jerk reactions, you had better believe that there are those in this world who are literally counting on the fact that, once you are in a fear state of mind, they can convince you of anything – and the actions inspired are not usually for the highest good of all.

The over-arching theme for this podcast – spiritual and secular versions – is emotional and spiritual intelligence leading to empowerment. We can’t be our best selves if we lack the tools needed to face, decipher, and leverage our emotions. Shoving them into a closet is a fool’s errand and I’ll talk more about this as I get deeper in my work with dealing with shadows and projections. Considering how easy it is to inspire fear and thus control others, this is definitely an area where I have paid a lot of attention in my life. I don’t really think there’s a cure – but I have learned ways to manage myself in a fear state so that I can usually return to a thoughtful and intentional state of being. I personally am not a fan of being someone’s pawn – that’s a disempowered state and goes against my core approach to life.

The Story

Perhaps I’ve gotten jaded, but I’ve reached the point that when people attempt to push my buttons my first thought, my FIRST thought, is “what is your agenda?” or “what are you trying to get me to do that benefits you?” For me personally, it’s a lot harder to push my buttons towards anger, but both fear and anger are highly contagious emotions that are easily spread. Once that sticky, dense energy gets into my emotional field, it’s also been hard to get rid of it. More than once my husband has come to my rescue by grounding me and helping me purge the fear-mind so I can think again. It took me a while to finally figure out exactly he does this so that I can back out of a fear-state on my own now, and I’ll share this later on. This topic has become particularly important in today’s climate which seems desperate not only for my attention but also for my compliance. A look over the headlines of any major news outlet will illustrate this immediately. For me, learning to manage fear by being able to sort it into the useful and non-useful mental bins has been vital. As Paul Selig says, there’s a difference between prudence (useful) and fear (potentially non-useful).

There is one thing I seriously want you to consider. Caroline Myss posed this question, and when I sat with it I learned some ugly truths about myself. The question is: “What does my fear give me permission to do?”

Remember, when we’re seriously afraid or angry, thought is not on the table – for survival, evolutionary reasons. So what does your fear give YOU permission to do? Seriously think about this. Be real with it, and brutally honest. No emotional exploration is ever useful if it’s not honest, and I know that can be tough (future link). Pause this podcast and sit with it a few minutes.

First and foremost, did you like what you discovered? If it was honest, it likely isn’t. Denying these truths helps no one, so own and integrate the truth of them. Doing this does not in any way lessen your value or innate goodness – it actually enhances them. Why? Because doing so means that these things will serve as your “oh shit” moments – those moments when you take an action that has your observer self hearkening back to this exercise to realize “oh shit, this may not be an action I’ll be comfortable with when I’m not being controlled by fear.” This is doubly true if, as emotion ebbs, you realize the fear was a lie, that you were manipulated or you followed the crowd to commit heinous acts. While I hope that we never have to face the potential that we took monstrous actions because our fear or anger got the better of us, I know that for many it is already too late. But it’s not the actions we took in the past that define us, it’s the ones we choose to take next.

As a person who is actively seeking to bring out the full potential of myself, I for one am not comfortable with this – the possibility of being manipulated, of blindly following the masses because “they’re doing it too”, of hurting others and violating my core principle of supporting and encouraging the empowerment of those around me. I doubt I’ll ever fully be free of this kind of fear as long as I’m having a human experience, but I can certainly build into myself emotional check-in points so that I at least stand a chance of stopping myself from becoming an unintentional monster.

What checkpoints have I devised?

First up has been to understand where my weak points are. I’m a rather eclectic person, and homesteading falls into my field of interest. Homesteading and prepping are not too far from each other, and I know I’ve certainly crossed the line between prudent and paranoid. My husband once pointed out that we did not need to stock 40 cans of chili. In that moment, I recognized I was behaving completely unconsciously with a fear-based food hording. Now that I am supremely aware of this weakness, I can keep our pantry stocked within reason. So understanding myself and where my own tendencies toward unconscious fear behavior lie has been very useful to recognize so that I can manage things. I know this is a weak area and likely always will be, so it’s here that I have to be vigilant. Now consider yourself – where are your fear points? What kinds of things will trigger your own fear reactions? I just gave one example, but there are definitely more. Be aware of as many as you can be, and keep an eye out as future ones reveal themselves.

Once I am aware of my weak points, now I get to figure what the source of the fear is. For this example, I recognized it was a learned behavior which ultimately traced back to at least my grandmother. If I personally have never been in a situation where this behavioral response makes sense, that means I’m acting out someone else’s response – in other words, an ancestrally inherited issue. If that’s a new concept for you, Christina Lopes has an amazing video on just what this is and how to recognize it. Armed with understanding potential sources of this fear-induced behavior, it’s a whole lot easier to live life on the useful-fear side of the spectrum rather than the irrational or inflated-fear side of the spectrum.

while recognizing the areas in which I have a fear-based weak-point and understanding what drives it are both extremely useful, that doesn’t always help when I’m out “in the wild”. Because both fear and it’s aggressive sibling are so socially contagious, I’ve been working to recognize the language of fear-mongering. This is the language of deliberate manipulation. Even so, sometimes those incited fears slip in between the cracks of my vigilance. In my case, I have 2 allies that I rely on if it does make it into my energy field. One is my Observer Self; the other is a super grounded friend who has clear sight and can cut through the fear language to help ground me. You can develop your own Observer Self, and if you’re on a path of trying to live your best self by Stepping Up to your Potential, it’s a vital skill that I highly recommend. Having that super grounded friend, though, is pretty rare and something I treasure. If you don’t have a friend who can do this with you, here’s the process. If he’s not available, I go through these on my own and they help.

1. Step One: Get out of the ‘fear mind’ which is a future state of ‘what if’ and get into the NOW mind by taking a deep, slow breath in, hold it for a count of 5, then slooooowly exhale. This process actually forces as physiological response that has nothing do to with the mind and everything to do with body itself. I do this as often as I need to in order to think clearly and calmly enough to answer the next questions. Now that the rational mind is somewhat restored, these are the questions I am asked. Know that if any of these questions trigger another physiological escalation of the emotions, pause and do this deliberate slow breathing until you can proceed. The first few times it may be hard, but it gets easier as you and your body learn the process.
2. Step Two: Ask these questions as calmly as possible.
   1. Where did this fear come from? ie: who told me what I’m reacting to? Sometimes just recognizing that the source is suspect is enough to knock me out of it completely.
   2. Do you know where they got the information they are basing their statements on? Here again, if someone is giving fear-based rhetoric based on rumors and apocalyptic thinking, this too can help me put things into perspective. If someone is quoting “science”, now I can start to assess the sources and use discernment to see if the science is solid or suspect or being interpreted correctly.
   3. What is the agenda of the person who told me this? So far, this one has been the final nail in the coffin. If the agenda is born out of someone’s honest desire to help, I can at least love that motive even if I elect not to pick up what they are putting down. But if the agenda is born out of trying to manipulate me into voting the way they want, or buying what they are selling… Well. I don’t know about you, but I rather dislike discovering that I’m being blatantly manipulated for someone else’s gain.

So far, we haven’t had to go further into the grounding process because these have been enough to take me out of fear-survival mind and put me back into rational-mind capable of discerning things. I have these questions written down and if he’s not around to speak to when I feel like fear is starting to sweep me away, I now usually have enough presence of mind to start on the deep slow breathing, and then ask/answer question one. I keep up the slow exhales and ask the next. The combination of the 2 works magic.

The Point

If you follow a practice in which your fears are considered and examined, then you are far less likely (not immune though!) to having your fears and anger sweep you away so that you become the unwitting monster. Now the question becomes “What do my unexamined fears give me permission to do?”

There was a 1956 sci-fi horror movie called “Forbidden Planet“. While the special effects certainly do not hold up and the acting/story telling has evolved tremendously since then, the core concept of this movie is absolutely BRILLIANT. Through the course of the movie, we learn that once upon a time a vastly advanced civilization called that planet home. Into the core of the planet, they built a machine which allowed them to manifest anything they wanted. The question that the lead scientist had was “what happened to them?” Invisible monsters are plaguing the investigative crew, killing people and causing havoc. Towards the end of the movie, the lead scientist figures it out but he does so only after he’s been in the machine long enough that his knowledge of that the fate of that long dead ancient race comes because he sees his own fate. In the dramatic climax, he is killed by the invisible monsters and with his dying breath he proclaims “monsters from the id”. The beings who had the ability to manifest their wants and desires immediately had overlooked that there was a subconscious aspect of their mind – and it was the machine-generated invisible energy monsters that were projections from their own subconscious selves that ultimately killed them all.

And that is what our unexamined fears give us permission to do – destroy anything which we perceive as the cause for our fear. Be aware of the monsters from the id! Step up and own these things, so you have the option of recognizing when these monsters start coming out to play without your awareness.

TL:DR

Unexamined fears give us permission to destroy that which we perceive as the cause for our fear. Without awareness, you can be manipulated and potentially turned into a monster. Taking a closer look helps us recognize when these monsters might start coming out to play without our awareness.

About the Image

I was up at Lake Champlain in Vermont one fall, taking a drive to view the changing colors of the leaves. Stretched out across the road, trying hard to sun him(or her)self into warmth was this snake. Being one of “those” photographers, I just had to get some pictures of it. Snakes are one of those creatures that incite a visceral fear in many, often lashing out to kill the snake without bothering to find out what kind of snake it was. The perfect illustration for this post! I, for one, really appreciate that snakes take down the rodent population and so work to stay out of their way and let them do their job. Carry on, little snake, carry on.

Audio

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Video

Video is also available through the YouTube Channel. The background for this video is the latest version of my fish tank, which now features all kinds of tetras and killifish.