Life is frightening. That thought came over me the morning after the mass killings in Paris last November. On the night of the attacks, I emailed a friend there, asking if he was okay. He wrote back the next morning: “Everything is fine…but what a shock!” What a shock indeed.
Events like this evoke many responses: sadness, fear, anger, hoping it won’t happen to me, worrying about whether friends and family are all right, wondering how to help. It also highlights the necessity to work with our own fear, from the little niggling fears we have to the biggest challenges we face in life. Where do we find courage? Where do we find solutions?
It seems there are no sweeping answers that magically calm our fear and anxiety. However, some hints may be close at hand. For intertwined with fear, we discover fearlessness. This was highlighted by the response of citizens in Paris on Twitter, immediately following the attacks: People using the hashtag “Porte Ouverte”—Door Open—to offer shelter to those affected by the bombs and shootings, who needed a place to spend the night, who could not get home, who needed a refuge from the terror. Come here, our door is open to you. That message of fearlessness and human solidarity is one we can celebrate in these frightening times.
More mundanely, how can we connect an event like the Paris attacks to the everyday fear we feel?—the fears we encounter when shopping for a bathing suit, taking a flight, or just looking at the day ahead. Is the Open Door policy one we can use personally? Or should we adopt a Closed Border approach? More and more, in these challenging times, we’re asked to face these options.
If we are human, we are capable of fear, and we will all know fear at some time. Of course, it’s not just humans who feel fear. Animals, too, experience this primal emotion. In Animals in Translation, Temple Grandin writes: “The single worst thing you can do to an animal emotionally is to make it feel afraid. Fear is so bad for animals I think it’s worse than pain.”
Fear is something ancient and ingrained. It has its helpful place as a survival mechanism in nature, triggering awareness of a threat and triggering responses such as flight, freeze, or fight. In the study of the human brain, the amygdala has often been considered the “fear center,” and it is definitely involved in our responses to fear. But recent research suggests that the amygdala is not the all-powerful Czar of Fear. As neuroscientist Joseph E. LeDoux writes in Psychology Today:
Be suspicious of any statement that says a brain area is a center responsible for some function. The notion of functions being products of brain areas or centers is left over from the days when most evidence about brain function was based on the effects of brain lesions localized to specific areas. Today, we think of functions as products of systems rather than of areas. Neurons in areas contribute because they are part of a system. The amygdala, for example, contributes to threat detection because it is part of a threat detection system.
LeDoux points to the complexity and the interconnectedness of our experience of fear, which is not just a question of how the brain functions but also is reflected in our psychological experience of fear. The complex nature of fear may be why one-shot solutions are not always effective and why we need broader and more inclusive approaches.
Sometimes there does seem to be a simple solution to our fear. If someone abuses you, you might think that if you stop the abuse, you should be able to stop the fear associated with it. But does that work? The best we could say is “Sort of.” You may not have to fear being actually abused by a particular person again, but it’s likely you will still imagine or relive the abuse and that you may be very anxious about the possibility of being abused by someone else. You may have a difficult time trusting people at all. There is more work to be done to conquer the trauma associated with your fear.
There is no single “fear center” in the brain. Various parts of the brain contribute to a complex “threat detection system.” Perhaps our responses to fear need to be just as nuanced.
Fear and anxiety are closely interconnected. Anxiety is a very common if not universal experience. Many things make us anxious, but we wouldn’t necessarily say we’re afraid of all of them. You may feel anxious before a job interview; you might not be afraid of going to the interview. We can think of the difference between fear and anxiety as a matter of degree, or as a way to distinguish between a threat and a challenge. Taking an exam may be challenging, but not necessarily threatening.
Whack-a-Mole or Welcome Mat
Anxiety may be anticipatory worrying, but it can also be generalized unease. Most people experience anxiety, which can be low level, ongoing, episodic, or sometimes crippling—in which case medical and/or psychological help is called for. With ordinary anxiety, we usually look for the cause of the anxiousness and try to correct it, but again, it’s not so simple. It can become like a game of Whack-a-Mole. You subjugate one cause of anxiety and up pops the next thing. It can feel endless. A common strategy is to treat the symptom, the anxiety itself, by self-medicating with drugs, alcohol, or finding other solutions, from sex to shopping. There’s nothing wrong with a new dress or a new fling, necessarily, but as habitual responses to anxiety, they can become crippling addictions themselves. And do they work? If they did, we wouldn’t have to keep drinking or shopping so frantically.
The alternative is to work with the anxiety as it presents itself, without necessarily seeking a cause or expecting an immediate solution. Welcome it, even, as part of an Open Door policy. “There you are again! Hello, come on in.” Interestingly, vulnerability and gentleness toward ourselves and our feelings can reduce fear and anxiety. The practice of mindfulness meditation, as well as other mindfulness and contemplative techniques, can be invaluable ways to lay out a welcome mat in situations of fear and anxiety.
An approach I’ve found helpful is called Touch and Let Go. When a feeling such as fear presents itself during meditation, the touch part is that you acknowledge or welcome the fear. You don’t push it away. You really take a look. You don’t have to dwell on it or build it up. If it’s a strong feeling or emotion, it’ll do that for itself!
Having welcomed your fear or anxiety, you let it go. This is far from a one-shot solution. The fear may remain after you release it, or it may come up over and over again. Let it be there. Make friends with it. Then, breathing out, let the fear go, out into space. Meditating with your eyes open may also help you feel the contrast between the anxiety and the space around. Rather than centralizing the fear within yourself, see it and let it go.
Take it Easy on Yourself
Although working with fear in one’s meditation is extremely valuable, it’s equally important to develop ways of working with fear and anxiety in everyday life. Here are some suggestions:
Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t blame yourself for your fears or anxiety. They’re human responses to the human condition. Try to suspend harsh self-judgments. Don’t expect to conquer fear in one breath, one hour, or one day.
Take time for yourself. Fear thrives when we push too hard. Appreciate yourself in small moments and small acts: take a walk, smell a flower, drink a good cup of coffee, watch an absorbing movie.
Do something differently. Alter a routine. By shifting a habitual pattern, you take yourself off autopilot. It may make you a little more anxious, but it also makes you more mindful and aware. And by working with small anxieties, you can learn about the bigger anxiety and fear in your life and how to handle it. The change could be small and almost silly: brush your hair before you brush your teeth, if you usually do the opposite. Wear something you never would, an outlandish scarf or hat. If you’re compulsively early, leave five minutes later for an appointment. Mix it up. Do something that makes you a little uncomfortable. If this backfires, remember point one.
Celebrate the victories. They may be small. You’re afraid of spiders, but you managed to trap one and put it out of the house. You’re terrified of thunder and lightning but you opened the curtains during a storm. Give yourself a mental pat on the back or a genuine piece of chocolate.
Make a catalog of daily fears. Get to know your fears and anxieties. Set aside a few minutes, and in that time, notice all the fearful or anxious thoughts that arise, and what triggers them. If this exercise makes you more and more anxious, don’t do it! But often noting fears and letting them come to the surface helps reduce some of the anxiety. It’s a good beginning.
Practice touch and let go in everyday life. Let the fears arise, but also let them go. After you make the catalog