Confessions of a Scaredy-Cat

how do we overcome a culture of fear?

Photo by Mikhail Mamaev on Unsplash

Here’s the thing no one warns you about healing: once you stop numbing all your feelings and start facing yourself, you’ll be confronted with a lot of ugliness.

You think you’re a nice person? Look, here are all your petty resentments!

Pretty sure you’re capable? Here are all your failures and shortcomings!

Think you’re rational? Behold your bizarre late-night fears!

I speak from personal experience. As I’ve worked towards mindfulness, I’ve noticed how much fear dominates my thinking.

Here’s a shortlist of things that scare me: murderers, climate change, whether my kids will have economic opportunities, Manfluencers, military drones, my husband getting hit by a car while he’s cycling, AI replacing jobs, AI replacing MY job, school shootings, scary noises in the middle of the night, professional failure, war, raising sons who grow up to be Manfluencers, getting diabetes, raccoons, losing my kids on public transit, the US becoming a theocracy, my parents dying, losing the right to vote, my neighbors being harassed and/or deported, things never getting better.

And, yeah, I probably shouldn’t be surprised; during my tenure in therapy, I received a litany of fear-related diagnoses: everything from post-partum anxiety to Generalized Anxiety Disorder, though those were before my eventual C-PTSD diagnosis, which made more sense of things.

In the last 20 years, I’ve worked hard to tamp down my anxiety. So when mindfulness dredges up even more fear it suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.

I just thought I was better, ya know?

It’s so hard to know what a normal level of fear is. If I feel safe walking home by myself at night and my neighbor doesn’t, am I foolish or is she paranoid?

But I know it’s not just me. We live in an age of fear: if it’s not our sensationalized media ecosystem (everything from TV news to social media), it’s rampant consumerism that says buying more stuff is the only thing that can save us.

And even if you manage to dodge all that, there’s our whole government chaos operation run by Fearmonger in Chief, Donald Trump. Is Iran about to nuke us? Are our streets being overrun by violent gang members? Every week there is some new threat which only Trump can save us from.

All this is for a purpose: fear is the ultimate tool for manipulation. As the historian Anne Applebaum shows, authoritarians (and wannabes) try to consolidate power by creating a culture of fear. Just like those Fox News commercials selling gold bars and emergency disaster kits, Trump sells us vague doom that only he can rescue us from.

How do we opt out? How can we notice when we are being manipulated and resist it? I want to be a reasonable person unswayed by fearful rhetoric, but it’s easier said than done. It’s embarrassing to admit how much of my inner monologue is fear. Nobody wants to be a scaredy-cat.

So, this month, I want to look at fear. Here are some questions I have:

• is it possible to be less afraid? How?

• how do we carry on living in what feels like a constant state of emergency?

• do Exvangelicals experience more fear post-faith deconstruction?

• how do we sort out appropriate vs. inappropriate fear?

• why does fear feel so bad?

• can we make friends with our fear?

• how do we avoid being paralyzed by fear?

Are you, too, a scaredy-cat? What tips, tricks, or recommendations do you have for handling fear? As always, I love to hear from you in the comments or via email or DM.

BONUS MATERIALS:

• this overview of Anne Applebaum’s Psychology of Totalitarian Control is a great starting point

• my brain every time someone says “face your fears”