Thursday, August 11, 2016

Fear

Fear is an emotion that many of us have a hard time recognizing or admitting that it exists within us. This emotion, which is a normal, healthy one, is often covered up, especially by men, with anger. Fear can help us adapt to difficult situations. It can help us avoid danger. But when it is prolonged or not tied to reality, it can be destructive.
Fear is a tool of terrorists. They want to create fear that is prolonged and, in many cases, unrealistic. They want the group that is being terrorized to believe that they are in constant danger. That they are in danger if they go shopping. If they walk on the street in their neighborhood. Or go to their child’s athletic event.
The antidote to fear is resilience. If we engage the skills and the attitudes of resilience, we will be less fearful. When we are afraid, we need to connect with others. We need to communicate with others and to recognize and deal with the feelings that we are experiencing. Isolation from others and denial of how we feel will only increase our fear. We also need to be flexible in our thinking and our behavior. Unfortunately, fear often makes our thinking rigid and it handicaps our ability to make realistic plans and take action to carry them out. Making decisions and acting out of fear often results in bad decision-making and misguided behavior.
Again, when we are afraid, we need to first of all admit that we are, and we need to seek out others with whom we can talk. We need to be flexible in our thinking and our actions, and we need to make realistic plans and take action. And most of all, we need to deal with the feelings that we have. We do not need to cover them over with anger. This is not to say that we should not be angry about the events occurring in our world. But we should also recognize and manage the fear that these events generate.
I will talk more about resilience as an antidote to fear in the next blog.

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