The Fear of Terrorism

As I have done in previous blog posts, I’m going to present a challenge from the card game, “Bounce Back.” Your job is to list the skills and the attitudes of resilience that you would use in dealing with the challenge. Describe how you would respond to the challenge using these skills. This one relates to the fear of terrorism. The media has certainly increased our awareness and our concern about terrorist acts.

You have been reading a lot and hearing a lot about terrorism recently. These acts do not seem to be confined to other countries, such as France or the Middle East. They have been happening in this country. At holiday celebrations, in theaters, and sporting events. It has reached the point where some are fearful of going out to the market or going to any type of crowded place, such as a mall, shopping center or a football game. If you find that your fear is restricting your life. How would you use the skills and attitudes of resilience to deal with this?

Take some time and think about this and about what skills and attitudes you might apply. Try to put yourself in the situation and think through what steps you would take.

Here are some of our suggestions about ways that you might deal with this situation. These are only suggestions. Each person and each situation is different. We are sure that there are other ideas that you may have or others may have about how to deal with this and what other skills and attitudes of resilience could be applied. We would encourage you to think this through and talk with others about how they will deal with or have dealt with this challenge.

First of all, we would encourage you to take some time to look at your feelings. And to get control of your feelings. Terrorism is about instilling fear. It is about restricting peoples’ lives and creating stress for them. If you do not or are unable to control these feelings of fear, you basically are giving the terrorists what they are seeking. Take a deep breath. Call someone who can listen to you for a few minutes. Talk!

So, connecting with others is something that we would recommend and communicating and acknowledging the feelings that you have. Keeping these to yourself is not a good idea.

We would also encourage you to look at the situation realistically. Try to see the bigger picture. It is much more likely that you will be injured in a car accident or struck by lightning than you will be a victim of a terrorist attack.

Again, you may have come up with other skills and attitudes that you would apply in this situation. As we said earlier, every situation and every person is different. We encourage you to think this through and talk with others about how they have dealt with their fears and how they would deal with fear in this situation.

In the weeks ahead, we will be posting other blogs that deal with challenges like this.  In the next blog, we will talk about dealing with a high risk situation in which a terrorist act might occur.