Pause: Fear

Pause: Fear

This time of year has a rich tradition of communities facing their fears in many ways. The tradition of wearing masks to scare away the monsters lurking near the dark veil between worlds has now lost its function in our culture, so we must learn to face them as individuals.

Whether it is a haunted house-induced panic, situational fear, reaction from a traumatic event or consistent anxious personality style, there is a similar effect on the people experiencing it. Awareness gets clouded with mental projections that cause people to imagine monsters or even witness “worst-case scenarios” that may not actually be occurring outside the mind.

Movie directors, news writers, politicians and marketers have all harnessed this wisdom for thousands of years to recruit others to see what they want them to see. To be an autonomous authentic self, a person must find a way to move beyond the monsters we imagine.

When my daughter was little, she seemed afraid of so many things in the world. If the sand stuck to her toes, trying to eat anything besides crackers or “Goldfish” and especially stepping on stage to perform. Lauren Thompson’s book, ‘Mouse's First Halloween’ reminded her again and again that things that look scary are often not as they first appear.

Little mouse learned that on Halloween night a tree’s shadow may look like a monster and that many other things can look frightening when we are in a spooky state of mind. When my daughter was hesitant or shutting down because of nerves, we may say, “Eek, Mouse Squeaked”, to honor how she felt and encourage her to consider how she could see more than just what was scary. Tears would often turn to laughs, and she could move forward autonomously. Knowing, like mouse, that it’s “not so scary after all.”

“At the foundational level, there has been little theoretical attention to how and when reactive fear and anxiety undermine a person's ability to deliberate and therefore undermine the capacity for autonomy,” according to researcher Jodi Halpern in the article, “What We Owe Patients When Fear Undermines Autonomy: Concretized Emotions and the Incapacity to Deliberate.” In medical settings, like Halpern studied, doctors and staff have a serious duty to determine if people have the “capacity” to make the decisions that change or may end their life or those they are responsible for.

Deliberation is the basis of our human capacity for autonomy. This highlights how essential it is to pause regularly to deliberate, especially during heightened emotional situations.

People who have experienced deep loss, trauma or change in their life may need more resources, space and practice at this to process the mixed messages that impact perception.

Butler Community College offers many services for mental and physical health and now even has a bi-weekly yoga class in the 1600 building that is there to help everyone attain this. Any activity that promotes inner equanimity will counter the effects of these stressful life experiences and help develop the capacity to respond authentically.

Float tank therapy, loving-kindness meditation and the ‘Triple Flame Timer’ offered through Gene Keys are regular support for this writer. The most helpful thing is learning to inquire within the reaction and integrate the information to prevent projecting it onto the world.

There are people at every community level working towards making life better. Individually, each time we pause, sort through our emotional reactions and respond with this equanimity, we add to that movement instead of making more monsters to be afraid of.