I feel like it’s important to talk about now, because we’ve seen so many different kinds of emotional reactions this week to the news, from disbelief, to panic, to eye-rolling, to jokes, and even to anti-authoritarian medical ignorance. In truth, all of them stem from fear.
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Because everyone has fear in them. It’s a natural emotion, something our body wants us to feel to protect ourselves from danger / keep us alive. And while we can learn to positively engage with fear and build a healthy understanding- Most of us learn bad ways of handling it
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Starting with myself! Hell, believe it or not, there was a time in my late twenties where I stupidly thought I was an “adult” who had grown “past” fear in a lot of good ways. Ha! … I was an idiot.
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Particularly because, back when I was a kid, I was paralyzed by fear at almost every second of my life. I was shyer than shy. Just a husk moving along in constant state of quiet panic about every interaction in my life... But I kept it QUIET.
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I didn’t know how to talk about this therapeutically back then (thank god for therapy now), so I just did a very common thing where I both normalized this reality and then thought I was “just bad” at being a good social person, unlike everyone else.
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But I didn’t think anything was truly “wrong” with my fear response because I wasn’t outwardly freaking out. I was just holding it all inside. But when you aren’t allowing yourself to get in touch with an emotion? You begin creating harmful coping mechanisms.
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To be clear, most of our early adaptive coping mechanisms are flawed. Our young tiny brains are doing our best and processing the best way to get results that put us out of danger. And often they are built out of the unique particulars of our circumstance.
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Me? I learned to deny, to lie about what I was feeling, to make others feel better first, to create a braver person outside myself. Essentially, I learned to put on a face that didn’t show anything was wrong. Cause I didn’t want to be vulnerable like the kid-version of me.
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The reason we embrace these adaptations long-term? Cause they work in the short term! You get positive feedback and so you get better at all these quick fixes and forms of avoidance. But you never learn to REALLY deal with the problem going on deep down. So you just keep running
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But eventually comes a moment where you to face IT. When you can’t run from your fears, where you can’t pretend anymore, or bat it all away. You have to look grapple and accept the emotions head on. And face the negative impacts of all that really, truly makes you uncomfortable.
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The negative impact of my lifetime of running was immense life; a culling, really. But going through therapy, I learned to connect to my emotions, to accept my fears, to emote and feel desperation, and ultimately, learned to join them with the healthy skills I had learned before
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Cause all those flawed mechanisms still have great kinds of usefulness- they just need to be part of a range of skills, not singular. And my particular way of dealing with fear gave me a great sense of awareness (because I grew up in a situation where danger was very, very real)
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In turn, every time I was told “this is scary” or “this is dangerous,” I took those words seriously. I learned how to engage those scary things calmly and with forethought, I learned to build practical solutions. I learned to try to talk about them and make them more “normal.”
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And that’s the whole thing. There’s good and bad (read: healthy and toxic) aspects to every kind of fear-based reaction. To wit...
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Re: Humor - A well-timed joke can cut the tension of a horrible situation and make people feel humanity and kinship in the struggle. But joking can also be a path of constant avoidance and prevent conflict from being dealt with healthily.
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Re: Avoidance - Sometimes “not being able to deal with the thought of X” is totally a healthy way of prioritizing and focusing on concerns more important to you at the moment. Other times it’s a way to completely ostrich yourself to real danger.
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Re: Engaging Fear Logically - Sometimes it can be a really healthy way of finding pragmatic solutions, but sometimes it can put bad faith in erroneous information, and you don’t realize you’re looking for the “rational” way to be in denial and avoid your emotions.
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Re: Disbelief - Sure, there’s healthy forms of skepticism, but the kind of disbelief we’re seeing right now from people still packing social spaces is the kind of willful ignorance that makes for grand tragedy.
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And re: Acceptance - When the corona virus threat started looming a few weeks ago, my hyper serious brain when into gear and begins figuring out what the obstacles and dangers will be, articulating “why this is the exact reason it will be a problem when it comes here.”
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But I acknowledge there are also the toxic forms of acceptance, like ASAP going to unbridled panic (note: obviously not talking about people with anxiety disorders, etc), and I admit a lot of times i’m making plans for problems that will never come up.
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There’s no right “kind” of response, at different times we need all five. But within them, we need the healthy versions. And in the last week of corona, I wish I was seeing those healthy reactions, instead we’re seeing so many toxic reactions in the time we need each other most.
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We’ve seen the worst of people in the way they raid grocery stores, stock up and try to sell necessary goods at high cost, or showcase jaw-dropping myopia in just how much they don’t care if they get a cold and others die. It’s sickening, honestly.
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Weirdly twitter seems to be the most plugged into the realities of danger (or maybe that’s not weird at all). Meanwhile all my conversations with family have been GAHHH. So many people are brushing it off with “oh, it will be fine” - “we’re not like Italy” - "not here!" etc.
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One relative, knowing I was self-quarantining literally suggesting I leave the house and interact with people to get some good food. But the time I convinced people that “I need you to take x seriously,” it immediately shifted to become, “okay, now I need you not to panic.”
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As a society, we’re so bad at fear in particular. And adults are the WORST at it. We deny it, then we jump to panic or irrational anger, or find all these ways to try and hold onto something that makes sense, as the danger keeps sliding closer and closer.
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These last few weeks even gave me a gnarly flashback to 2015. Because when Trump announced he was running, I was petrified from second one. I knew he could win. And yet it was the same jokes and disbelief, and I watched it all unfold with this pit in my stomach.
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He was elected because so many forgot (or never knew) the old adage about how a politician stokes the fires of fascism, for “ it does not take cunning, nor great communication, nor guile, nor insight, nor brilliant strategy… all it takes is no character.”
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History provides the answer to how this keeps happening. I saw a similar sense of surprise on twitter with people asking, “how did CONTAGION predict all this?” The answer is Scott Burns did very basic research and the CDC said “it will happen like this.” and then he wrote it.
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When we’re aware and accept the realities of what can happen and why, there aren’t surprises... There is just openly facing that which we must face.
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Stuff like this can happen so easily, all the time, everywhere. Our economies are made of paper. Most Americans a rent check away from despair. And as much as people don’t like it, we all constantly depend on one another to hold up the social contract.
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