What About Fear As a Lifestyle?

Walk through any department store in October and you'll find an entire industry devoted to frightening people for fun.  Turn on the television and you'll find murder documentaries, disaster predictions, economic collapse warnings, climate catastrophes, political outrage, and enough true crime programming to make you afraid of your own mailbox.  Open social media and there is always someone warning you about what should terrify you next.

Then we scratch our heads and ask why anxiety rates are skyrocketing.

Maybe we're asking the wrong question.

The question isn't why people are afraid.  The question is why we've built so much of modern life around manufacturing fear.

Fear was designed to help us survive the occasional bear.

Instead, we've created a society that delivers bears to our nervous systems twenty-four hours a day.

The human brain struggles to distinguish between an immediate threat and a vividly imagined one. Every headline, horror movie, catastrophe prediction, and worst-case scenario rehearsed in our minds becomes another practice session for fear.  Then we declare war on fear itself.  We buy books to conquer it.  Take courses to eliminate it.  Search for hacks to overcome it.  Yet the more attention fear receives, the larger it appears.

It's as if we've spent decades trying to extinguish a fire by pouring gasoline on it.

Just the other day, a client said to me, "I realize I avoid everything because I'm afraid of being afraid."  

She wasn't kidding.  When we have made fear loom larger in our life than it needs to, we start looking for ways to seek comfort in the midst of our own fearful imaginings.  And when seeking comfort, or being comfortable, or living inside our own "comfort zone" is a big enough priority—complacency naturally follows.

We start saying things like, "Oh no, we're not able to make it.  It might rain that day."

"I don't do crowds.  No thanks."    "I am not interested in being anywhere involving lots of steps."

"Babies and I don't get along."     "No, I don't do vegetarian anything."

Once complacency sets in and we become comfortable with it, we start avoiding as a lifestyle.  Which leads to isolation, which leads to disconnection from both self and others, which ultimately leads to a miserable life with or without active addiction(s) attached.  Active addictions such as whatever works to provide us with our own radical escapes from reality on demand.  Too much working, too much exercising, too much researching, too much reading, too much volunteering, too much giving until we collapse, too much rescuing stray animals—and these are the more "acceptable" forms of escape in our culture by the way!  We already know what the not-so-acceptable forms of escape are.  We read about those every day.

Courage is not the absence of fear.  Emotional health is not the absence of fear.  Resilience is not the absence of fear.  They are the ability to continue living meaningfully in the presence of fear—and in spite of it whenever it shows up.

We have been sold a false promise about fear in our culture, which is this:

"If you do enough work in whatever form that takes, you will eventually stop feeling afraid."

But that's not how healthy people function.  Healthy people still feel fear.  They just don't organize their lives around it.  Many people aren't suffering because reality is dangerous.  They're suffering because they've developed a habit of treating discomfort, uncertainty, embarrassment, rejection, grief, conflict, and change as if they were emergencies.  

With this way of thinking, the nervous system never gets a day off.  We have become a civilization that treats ordinary human vulnerability as a five-alarm fire.  We need to practice living in peace in spite of the storms around us, and in spite of the chaos, crisis, and mayhem that we witness.  Nobody can rob us of our peace or our joy unless we allow him/her/them to do it.

The most fearless generations were probably not the generations that talked about fear the most.

They were too busy building businesses, raising children, serving in wars, immigrating to new countries, starting farms, opening stores, and figuring out how to make it through another winter.  Not because they lacked fear.  Because they had purposes bigger than fear.  That may be the real antidote.

Not fearlessness.  Purpose.

Fear says: "What if something bad happens?"

Purpose says: "Maybe. But I have things to do anyway."

What do you need to be doing anyway—besides wasting time living in an attempt to avoid hard things?

Until next post...

Social Mockery by Proxy: Contemptuous Much?

Most people can recognize obvious bullying when they see it.  A child being ridiculed on a playground.  A coworker being publicly humiliated during a meeting.  An online troll attacking strangers from behind a keyboard.  But there is another form of bullying that often slips beneath the radar because it is quieter, subtler, and easier to deny.

I call it Social Mockery by Proxy.

You have probably witnessed it. Perhaps you've seen it at work, while waiting in line somewhere, at a family gathering, in a classroom, at the mall, or anywhere else human beings congregate.  Two people lock eyes.  One subtly glances toward another person nearby.  The other follows their gaze.  Eyebrows rise.  Smirks appear.  A chuckle is exchanged.  A private joke is shared.

Meanwhile, the unsuspecting target continues going about their business completely unaware they have become the source of someone else's entertainment.  Nothing is said directly.  No harsh words are spoken aloud.  No confrontation occurs.  Yet the message is often unmistakable:

"Look at that person."

"Did you notice...?"

"Can you believe...?"

What fascinates me about this behavior is that many people who engage in it would never consider themselves bullies.  If challenged, they are quick to defend themselves.

"I didn't say anything."

"You're imagining things."

"We weren't laughing about you."

"They can't hear us anyway."

But bullying is not measured by volume.  Cruelty often whispers instead of shouts.  And if we're being honest, most of us have participated in some version of this behavior at one time or another, whether consciously or unconsciously.  That is precisely why it deserves a closer look.

Throughout much of my life, I experienced the looks, the stares, the whispers, and the assumptions.  I have a deep voice.  I am nearly six feet tall.  Growing up, these female-but-not-quite-female-enough characteristics often drew attention.  As a young person, I learned to defend myself the best way I knew how. I developed a razor-sharp wit and a comeback style that could rival any insult comic on the planet.  Today, however, I see these moments differently.

What once felt deeply personal now strikes me as a reflection of the other person's own personal discomfort rather than an accurate reflection of me.  And that observation leads to something important.  Social Mockery by Proxy often has very little to do with the person being mocked.  

Instead, it frequently serves as a form of unhealthy connection.  Not connection with the target.  Connection with the other person joining in the mockery.  It creates a temporary bond through shared contempt.

Think about that for a moment.  Healthy relationships are strengthened through shared interests, shared experiences, shared values, genuine curiosity, compassion, and honest conversation.  People connect by saying:  "That's beautiful."  "That reminds me of a funny story."  "Tell me more about that."  "I love the way you explained that."  "Doesn't she remind you of someone we used to know?"

Connection grows through curiosity.  Connection grows through empathy.  Connection grows through understanding.  But unhealthy people often connect differently.

"Look at her."  "Can you believe him?"  "What is he wearing?"  "What a joke."  "Oh my God..."

Instead of connecting through curiosity, they connect through criticism.  Instead of building intimacy, they build alliances.  Instead of elevating each other, they lower someone else.  For a brief moment, they create an exclusive club of two. 

And the price of admission is another person's dignity—as well as eroding away at their own.  That is what makes Social Mockery by Proxy so revealing.  The target is rarely the person who interests me most.  My curiosity tends to focus on the people doing the mocking.  Why do they need another human being to become a punchline?  What insecurity are they managing?  What discomfort are they avoiding?  What emptiness are they attempting to fill?  What satisfaction are they deriving from reducing another person to an object of amusement?

These are not questions about the target.  These are questions about the mocker.

So if today's post feels familiar because you have engaged in this behavior yourself, even unintentionally, I offer a simple question for reflection:  If the person being discussed were standing directly in front of you and could hear every word, would you still say it?

If the answer is no, perhaps it shouldn't be said at all.  Human beings were never meant to become social glue for other people's fragile egos.  That is not humor.  That is not connection.  That is not kindness.  That is not empathy.

It is simply Social Mockery by Proxy.

Perhaps it is time we begin calling it what it is, both when we witness it in others and when we recognize the temptation to engage in it ourselves.

Until next post...