Fear.

Panic.

Finger-pointing.

Obfuscation.

Control.

 

 One morning last week, I was considering the state of everything. In my (purposefully limited) time on social media, I once again had seen an overabundance of divisive and fear-mongering material (most of it about violence, protests, and COVID-19).

I was overwhelmed by the junk already, and it was only Wednesday morning!

I’m not going into any of the discussions or viewpoints about any of the issues, because what we believe regarding them is irrelevant. What I am going to talk about is fear and how we can begin to jettison it from our lives—because although our fear might serve others, it does not really serve us.

I must not fear.

It seems the United States—and possibly the entire world—is full of fear right now, and I’ve heard probably all of the theories about the causes of all the current divisiveness. I’m not sure which ones are right or wrong, and to what extent. But it doesn’t really matter.

Stop. Read that last sentence again.

It doesn’t really matter who/what is causing the divisiveness.

What does matter is (1) that division is basically the same as fear, (2) whether we are buying into the fear or not, and (3) that when we do buy into the fear, we gain nothing. There is no benefit to us—zero.

Frank Herbert, acclaimed science-fiction author, had it right: fear is the mind-killer. Fear keeps us from moving forward. Fear keeps us trapped. Fear makes us easier to manipulate.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Here are a few key points from a study of fear-appeal literature (this research is used in advertising campaigns, health-improvement campaigns, politics, and generally any kind of persuasion):

• • • When people feel fearful, they are motivated to reduce their fear, or the threat or danger causing their fear.
    • Fear appeals are built upon, well, fear. They focus on making you fearful and causing you emotional distress.
    • Generally, the more frightened a fear appeal can make you, the more likely you are to take the action suggested to allay your fear.
    • A really effective fear appeal will evoke a manageable (not too much, not too little) level of fear, tell you what you can do to “stop” that fear, and make you feel empowered to do whatever is required to stop your fearfulness. It will cause you at first to feel good about yourself, then make you sensitive to how at risk you are, persuade you to let go of a belief it does not want you to have, and empower you to make the decision it suggests.

 

That’s the general gist of the fear appeal and how it works. In both creating and studying fear appeals in all sorts of situations, researchers have also found that some characteristics about the audience (that’s you and me) influence the effectiveness of fear appeals:

• • • High on the list are language, cultural orientation, stage of change, attitudes, and goals. eA fear appeal that is especially effective on a Baby Boomer may not be as effective on a Millennial, for example, and a fear appeal especially effective on a young black trans woman may not be nearly as effective for a middle-aged white cis man…or even a young black cis woman.
    • Someone who has more knowledge about a particular topic is going to require a bit less of a “push” to become afraid. (If someone can make you feel like you’re becoming an expert, then it stands to reason they can make you fearful more easily.)
    • It is also important that “emotionally intense, high-impact ads may require fewer exposures” to cause your fear, but the amount of a person’s subjective knowledge affects the degree of their emotional response.
    • Someone’s behavior after exposure to a fear appeal depends on how important they think it is to do/have whatever the fear appeal suggests, and how able they think they are to do/have it (how empowered they feel, mentioned earlier).
    • The thinking (cognitive) and feeling (emotional) processes support each other, rather than work against each other.[1]

Fear appeals aren’t all bad, especially if they lead you to take better care of yourself. But they can be bad if they manipulate you into doing something that harms yourself or others.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

Remember that earlier bullet point that mentioned how truly effective fear appeals use just enough fear—not too much and not too little? If we become too fearful, like there’s nothing we can do to allay the cause of our fear, we can become stuck in the fear, unable to move out of it, which often leads to us sharing more of our own fear and causing more negative emotional contagion.

But we can protect ourselves against emotional contagion.

I will face my fear.

Instead of allowing yourself to be trapped by fear or to fall prey to fear appeals that don’t have your best interests in mind, I urge you to be like Frank Herbert’s Muad’Dib and remind yourself of this truth frequently:

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.[2]

Let’s stop being Chicken Littles and spreading emotional contagion.

Remember, the fear appeals so often used by the media and politicians—and even marketing campaigns—are incredibly popular for one simple reason: they work. If we respond to them by feeling fearful, that’s totally normal, because we are all human. It is incredibly easy for our emotions to carry us—even those of us who pride ourselves on our use of logic—away so we stop using our intellect and our powers of reasoning and we simply do what we are told.

For your own sake and the sake of everyone around you, please don’t let that happen to you!

I will permit my fear to pass over me and through me.

The people who benefit from our fear (whether you want to think of them as Illuminati, reptilians, the Devil, faceless corporations, the incredibly rich, the Freemasons, etc.) are the only ones who benefit when we go down that rabbit hole.

It’s important to remember that we fall prey to manipulation even when we think we can’t, as this article about advertising explains, so let’s reduce our exposure and shift our mindsets—it’s time to do what’s best for us.

And when my fear has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Here’s how I suggest we start becoming more resistant to fear appeals and to spreading emotional contagion:

• • • Stop sharing outrage/clickbait posts. Period. Full stop. Those posts are created to sow division and fear. The us-vs.-them rhetoric that has become so popular (liberal vs. conservative, black vs. white, science vs. antivaxxers, “natives” vs. immigrants) makes us less likely to stand up for others and less likely to take a moral stand against the abuse of others, because we’re afraid of “them.” Stop contributing to the fear.
    • Limit our consumption of electronic media—the “real” kind, the “fake” kind, and the “social” kind.
    • All media is That means the information being presented to you has been filtered by someone else before it gets to you and your brain. It’s been filtered for a reason: to influence you in some way (to get you to buy something, to support a political action, etc.) And electronics put our brains into passive consumption mode.[3]
    • The good news is that you can change the way you consume media, so it benefits you—if you focus on active engagement, rather than passive consumption. It just takes deliberate effort.
    • Take a media vacation. Make it an experiment: stay away from things like Facebook and Instagram, or TV (yes, including the news!) for a few days, then see how you feel both mentally and physically.[4]
    • You can stay connected with friends in so many other ways, including FaceTime or Zoom, texts, emails, cards, letters, and phone calls.
    • And you can stay in touch with the events of the world by reading a newspaper or magazine (which involves more active engagement).[5] There are more-neutral sites you can scan once or twice a week to help keep you informed, including Reuters, AP News, and even Snopes. Remember that media consumption isn’t always bad or harmful; you just have to know how to use it to your benefit, rather than your detriment.
    • Get a massage. Go for a walk in nature. Have a Reiki session. Take a bubble bath. Do whatever helps you decompress (that isn’t related to the media in any way). Stress can wreak havoc on our ability to cope. “Fear is part of life (but) if we are spending the majority of our cognitive, physical, and psychological resources on worrying, we are preventing ourselves from devoting them to other activities that can be protective.”[6]
    • Consider/meditate on Reiki Principle 1: Just for today, I will not worry.
    • Know your triggers. Face them and work through them.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Above all, remember to take a realistic view of things—the good and the bad. Temper every piece of bad news with good news (check out the Good News Network). Remember the great leaders through our history, and their focus on unity rather than divisiveness (anyone remember the name of that Jewish guy from a couple thousand years ago?). Study them. Study the great people who inspire you these days—really outstanding examples of humanity (two of my favorites are Dolly Parton and Dwayne Johnson).

And finally, whenever fear starts to get you stuck in cynicism, remember:

Cynicism is … a synonym for laziness. It sort of gives you an excuse to do nothing. And … it’s often used as a legitimization of hierarchy, because if we cannot trust each other, then we need them—we need the CEOs and the monarchs and the generals and the kings and you name it. But if we can actually trust each other, if we do have the courage to move to a more realistic, hopeful view of human nature, then we can move to a very different kind of society as well—and build very different kinds of schools and democracies and workplaces.[7]

 

 

Notes

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265807800_Fear_Appeal_Theory

[2] Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965.

[3] To learn more about passive consumption, check out Catherine Andrews’s Medium.com post “The Danger of Passive Consumption on Social Media and How to Break It.”

[4] Studies show that people who consume more electronic media—including social media—are less happy, more fearful, and less able to tell if a politically skewed headline was real.

[5] Print media is easier to stop and think critically about, whereas news created for TV or the internet is meant to keep you moving to the next thing without giving you time to pause and think.

[6] https://news.northeastern.edu/2020/03/10/fear-can-be-contagious-here-are-some-ways-to-protect-yourself/

[7] https://www.npr.org/2020/05/30/866059164/in-humankind-rutger-bregman-aims-to-convince-that-most-people-are-good?fbclid=IwAR3bow-5fN9WiNHUGgYhcveKzA02ASMd3Yul2_lodtzAQg82XbXdKtHYipk

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