A New Alternative to Fear

You’ve all heard, no doubt, what happens to us humans when our survival response is triggered. Yes? The most-often-repeated version is “fight or flight.” Psychologists like me, along with many others outside that field, know there is a third instinct in the face of fear:  freeze. Fight the perceived attacker, run away, or become immobile, incapable of response, shut down. (See the lizard named Beans in the movie Rango for a classic example.) Those are the three options available when, in the face of perceived threat, the most primitive, reactive part of the brain takes the steering wheel on this ride we call life. Some of us have a strong "preference" for one; others of us make use of any of the three, depending on the situation.

I’ve become convinced that there is another alternative, one that blends the 7 Childhood Treasures of Trust and Independence. But before I tell you what it is, a word about the perceived threat or attacker. Before I can climb up from the depths of my reptile brain’s forced three-way choice, first I have to adjust to accept one hard fact. That is:  whatever drives me out of my huge and hugely logical neo-cortex, and into the gut-instinct to become invisible, flee, or defend…well, it may not be an actual threat or an actual attacker at all.

I’ve written of this uncomfortable truth before…that your reality is unique to you. Your belief that some person or situation is a threat to your safety is just that—a belief. It often derives, not from an actual circumstance of danger in front of you, but from a subconscious tour taken by your experience of that circumstance. Your incoming sensory perceptions—sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures—register a little snapshot of events in front of you. That multi-sensory image then takes a little stroll through a few filters in your neural network, created by early childhood experiences
when you were pre-verbal and, largely, pre-cognitive. Your infant or toddler fears attach themselves to an adult set of conditions and—Voila!—you are terrified. Yet, unless someone in this moment is brandishing a weapon at you or throwing a kick or punch toward your body, you may not actually need to fight, flee, or freeze.

Thus, my conclusion that there is another option:  face. Face it. If the person, place or thing of which I am afraid is not really a threat to my life—as I, at first, feel it to be—then I can face it. Square-on, directly, seeing it for what it is, I can face my fear and use my very adult skills to cope with it. I’m reminded of the Harry Potter volume in which Professor Lupin has the kids face boggarts, which manifest as one’s greatest fear. Face it:  Life is a boggart sometimes. Frankly, it’s not okay with me to still be freezing in fear over my childhood nightmares, when I’m 60+, no matter how real those nightmares used to be.

So that, my friends, is it. Fear. Face it. Unless there is a real and immediate threat of bodily harm, I advise feeling your fear…and then taking a step back to get a new perspective. See the fear, face it, and move on in your intended direction. Long ago, a dear friend gave me a small lapel pin that read, “Do It Afraid.” I’ve been following that advice for about 25 years, getting better and better at it. Until recently, that had often meant white-knuckling through, with pounding heart and clenched jaw. Literally, I took action while almost catatonic with Freeze as my defense. Iin fact, I actually managed to achieve quite a lot, as a kind of numbed-out auto-bot.

 

The notion that I can face a fear directly—engage it in dialog, if you will—is a new approach. Now, I can tell myself a new story about my experience, one not so full of the echoes of childhood terrors.

Not long ago, I tried something new:  calmly addressing three individuals who had each “flamed” a bit in an email dialog among us. After my initial instinct to Freeze or Flee, I decided to Face. One-on-one, eye-to-eye, I sat down with each of the three and stated a calm, kind, and rational version of “that was not okay.”

And the world did not end.

And I have not died.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate,” said Carl Jung. Until you make conscious—until you face—the unconscious fears that make you freeze, flee, and put up your verbal fists, those fears will run your life.

“Great!” you say, “How do I do that?”

For me, it started with getting to know my body with the intimacy of a toddler. No, not sexual intimacy, silly; toddlers know their bodies like you know how to tie shoes. Without conscious awareness or even many words to think about it, they know everything that their bodies are feeling and doing, how they’re moving, and where they feel good or hurt. Every kind of emotional weather that passes through the life of a toddler is felt in and expressed through her body. Muscles tense or relax, systems agitate or become sluggish, temperature changes, energy explodes or collapses. Just watch an 18-month-old for a few minutes and you’ll see what I mean.

We grown-ups have learned to ignore a lot of those body cues to our emotional states. Oh, they’re still there! Your thighs and/or some other big muscle groups still clench like rocks when you’re angry. My heart beats faster and my pupils dilate when I’m afraid. Grief doubles you over as your gut clenches and writhes around the hole left by your loss. I still feel the urge to do cartwheels down a grassy slope when a spring day is particularly fine. We all still experience these physical manifestations of emotion but now, as adults, we’re supposed to talk, or write, about how we feel, rather than physically feel it.

So here’s a tip for nothing:  when you’re on the verge of fight, flight or freeze, try dropping your awareness out of your mind and into your body. The Treasure of Independence begins with your awareness that you have a physical body separate from your caregivers' bodies. Notice whether your fists are clenched or your eyes are squinting. Notice if you’ve drawn into yourself as a turtle in a shell. Really notice what your body is doing or, if you believe you may not be able to do so, ask a loved one you trust to point it out to you. “Sweetie, look at your fists, your knuckles are white.” Feel it, as a pattern of tactile and kinesthetic sensations.

Becoming aware of how the fear was manifesting in my body allowed me to separate from it just a bit, to become someone observing the fear, rather than swimming in it. That step is enough to climb up the first rung of the ladder that leads from reptile-brain instinct to neo-cortex logic. Here’s the problem with fight-flight-freeze:  you can’t think. Literally cannot think. Once your ancient reptile brain takes over, you have no access to the executive functions of the higher brain. As a second tip for nothing:  after connecting to your body, the next step up the ladder to rationality comes from
invoking your senses. Ground yourself in your physical reality. Look around you. Identify three things you can see, two things you can hear, two things you can touch. Then, invoke language; name them all to yourself:  I can see a pencil. Candle. Book. I hear the furnace. Traffic. I touch the Cat. My water glass.

Coming back from the instinctual brink to the part of your mind that can think, reason, consider options, plan…that’s the prerequisite for adding the fourth option of Face it. To even ask the question, “Am I really in danger?,” to differentiate boggarts from real threats, requires operating from the higher brain, not the lower brain that only knows instinctual reaction.

 

Those who remain stuck in the neural web of their own ancient nightmares will forever keep fleeing, keep fighting, keep freezing themselves into perpetual victimhood. Don’t let that be you.

My 7 Childhood Treasures series at the Center for Spiritual Living-St. Louis began on the 13th, with an introduction session that will be repeated in March. Next up is "Digging Way Down, Down," on mining the first two Childhood Treasures of Trust and Independence. Each session stands alone, so feel free to come join us on Saturday February 23rd, from 1:00 to 5:00 PM. See my website events page for full details on the whole series.