Putting Fear in its Place
Part One: Origin, purpose, and types of fear
Fall 1971
It was a cloudy day with light rain falling, as it had been most of the day. I’d been a fully licensed driver for about a year and was on my way home from school, driving on a residential street. Suddenly a V.W. Bug about a car’s length away was turning in front of me into a driveway. I was young, with quick reflexes and I instantly stepped on the brake. Time slowed. It was like I was viewing a movie frame by frame. At the abrupt sound of my wheels gripping the pavement, the teenage driver turned her head, eyes wide and filled with fear. But I wasn’t able to stop soon enough. Sliding the last few feet on the wet pavement, my car struck the V.W. broadside, rocking it a bit as the door buckled. I exited the car; my heart still pounding as adrenaline worked its way through my body. I was alert and focused, but fear had dissipated. There was only a feeling of calm concern as I went to check on the driver. She was uninjured.
Fear’s origin and process
Fear has its origin at the level of instinct. Two innate fears are with us from the time we are born: fears of falling and loud sounds. The rest are learned either through instruction, experience, or a combination of the two. Fear is associated with the instinct to survive; its purpose is to protect us from bodily harm or death. With that purpose in mind, I find myself asking, “Is this fear or intelligence?” As I sit with that question, I get the understanding that it is neither, rather it is both. It is clear to me that our fear instincts and their response are initially determined by our innate bodily intelligence.
Fear also has a cognitive element as the process involves conscious, intellectual activity. When our senses detect a situation that may pose an imminent or potential threat of bodily harm those sensations trigger the amygdala to send energetic (emotional) chemical signals to ready the body for action (fight, flight, or freeze) depending on the input coming in from our memory and thinking access centers, the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex respectively. How involved and the quantity and quality of the input is determined by need, cognitive development, experience, and training. Circumstances determine the need, while age, training, and experience contribute to cognitive content and development.
If you’ve read Consciousness, Awareness, and Attention you will not be surprised when I say that I view the cognitive operations to be not identical with, but a key contributor to the psyche system. So, regarding fear, I see it expressed roughly as instinctual or psychological. Why is this important? Before going into that allow me to introduce another memory.
Fall 2007
I was finishing the drywall in a residential elevator shaft, working on portable scaffolding 11’ high with an 8’ extension ladder on top so I could reach the ceiling over 20’ above the concrete floor. As I was pressing my knife to apply pressure on the tape, I must have braced too hard on the ladder. I felt a slight shift and heard my partner on the floor below shout out my name. It was too late. I reflexively tossed my tools to get them away from my body and to clear my hands so I could grab onto the ladder and ride it down; just as I had been trained to do. There was no slow-motion experience, only the awareness that I was falling. Until I wasn’t.
I can’t say I felt frightened when I crashed to the floor. Rather, I have no idea how I felt, I was in a state of shock. I forgot where we were or what I’d been doing, even the fact that I had been up on the ladder. I remember asking my partner with amazement, “I was up there??”
It was an interesting ride to the doctor, I joked along the way, probably to relieve my partner and myself from the stress. I did have a 25% compression fracture of my L4 vertebrae and a bad scrape on my left shin. That was a great outcome. It could have been much worse.
This time, however, there were psychological issues to follow. When I returned to work my first assignment was again on scaffolding. The ceiling we were to work on was well over 20 feet high and, although the space allowed for more stable scaffolding and additional height, it was still too short for my reach. So, I was expected to work from a 30” high bench placed on the top platform. But I couldn’t even step up on the bench, my stomach churned and my whole body felt like wobbling Jello. Embarrassingly I had to sit the job out. It took quite some time after that for me to get comfortable enough to work on scaffolding even just 6 feet high. I retired from the job a year later without having to work at the more extreme heights again. My decision to retire was not consciously due to fear, but the potential for harm in construction is considerable and I can’t deny that was one consideration in my decision. I’ll return later to the ramifications of my response that first day back on the job as it will be relevant to how we put fear in its place.
Types of fear
To recap, fear generally expresses itself instinctually with emotional (energetic) chemical signals to ready the body/mind to react according to the perceived threat; an imminent threat requires immediate action while a potential threat requires further information from the cognitive centres via the psyche. Generally, this leads to fear being expressed and acted upon at the instinctual level or directed by the psyche.
In practice, there is no purely instinctual fear except with babies. Nor can there be any purely psychological fears. We might say there’s a spectrum of fear. Why is this important? The appropriateness of our response to fear depends on the quality of information provided by the cognitive elements (memory, thinking, reasoning, etc.) As such, psychological fears run a greater risk of being effectively irrational (inappropriate) due to faulty memory, misconceptions, or flawed reasoning.
There were pertinent differences between the two incidents I’ve recounted. In the auto accident, I did nothing wrong, and my training and skills helped keep me from harm. Also, instinct and experience worked seamlessly together. A threat was sensed. Training and experience allowed for immediate cognitive confirmation of the imminent danger. There was an energetic (emotional) release of appropriate stress chemicals and appropriate reactions ensued. There was no psychological resistance (no attachment, no repulsion, and no ignoring). The chemical cycle was free to complete, with no trace left behind and no prolonged feeling of fear. This incident can be described as an almost purely instinctual event. The fear was entirely rational (appropriate), and the only psychological impact was confirmation that my knowledge and skills when driving were more than adequate.
However, in the construction accident, I ignored best practices; you should never put a ladder on top of the scaffolding and even a bench presents a higher risk of mishap. The trauma was more dramatic, and shock interrupted the cycle, blocking the experiential feeling of fear. It was an appropriate (rational), yet incomplete, action and the memory was stored in my body and mind, ready for reactivation should a similar situation occur, which it did.
The psychological fear that arose when I returned to work had a rational base, I was being asked to ignore the added risk and violate my training. But the feeling of fear seemed outsized, it felt inappropriate. But it did stop me in my tracks and prevented another bad decision if not another accident. However, my response did nothing to resolve the feeling of fear just beneath my threshold of consciousness.
I believe the reason the feeling was so intense and outsized is because there was an instinctual loss of trust in my judgment, for good reason too. I was just about, for the second time, to allow my prideful self-image as a man of courage to ignore the conflicting truth that I lacked the honesty and courage to confront my boss and demand more scaffolding to be brought to the job. In other words, I had let fear of being seen as less of a “man” guide me to making an irrational decision. It was an irrational fear that allowed me to ignore the subtle and rational fear warning I had received before I made the mistake of climbing that ladder.
That day back on the job I had the opportunity to be attentive and aware of all of my feelings, without judgement. But I didn’t do that. Instead, I succumbed to feeling embarrassed and chose to resist the feelings. Worse, I ignored them as soon as I was able.
Had I allowed the space of awareness to guide my attention and the feeling of fear to complete its cycle intuitive understanding would have guided me to a different decision and let trust and courage in my reasonable judgment return. I would have then had the opportunity to return to the heights on a reasonable basis, applying best practices, and thereby replacing the traumatic memory as soon as possible. Metaphorically I would have been getting back on the horse that had thrown me. But not until I had cinched the saddle.
Irrational Psychological Fears
I have been retired from construction work since 2009. My wife and I owned a few rental homes, so I still made use of my knowledge and skills. But there have only been two occasions for me to work from a scaffold and then only at heights from 9 to 12 feet. I have experienced unexpected fear each time, even if I knew I had taken appropriate precautions. You may think that would not be a problem. But it is, let me explain. When there is a clear threat, we can quickly ascertain the nature and seriousness of the threat. But when there is no rational reason to be afraid the result is confusion, self-doubt, and second-guessing. There is no clarity of mind or appropriate focus on the job at hand. That inattentiveness is a danger in itself.
“Fear is never an actuality; it is either before or after the active present. When there is fear in the active present, is it fear? It is there and there is no escape from it, no evasion possible. There, at that actual moment, there is total attention at the moment of danger, physical or psychological. When there is complete attention there is no fear. But the actual fact of inattention breeds fear…”
Jiddu Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti’s Notebook
I can attest to the truth of what Krishnamurti is saying. In both accidents, I have shared, during the actual moment of danger there were no “feelings” of fear. There was no trembling, no confusion, no indecision, and no worry. There was only total attention (what I call Attentive Awareness) and appropriate action. And there have been other instances in my life as well.
The construction accident is the only time I have experienced going into shock, an automatic psychological response. It delayed and suppressed my feelings of fear until it was triggered later when I returned to work. It caused only relatively mild disruptive changes in my behaviour and life. But that is not always the case.
Severely disruptive psychological conditions such as PTSD, Anxiety Disorder, and Phobia each have some history of trauma at their root. Severe and continued trauma will have effects. Sustained, though milder, forms of trauma may induce irrational fears. If neglected or suppressed, they might become more problematic. So, let me be clear. I am not a medical professional and I recommend that if your career, relationships, or just life in general is severely affected by irrational fears or hallucinations you should seek professional advice.
The type of psychological fears that are being addressed here are not usually perceived as disruptive; it is more likely many will be declared by you to be rational and necessary. But whether that is true or not is what I am suggesting you investigate. Could they possibly be rationalized rather than rational? Do they affect your life in ways that you have not yet realized? We will inquire into these questions and more, as well as examine the psychological fears you already know to be disruptive to your relationships, in part two, “Putting Fear in its Place: Discovering Freedom from Fear”.
