Winning the battle against Fear: A Personal Story
I want to share a story, and in doing so I hope that you can find some trust in the words I write and share, and the message I am sending to you all at this time.
I know something about this all pervading fear. I know what it feels like in my body, and how it paralyses the mind.
Some of you may know that four years ago I was in a terrorist situation.
Small, failed, terrorist incidents were frequently reported throughout the country, and while we were alert we were not terribly impacted. Then one night it all changed.
A restaurant just 120 metres from my apartment was taken over by five young men. The local and Muslim patrons were ushered out, leaving the internationals and non-Islamic behind. They were held hostage for 12 hours, and then one by one brutally slaughtered. I saw the footage and I cannot forget it.
It should have been me.
I was heading there for a post dinner dessert, but as fate would have it my then-husband ran into a friend and we were delayed by 15 or so minutes. As we eventually got on our way the streets people had started to mill out onto the surrounding streets – which being so densely populated wasn’t unusual in itself - but then I heard the guns, and then the screams.
People I knew were in there. People I knew were on there way there.
I was terrified
Life changed overnight.
This was one of a sequence of planned terrorist attacks and every foreigner working in the country was now a potential target. The locals didn’t want to be near us. I was labelled particularly high risk due to being married to a public figure whom, while a practicing Muslim, was not necessarily living the most pious of lives and moreover we were visible.
And so ensued armed guards, quadruple deadbolted doors, CTV cameras, safe-rooms, and total lockdown. No movement outside except to be met in a basement to be closeted away by unnamed and heavily tinted vehicles. No outings beyond the office. Entering each premise required a lengthy security process. No markets for food or necessities. No travel. No exercise. No trees or dirt. No sun except for what filtered through windows. Exterior walls were immediately extended another 6 feet and topped with barbed wire. For months on end we were prisoners in our homes until security measures were ramped out sufficiently to be allowed out - under strict conditions. For a long time every local man and every moment caused me to freeze in fear.
Such conditions aren’t unusual to UN staff but I was one of a few ‘green one’s’, and I clearly remember the meeting in which our Head of Office mocked us for the fear that was reflected in our pale and lifeless faces and hunched shoulders.
I Numbed out
So it was left unexpressed. I pushed it down until it lodged in me as frozen tension. Seen in occasional and seemingly irrational emotional outbursts, and a new appetite for alcohol. Binge-eating. Binge-watching crap television on my laptop. Working around the clock. All effective short-term means to numb my feelings.
Now this is a situation that was more intense but more localised than what the global and unprecedented crisis that we are experiencing right now with the Coronavirus and it’s wider ramifications. But internally the situation is achingly similar. Fear can paralyse us. It can cause us to act irrationally and emotionally. It can disconnect us from ourselves and others and cause tension in relationships. It can discombobulate us, and lead to inertia. It can cause selfish and irresponsible behaviour.
But it doesn’t need to.
7 lessons I learnt aS the antidote to fear
I learnt a great deal from my experience, lessons that changed my life. And I want to share them here with you in the hope that it can help you through this, and other challenging times.
You can’t run away from your feelings.
The things I thought were important were not.
Connecting with your community is essential.
You can choose to enter and feed the drama or to observe it.
You can choose to filter all the information and news that comes to you and set boundaries around that.
Good self-care is foundational to your health.
Practicing presence is the greatest gift you can give yourself.
1. You can’t run away from your feelings.
Fear is an emotion entwined in the flight-fight-freezeresponse, the natural biological survival reaction in our reptilian brain to that what is perceived to be unknown and unsafe. Your ‘rational’ brain or neo-cortex can impact, but ultimately has little impact over this basic survival response that triggers the release of stress hormones and the sympathetic nervous system.
A feeling of fear is likely to arise in you at some point , perhaps in the relay of the news, in the empty supermarket aisles, or when you hear a cough.
It is important that you recognise a) that this is a normal response, and b) that it needs to be expressed, not suppressed to be liberated.
Allow your feelings a safe space to be expressed and liberated. If you push your feelings down they will form frozen tension that will bubble up in unhealthy and seemingly irrational ways at a later and unforeseen time, and this frozen tension impacts on your ability to flow, and be open to life.
Instead of running away from your feelings tune into the sensations in your body, the tension or tightness and ask your body to move and express these sensations that you become aware of in the way it wants to. This is chemistry at play. This is respecting your body wisdom. Notice how a deer releases built up adrenalin by shaking all over once it has escaped an unsuccessful predator.
2. The things I thought were important were not.
Times like these illuminate your values. You can clearly see what are your priorities in life, and where you are focusing attention on things that are unfulfilling. Keeping-on at the things that do not light you up will burn you out. Take the opportunity that this presents to redefine and realign your life. You will never look back. I made the seemingly momentous decision to leave my burgeoning career and the exciting expat-life. No regrets.
3. Connecting with your community is essential.
This has been much talked about so I will keep it brief. Self-isolation on the physical level can look like loneliness, but there are a plethora of means to keep in contact. Skype and Facetime are brilliant. Intimate gatherings in each other’s homes. Raising each other up, and holding space when needing to.
4. You can choose to feed the drama, to observe it from a distance, or to be a beacon of light.
What you listen to, how you talk about it, the language you use, the actions you take can be reactionary, or they can be measured. Before you enter a conversation, a shop, or your social media pause, take a breath, and ask from your heart how you want to show up. You hold immense power in spreading fear, or spreading love. Be a beacon of light.
5. You can choose to filter all the information and news that comes to you and set boundaries around that.
We all know that the media is a business that thrives on sensationalism. There are very few examples of impartial journalism. Furthermore, we live within systems that are built on disempowering us through the spread of fear. Vet your sources of information wisely. Set limits around the amount of screen scroll time. Unfollow or mute people who are adding to the drama. I set a hard limit with my (ex-) husband about what he could discuss with me and show me, and exited from conversations that I knew wouldn’t serve me.
6. Good self-care is foundational to your health.
Self-care is not necessarily a manicure and a massage. It is tuning into yourself and your body and nurturing it the way she needs. This may mean you go to bed earlier, move gently throughout the day, journal before bed, eat nourishing foods, have a cry, lay on the grass, hug a tree, tend to your garden, tell your loved ones what you need and how they can meet that. Fill up your cup first, instead of reaching for the habitual crutch to simply get you through. I turned to a morning and evening meditation practice and finding a sit spot on my balcony to connect in with the very small snippet of nature available to me.
7. The universe has your back.
In everything something good will come. In everything there is a lesson to be gleaned. In every moment there is evolution. There will always be equal growth and challenge in everything, always. Nature is both life and death in ever-continuing cycles. Accept this and trust that something bigger than you is at play.
8. Practicing presence is the greatest gift you can give yourself.
Above all else, presence. In total mindful awareness of where you are right.this.moment. Feeling your seat supported by the earth beneath you, the coolness of the air inhaled through your nostrils, the breeze caressing your check and the rise and fall of your chest you can not forget that you are alive. That you are at home here, in your body, not your trickster mind and competing ego. This moment right now is the most important moment.
There are a myriad of tools and techniques you can use to ground yourself. Perhaps it is a guided meditation on an app such as Insight Timer. Perhaps it is a Sit Spot practice in a committed special place in nature, where you commit to awakening all your senses to what is around you several times a day. Perhaps it is a form of meditation, or cooking, or knitting, or drawing or dance. Try a few out, find what works for you. The more you practice the quicker and more deeply you will connect with yourself, and you will find the stillness within.
These practices are all centered in love. They lead you back to your heart, and to feeling supported. Love is the most powerful antidote of all. And it means that you are in a powerful position.
Will you choose to be a beacon of light?