Coping with the Inevitable Fear Life Brings Us



"He was greatly taken aback, he stood perfectly motionless, but with a look of a sylvan creature on the point of fleeing away. He turned with agitation and his hand trembled so that he nervously took up a small object..."
Nathaniel Hawthorne first meeting the woman who was to become his wife by Charles Robert Gaston

Petting the wild beast is not a good idea

In the last couple of  posts, I've covered the first two problems [laziness and diet and exercise] with my list on how people gum up their lives. Next on the list is most people's favorite topic, ta da, fear. What's really unfair is we humans are born with a healthy amount of fear as part of our biological makeup. We are programed so that fear, and the fight or flight response, keep us safe. The human race could have been neatly wiped out in a couple of millennium if we'd stopped to pet the wild beasts. Happily for all of us, built into our brains is a system that gives us this red alert to run and flee upon any encounter with a dangerous animal.

Things start to go awry when, for whatever reason, our brain falsely triggers our life saving adrenaline. Then adrenaline kicks in and it vastly overcompensates for ordinary situations.  A good example of this is phobias and fear of cats [elurophobia] comes to my mind. My paternal grandmother had a pathological fear of cats and my unhelpful Grandfather thought it was wildly funny and would tell us as kids, "go put the kitty in Grandma's lap." Screaming ensued, cats were horrifying and alarming to our poor dear Grandma.

 I love this dear and treasured creature

Too much adrenaline can leave the body and the mind in a state of constant alarm and lead to exhaustion. This is the pathology for our age: too much to do, to much over stimulation, not enough down time or sleep. We're almost proud of it, I hear people brag about this. However, when the brain is overloaded it's tendency is to misread ordinary situations as stressful. I give myself as an example of that. Many years ago I was commuting to graduate school, I had a part-time job and an internship; and I was raising teenagers. Some could, I'm sure, do this with aplomb but in my mind it felt more like a bomb. I was as taut as a guitar string. Once a friend caught me crying while riding on the ferry enroute to school. "What's up?" he said. "I'm going to turn in my paper that I spent the weekend on and it's not my best work," I said. "Do you have time to do your best work?" he said. "God, no! I barely have time to sleep." I lamented. "Well turn in the paper and accept that it's not your best effort, it's not the end of the world." All too true and I did calm down and let my standards [too demanding and too high a bar for my circumstances] drift down a notch.

One of the consequences of these repetitive danger and warning signals firing in the brain, can be panic attacks. I have helped many a client through the dreadful feelings of panic and more importantly how to prevent the attacks. As I have mentioned in post before, phobia are one of the easiest things to treat. Panic attack and prevention takes a bit more time. If you've never had a panic attack, it feels as though you are having a heart attack.

Interestingly, because of our over scheduled, high pressure society, people can be in a constant state of alarm.  One of my friends believes that's why there is such a prevalence of antidepressants and tranquilizers. People are so over stimulated that they can't soothe themselves naturally so they need to artificially calm down, hence the drugs.

It is my considered opinion that psychopharmocology has gotten in the way of good therapy. There is certainly a case to be made for antidepressants for severe depression and the very necessary drugs for cases of bipolar illness and schizophrenia but the rest of the time, with a few exceptions, drugs are ridiculously overprescribed. Take the uppers used on children for ADD/ADHD. I have argued for over twenty five years that the first course of action should be family therapy and second, look at the diet and exercise programs of the patient. Currently, the statistic is that one out of ten boys in this country is on some upper or another [adderal, stratera etc.] this just plain silly. Plus I believe it sets them up to have an addiction problem. Please remember who is doing all of the studies on the necessity of these drugs: the drug companies themselves. Do you think there might be a teeny-tiny conflict of interest?

It is normal to feel fear, it's uncomfortable but oh so human to be afraid at times. As a matter of fact, this is a good way to challenge yourself, do something that makes you anxious. Take a chance, risk it. Another  magic prescription for coping with fear/anxiety, sadly for the drug companies, is to teach people to soothe themselves. This can be through changing the invasive thoughts, meditation, writing in a journal, making a cup of tea, doing relaxed breathing and practicing breath control, yoga, exercise, massage, talking to a friend you trust [or a therapist, priest, shaman], going outside for fresh air, smiling, distracting yourself with a good book, etc.  The list is long, but what is not on there is drugs, they mask--- they don't teach lasting calm. No one is going to make money off this list therefore no one is trying to sell these ideas and suggestions to the general public to combat the fear.

susansmagicfeather copyright 2013 Susan R. Grout all rights reserved