Responding to Fear
Lucinda J. Garthwaite, ILI Director
“They literally met on two sides of the street.” That was a friend and colleague of mine this week, a devoted educator and social equity advocate. In his town in another state, on the same night, at the same time, two different groups met to talk about school equity. In a building on one side of the street were people organizing for racial equity in the town’s public schools. In a different building, on the other side of the street, people were organizing to resist those efforts. The thing is, my colleague said, “They were seeing two completely different realities.”
My friend and I share the same basic ideas about how these different perspectives came to be. But what’s to be done, we wondered, to keep the street from getting wider and wider? If my intention is to increase social equity and decrease violence, to help make it possible for more people and the planet to thrive, what’s the most effective way to respond to the people across the street from me?
Later I posed that question to another good friend, also a long-time educator. “Fear,” she said, “we need to deal with the fear”.
I believe that others’ emotions cannot be opposed. I can disagree with an idea, an opinion, a statement of fact. I can wish someone else didn’t feel what they feel, but I can’t disagree that they feel what they feel. I can’t disagree that they are afraid.
People learn what to fear from both experience and information, though, and this is where it gets confusing, because I can disagree with information. So if another’s fear is rooted in information with which I disagree, can’t I start there? Can’t I try to convince them that their fear is wrong because the information on which it’s based is wrong?
I can try, but it’s doubtful that I’ll succeed. Rational conversation and logic are no match for beliefs that underlie fear, because fear’s purpose is to protect from threats that feel existential, as in: If this thing happens, I might not be who I am. I might not have what I need to survive. I might die. So I will hang on tight to my fear, thank you very much!
In terms of social change, this is a problem, because when fear drives behavior that puts others’ well-being and even lives at risk, it’s time to take deliberate and urgent action to mitigate that fear.
The urgent action needed, though, is exactly not devaluing another’s fear - Disagreeing with fear. Screaming at fear. Taunting or belittling fear. In response, fear just digs in harder.
Strategies for responding to fear need to cause fear to diminish, not dig in. What fear needs in order to recede, as a wise teacher often reminds me, is reassurance. Also information, but not in the form of argument. In order for fear to stand down, the information that a fearful person needs is, “I will not hurt you” or “I will not let you be hurt.”
In the interest of increasing equity and decreasing violence, challenging others' fears is not an effective option. But setting that option aside must not mean giving up on responding to fear; fear lights matches every day, touches them to gas, and sets the world on fire. We’ve got to put those fires out, and fiercely resist the lighting of the match. We’ve also got to learn to respond effectively to fear.
When I am tempted to talk someone out of their fear (won’t work) or devalue their fear (makes it worse), it’s because I myself am afraid, and often with good reason. My fear is a good alert system. When it gets me out of the way of a fast-moving train, it’s a good motivator for quick action.
But social transformation is not a fast-moving train, transformative strategy requires careful thinking, and careful thinking isn’t possible when fear is in charge. My fear is most useful when I pay attention to its alert with appreciation and respect, then set it aside so I can think and then act.
So that’s where my work begins, and where I’ll return over and over again. As I get better at seeing and soothing my own fears, I’ll be more able to respond to others’ in ways that leave room for their fears to step aside. That’s one way to keep the street from getting wider.