Our primal minds are all about survival and when it feels uncomfortable, it spins out of control to get us to act. It feels something is wrong deep down in our gut and it wants the feeling to go away, so it cycles through problems, stressors, and regrets to try to determine the threat causing the feeling.
Has this ever happened to you?
The city noise penetrates my sleep and I wake, alone, feeling a foreboding, an unease, a fear deep in my gut. Flashes of incomplete thoughts play in front of my mind’s eye. The feeling in my gut gets worse as its knots tighten, my mind cycles, and fear grows.
Rent is Due
Tasks not done
On my own
Failures play out
It takes time for the cobwebs to clear. For the generator to turn on and kick start my conscious mind. As my consciousness comes back online and my eyes begin to focus, I stretch and my tummy rumbles - I’m hungry not scared.
Analyze the Situation
When we consciously analyze the situation. Break it down. We discover things are not as scary as we thought and nowhere near as stressful because we can act on a solution, so why is our society filled with so much fear?
A poll by the US National Mental Health Association found that 85% of Americans believe that the USA will experience a terrorist attack in the near future and 41% said they feel fear (Widmeyer Research & Polling, 2004). There are countless polls and studies proving we are living in a time of heightened fear, all one needs to do is Google fear stats to find proof that we are living in fear.
Media Feeds Fear
One of the reasons is our daily dose of media consumption, whether it is traditional media outlets or social media. To increase viewership news media makes stories sound as dramatic, threatening and urgent as possible. The result is 24/7 drama and danger, “Contributing to what George Gerbner called ‘the mean world syndrome’—the sense we have, based on a steady supply of frightening and threatening news, that the world is a riskier place than it actually is.” (Gerbner & Gross, 1976). We carry our news in our hands and talk about it on our screens. It is everywhere and the media has profited from a decrease in censorship and an increase in consumption.
The news used to only be reported at 6:00PM, then the early news became a thing, and then the morning news was created. In 1980 CNN brought 24-7 news into our homes with images of war, crime, and dangers from around the globe. In 1991, the Gulf War coverage catapulted CNN into a news media leader and people got used to having anytime access to breaking coverage. The global reach of stories shared by CNN and other news outlets soon shrunk the globe bringing disasters from all over the world into our living rooms. Suddenly, when something happened in a large city, people started believing it could happen down the street from their homes, no matter how far they live from the event.
Censorship Relaxation Increased Fear
Censorship used to ensured kids did not see images on TV. Today, everything is available to kids online and on their TV screens.
Children no longer feel safe. After Columbine, the number of school shootings has increased and the safety features put in place to ensure their safety, makes the fear all too real for them. Thirty years ago, we had…
Discover how to stop living in fear
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