Let's Talk About Fear

Let’s talk about fear. And, let’s talk about a particular type of fear that floats around us like a fog but no one seems to be able to say it is clouding our vision. This fear is not the fight or flight to an immediate danger. It is not the fear of suddenly slamming on the brakes when the car in front of you stops short. It is not the fear that your adolescent will make a stunningly bad choice with life long consequences. This fear is from grief that is part of all of our lives. But since we won’t name the grief, the grief grows into fear. And since we won’t talk about the fear, we project onto others. So let’s talk about ambiguous fear. It all starts with ambiguous grief.

Perhaps you heard the recent Krista Tippet interview “ The Myth of Closure” with Pauline Boss. Boss names those places in our hearts that contain the losses in our lives that we cannot control and that remain with us. She calls these losses Ambiguous Grief, and they are a part of being human. Most of examples focus on trauma, such as 9/11 or the Japanese Tsunami but they are also as personal as a loved one disappearing into mental illness or autism or Alzheimer’s. Ambiguous grief is about a loved one disappearing.

We all grieve with the loss of connection, especially with those to whom we are close. But when a human connection is severed, for example a plane disaster, then we connect with our grief even if the event happened to someone we don’t know. Today, as a mother with a daughter traveling in Asia, I fear her loss through a plane crash or tsunami or toppling of an unstable government. I do not walk around sad all the time, but I am aware of a constant unsettledness. Since it is not unusual for 20 something’s to travel and it is not unusual for mothers to worry, I do not feel that something is wrong with her or me. The point is as a human being, I connect with the loss of others. I go out to eat, ride trains and subways, go to the movies, fly in planes, and go dancing. These are all places that loved ones have suddenly been taken away. I identify with those places. So, we all have some ambiguous grief.

As more and more layers of ambiguous grief build it ferments into what I call ambiguous fear. After so many of our neighbors know economic ruin because jobs moved away, after so many natural disaster, crashes, attacks, it becomes more and more possible that these tragedies could happen to us. The likelihood that we could be next grows in our hearts.

An additional component of ambiguous fear is that we deny that the fear is inside of us. Then only place it can then go is outward. The most likely outward targets are people who we don’t know but who are associated with having caused other tragedies. Do you remember the Oklahoma City bombing and the initial reports that described men of Arab descent leaving the scene? In fact, it was an American white man, Timothy McVeigh, who was the bomber. Our projection outward targets someone not like us, someone associated with other events of fear.

Ambiguous Fear is my term for the force that grips our country, and others, now. Events like Sandy Hook, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Katrina, keep happening. With each event, our ambiguous fear grows. We will not name the fear that as a nation we are not going back to the post World War II boom. We fear that our lives will never be better. We will not name our inner fears that our thriving economic system somehow did not spread out the benefits of economy to everyone. We will not name the fear of the inevitable unknown that closer connections across the globe bring. When it was novel, then it was fun. Now that globalization changes life everyday, we are afraid. And, as the pressure from within builds up, the ambiguous fear eventually must be expelled.

That ambiguous fear means that ‘other people’ are taking our jobs, or changing our values, or eroding our freedom. The ideas that we can control our destiny by taking back that which we believe has been taken away promises to restore what is familiar and therefore what we believe to be right. The advice on how to overcome ambiguous fear is to restore the balance. Every candidate, pundit, referendum, and poll has a way of lifting the fog of ambiguous fear. The voices are plentiful.

Yet, the most frequently offered scriptural, spiritual advice is “Be not afraid.” Until we pause, breathe, learn to see what we are doing to ourselves and take a step back from our fear, we will not be able to sort out the plentiful voices. Until we step back from our fear, we will only react. Perhaps it may seem overly simplistic but I think it takes daily prayer and developing your own ability for self-reflection to explore, “Be not afraid.” “Be not afraid” invites us to find places of connection with others and with God. “Be not afraid” says that the connections may come to us in expected and unexpected ways.

If you find yourself overwhelmed, overcome, or reacting, then pause, breath, and pray the words, “Be Not Afraid.” If you meditate or practice centering prayer, try these words as sacred words in one of your meditations times. If you recall a scriptural phrase, then begin one day by using these words. Layer on the next day, then the next day, then the next. Observe if a shift begins within you.

Let’s talk about fear with God. The fog of ambiguous fear cannot be lifted when it is projected onto others. Our clarity of vision will return when we begin with ourselves. Our clarity is within our inner hearts in our life with God. “Be Not Afraid.”