What is Fear? Part 2 of 8: Dealing with Fear The Healthy Way
What is Fear? Dealing With Fear The Healthy Way
Part two of an eight-part series by David Traub, Co-Founder, Unityfor.org
While fear is naturally triggered in all of us throughout our lives, those of us with the essential foundation of self-esteem and faith in the world learn to deal with its trigger in an objective and discrete fashion. What is the source of this fear? Why has it manefest? How to accurately assess and rate the associated danger and its source in the bigger picture? And of course, how to respond in order to return the sense of safety and focus on matters at hand?
A cogent response to fear will nearly always find a way to address fear’s source, to abate it, and to forge a path back to stasis in a manner that optimizes harmony for all participants in the greater immediate and societal ecology.
Those without such a foundation of internal confidence act and faith in the outcome act far more simply and dangerously. They do not enjoy the luxury of considering others and a solid faith in positive outcomes, and thus must bring to bear maximal defense – and even, offense – to stave away the source of the fear. They are compensating with excessive response… for a perceived lack of control.
And so a lack of well being in an infant becomes a teasing child, drunk in the sense of power (compensation for fear) his or her ability to solicit negative emotions in other gives. Teasing gives way to bullying as the means of further distancing oneself from the deep feeling of internal inadequacy and fear that haunts the lonely and unsafe child. And of course bullying is a fast track to ever more pathological compensations for fear such as guns, crime and the gangs and armies that reinforce both as a self-determined ‘family’ that provides the alternative universe of pathological confidence, rules and ‘love’ that the infant in all of us never received at home.
Of course the above assumes an initially healthy human child compromised by environmental abuse, and negates the possibilities associated with the occasionally aberrant human born with psychosis, personality disorders and/or other pathologies whose maligned behaviors defy conventional explanation.
It is the highly functioning among these humans that we have the most to fear ourselves should they manage to find or fight their way to illogical power. This is because no amount of counseling and logic – particularly for adults – is likely to sway their internal mandate to fight fear with ultimate power and perceived control.
Click here to read Part 3 of 8: The Relationship Between Fear and Impulse To War
Peace to All,
David Traub, Co-Founder, Unityfor.org
Why do Americans fear Muslims?
Just a couple of weeks before the Christmas Day scare in 2009, Homeland Security secretary, Janet Napolitano, said, “Home-based terrorism is here…It will be a part of the threat picture that we must now confront.” Radicalization is playing out in America like never before and here are several grizzly stories to ponder.
In May of 2009, authorities in New York accused a group of plotting to bomb a synagogues and attack military planes with rockets.
June: Police arrested an American convert to Islam for shooting to death a soldier at a recruiting center in Arkansas.
July: Federal authorities arrested seven Muslims (all U.S. citizens except one) in North Carolina on plans to wage Jihad.
August: Authorities in Kosovo turned over a 21 year old Albanian- American who allegedly traveled overseas for terrorist activity.
September: FBI arrested an Afghan-American who trained with Al Qaeda for plotting a bomb attack in New York.
FBI arrested an American Muslim convert for plotting to bomb the Federal Building in Springfield, Illinois.
FBI arrested a Jordanian immigrant for trying to set off a car bomb in Dallas.
October: A Pakistani-American business man was charged for scouting terrorist targets in Denmark.
A radical imam died in shootout in a Detroit mosque after an extremist investigation turned into a raid.
A Boston-area man was accused of a plot to kill or maim Americans including officials overseas.
November: Army Major Hasan killed 13 in a rampage in Arkansas after being radicalized with ideologue in Yemen.
Prosecutors in Minneapolis unsealed terrorism charges against eight Somali-Americans who sent recruits to fight overseas.
December: The Christmas Scare, Umar Farouk Abdulmultallab attempts to blow up a U.S. airliner.
And that was just one calendar year! The most violent year since September 11, 2001.
The question before Christians and Muslims alike is…how are we going to work together to resist extremism and build bridges of trust and confidence in the new decade?
Military containment and hard borders will not be enough. The public, ordinary citizens, will need to help leverage peacemaking efforts too. Count me in.
Shirin Taber
Author of Muslims Next Door
When we fear, we are reactive victims. When we love we seize the initiative. Love for country helps soldiers to risk their lives. Love for children enables parents to discipline them without being intimidated. Love for us took Jesus to the cross. Love for enemies will give courage to face, overcome, and transform them and the environment that breeds them.
A grass-roots participatory ministry called, Adopt a Terrorist For Prayer gives Jesus’ followers a simple and practical way to take initiative and overcome fear.