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Welcome to TheFearMonsterSlayer

Hi and welcome to my blog. I’m Jeff Aronson, TheFearMonsterSlayer. In this and future blogs I’ll share some simple, effective and fun tools for managing fear and anxiety. So, welcome aboard!

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THEFEARMONSTER OF LONDON

8/5/2014

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Londoners during the Blitz
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"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."--Franklin D. Roosevelt

Malcolm Gladwell, in his recent book, David and Goliath, describes a very interesting observation about how the British citizenry dealt with fear during the German Blitzkrieg bombing of London during World War Two. I really like Gladwell's books as they challenge conventional wisdom about why and how things happen. They're all on my recommended books list (They're also on THEFEARMONSTER'S banned books list).

In the years leading up to the war, the British government knew that the German Air Force would bomb London and that there was nothing they could do to stop it. The British military command predicted that a sustained bombing would kill an estimated 600,000 people, wound another 1.2 million and create mass panic.

Plans to build a massive network of underground bomb shelters were abandoned because it was feared that people would never come out of them. And several psychiatric hospitals were set up outside the city limits to treat what was expected to be a flood of psychological casualties.

In 1940 the attack began. For eight months, beginning with 57 consecutive nights of devastating bombardment, German bombers dropped tens of thousands of bombs and more than a million incendiary devices, fire bombs. Forty thousand people were killed, another forty-six thousand were injured, and a million buildings were damaged or destroyed.

But then an interesting thing happened. Every prediction about how Londoners would react was wrong. The panic never came! The psychiatric hospitals were switched to military use because no one showed up. Many women and children were evacuated to the countryside but people who needed to stay in the city mostly stayed. As the German assaults increased, authorities began to observe, to their astonishment, not just courage during the bombing but something closer to indifference.

People went on about their business, kids played in the streets and went to school and life went on pretty much as usual. It became astonishingly clear that the bombing didn't have the effect everyone thought it would. So why was that?

At the end of the war a study was done to solve the puzzle. It was found that the morale of the community depends on the reaction of the survivors. The so-called "near misses", people who feel the blast, are horrified by the destruction and carnage, may be wounded but survive, and are left with a powerful reaction associated with the bombing. They may continue to experience what's called post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD.

Then there are the "remote misses" who make up a far greater percentage of the population. People who hear the sirens, see the bombers overhead and hear the explosions. But the bomb hits some distance away. They survived the second or third time that happens, they experience a feeling of excitement tinged with a feeling of invulnerability. Their reaction is exactly the opposite of that of the "near misses" who are traumatized. A remote miss creates a feeling of invincibility.

In recollections of Londoners who lived through The Blitz, countless people described feeling happy and triumphant, exhilarated and invulnerable. One Londoner, who had been bombed out of his house two times, refused to be evacuated to the countryside. He said, "What and miss all this? Not for all the gold in China!"

The study concluded that  we are not only liable to fear but also afraid of being afraid. Conquering that fear produces exhilaration and a self-confidence that is "the very father and mother of courage." Soldiers going into combat of course fear dying or being maimed but right behind that is the fear of not showing courage and letting their buddies down.

Courage is not the absence of fear but doing something courageous in the face of fear. It's what we earn when we get through the tough times and realize they aren't so tough at all.

Next Time: FACING DOWN THEFEARMONSTER
 


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ADVANCED THOUGHT SHIFTING

5/24/2014

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"Nothing is as dangerous as an idea when it's the only one we have."--Emile Chartier
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Our thoughts are like asteroids and meteors, zooming around out there in space. Some enter our atmosphere only to burn up quickly as meteorites or shooting stars. Others occasionally penetrate through the atmosphere and crash into the earth such as the recent one that blazed across the sky in Russia causing injuries and damage. It was an asteroid or comet that hit the earth and is believed to have contributed to the extinction of three quarters of all plant and animal species including the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago.  

Likewise, negative thoughts like worry and anxiety can cause serious damage or distress if they're allowed to enter our mental atmosphere. So here's a way to build a defense system. I call it Thought Shifting and I introduced it in my previous post. It's simple and amazingly effective and we can get good at it really quickly. It's also fun. But, like getting to Carnegie Hall (see previous post), it takes practice, practice, practice.

This is a thought exercise. Einstein used thought exercises developing his theories. These are much easier.
Step 1. Form a visual image in your mind. It can be anything. The shoes you're wearing, a '63 Corvette, anything (keep it neutral, nothing emotional or disturbing).
Step 2. Fixate on it for a few seconds then shift to another image. Your dog, your cell phone, or a bowl of Ben&Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie Ice Cream. Whatever.
Step 3. Repeat Step 2 with different images.
Step 4. Keep doing it with new images.

That's it. It only takes a few seconds Do it fifty or a hundred times a day whenever you think about it. Our thoughts are like a light switch. We  turn them on, we  turn them off, we turn them on, we turn them off. You'll be surprised how quickly you can get good at it.

Remember, what we focus on expands so we want to keep these invaders out of our mental atmosphere. Oh yeah, I still haven't mastered thought shifting from Ben&Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie.

Next time: CATS, BATS, AND RATS IN THE ATTACK

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    Hi and welcome to my blog. I’m Jeff Aronson, TheFearMonsterSlayer. In this and future blogs I’ll share some simple, effective and fun tools for managing fear and anxiety. So, welcome aboard!

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