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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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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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THREAT ASSESSMENT

6/15/2014

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What it feels like.
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What it actually is.
"Fear sharpens the senses. Anxiety paralyzes them."--Kurt Goldstein, quoted by Scott Stossel, "My Age of Anxiety"
As I've mentioned previously, what we focus on expands.  And this is true of any feeling or emotion but especially fear and worry or anxiety.

Even though I'm pretty computer-challenged, I like to think of our brains as having two operating systems: 1) The emotional, and 2) The rational, objective, critical-thinking system. These systems actually operate out of different parts of the brain: The amygdala, which drives emotions like fear, anxiety, anger, sadness. And the pre-frontal cortex, which controls executive functions like driving a car or balancing our checkbook (mine always seems to crash at this point).

If we're feeling anxious and we stay in that emotional state, our anxiety is going to remain high.  While one foot is in the emotional, we want to have the other in the rational objective system. It's just not realistic to think we can turn off anxiety by simply telling ourselves to stop worrying. But we need to bring the anxiety down to a reasonable level so we're controlling it, not it controlling us. So here's a technique my clients--and myself as well--find helpful.

1. Imagine two vertical lines. Label one as "Anxiety" and the other as "Threat." Number each from 1-10 with 1 at the bottom, 10 at the top. Under "Anxiety" 1=totally calm, approaching Nirvana, 10=I'm jumping out of my skin, peeling myself off the ceiling. Under "Threat" 1=no danger, totally safe, 10=the world is coming to an end.

2. Rate your anxiety level on the 1-10 scale. So let's say you're at a 9. Now let's move to the threat scale for a minute. Is there actually something going on right now that's causing your anxiety to be at a 9?  Is there a saber tooth tiger right outside the cave?  If the answer is "no," then we repeat this mantra: "Nothing bad is happening right now." Do some deep breathing, focusing on some other activity. And note the anxiety level coming down.

3. But if there is an actual threat, we rate it. Say I just got a letter from the IRS wanting to have a little chat about my last year's tax returns. My anxiety is at a 10 going off the chart and  I rate the threat at a 9 (Interestingly, when  we identify an actual threat our anxiety usually drops a little now that we know what we're dealing with).

4. So, let's analyze the actual threat.OK, I'm scrupulously honest  and keep receipts for everything I've ever purchased since 1985. So now the threat has dropped to a 7 and the anxiety is down to an 8.

5. What else about the threat? Well, I've got a great tax guy, Bob, who's done my taxes for years, knows tax law in and out and used to work for the IRS. So now the threat is down to 5 and the anxiety at 6. (Notice the two scales usually don't drop in perfect sync with each other. That's OK; we just want to bring them down).

6. Anything else on the threat? Oh yeah, Bob will go with me to the audit and do most of the talking and assures me that the worst thing that might happen is I may end up owing a little bit and I won't go to prison for tax evasion. The threat now? Down to a 3. And the anxiety? Maybe a 5 or even 4. There's still some anxiety but at least it's gone way down. We're not going to eliminate it, we just want to get it down to a manageable level.

Remember, fear is the presence of a real threat, anxiety is imagined and in the future. This is a good tool for managing anxiety by objectively assessing the threat and problem-solving. This may seem a little cumbersome but with some practice we can get really adept and fast at it. And it puts us in control, not the anxiety

Coming Up: FEARMONGERING



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    Jeff Aronson

    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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