Fear comes in all shapes and sizes. A situation that we don’t have control of can be scary. It can be as simple as being in a car stuck in traffic, or a meeting where we feel a teammate is not allowing us to explain ourselves in a situation where a misunderstanding could hurt people’s jobs. This stuff is stressful, and stress is a trigger for fear.
For me, this often leads directly to an intense need to remedy the situation and take control over what and how things are being communicated. This happens with parents all the time. The kids are out of control (chaos), it freaks us out (fear), we try to control the situation (reactive / emotional response to fear), it doesn’t work (people don’t like to be controlled), we escalate (anger), and then we find ourselves and everyone around us in a highly negative, totally dysfunctional state.
I think everyone experiences this at some point, for many people, it’s all day every day. Angry people live in an angry world Ram Das says. I’ll post a talk of his I liked at the end of this. In the time very long ago when anger was an appropriate response to desperate situations, that instinct worked for us. But now, it’s like we carry around this feature of our body-machine that served us better in a time that has passed many years ago.
I’m not sure I have an answer. I’m in the process of trying to understand this myself. If I feel myself getting emotional and making reactive decisions based on this fear state, I try to breathe deeply, think about my breath, take my focus off of the fear / control instinct and try to observe my feelings. It’s very difficult. But by stepping outside myself I see the grossness of this reaction. I often think, if I had a video of me running all day every day, how horrified would I be if I were to review that with my family every evening? I would be utterly accountable for all my wrongdoings. Would I act differently? Probably.
We as a species need to make sense of this sequence of events. It almost always leads to unhealthy escalation and anger and worse, conflict:
1. Agitated Situation
2. We feel overwhelmed
3. We get scared
4. We try to control the situation
5. We can’t so we get angry
6. We escalate
7. We downspiral into anger and do hurtful things or things we regret
I see this on the road every day here in NYC. Traffic is the perfect metaphor for this. Someone blocks you, you wait patiently, your patience runs out, your mind fills with desperate thoughts (I’m late to work, he’s so inconsiderate, righteous indignation fo all shapes and colors), and so we honk (seeking control), it doesn’t work so we escalate (anger), and then boom there it is.
We have to be able to move past this. To evolve past it. One way is to just think of the human at the receiving end of our negative behavior. How does this make them feel? Do they deserve to have me make their day a little worse? Are they already in deep pain? What if this is just the tip of the iceberg for them and they’re miserable? Shouldn’t I be compassionate that they are hurting? These thoughts lead me to “How can I help them feel better?”, and “it’s ok, I’m not that late”, and “wouldn’t it be nice to try and turn this into a positive rather than a deeper negative?”.
I’m certainly not the expert, but I think I’m onto something here. This cycle seems to be a common one, I know it effects me, and I think a lot of destructive behavior begins in this way. And if there was a way to globally shift our consciousness towards “de-escalation” instead of the monkey-brain reaction of “escalation” I’d be willing to bet a lot of good would come of it.
On the surface Ram Das may seem a little hippy-dippy. Not everything comes in a package we’re prepared for. Have a listen, I like the stuff this dude says. You may too.