Once upon a time information was limited – as a consequence, the general population had a limited understanding of the world around them. In the 21st century all you need is a smart phone to have the world and the whole of human history in your back pocket. It is estimated that the average owner of a smart phone has more information at their disposal than the president of the United States had in The 1970s. Unfortunately, a lot of this information can make us predisposed to fear and this fear can quickly spread as a society wide experience.
What is the psychology behind this? On a societal level fear has to be general and somewhat vague to provoke a society wide response. It has to have enough variance for the many individuals to feel some kinship with the fear but not so specific that it would exclude too many people.
Interestingly, the main difference in the fear response is an ability to retain control of the rational mind, it’s also the ability to suspend your imagination. Some people have this skill to a greater or lesser extent than others. You have to expose yourself to some danger to get perspective on how to handle fear. Just like any skill you need to practice it in order to master the wave of emotions. Martin Seligman in 1971 proposed the theory that fears are related to survival instincts and that they are not related to everyday events. In a South African context we have to learn to live with certain experiences and these are not to be taken lightly. However, South Africans are an example of the resilience that builds when tested.
Hypnosis is so effective for fear – both individually and for group work. We can use hypnosis to visualise the actual fears (rather than the floating, fear response) and drill down into the individual motivations of clients. We can also desensitise clients who may be living into general fear states and help them to visualise more positive outcomes.
Back to Smart Phones, something we all can benefit from is guarding ourselves against this wave of 21st century information that can create the unhealthy experience of fear.
Our imaginative fear minds are constantly triggered by what we watch. In a society that is generally experiencing a free-floating anxiety, that anxiety can attach itself to other expressions of fear in order to relieve the sensations. During large events, like the pandemic, many people strongly reacted because in their mind this was something tangible to attach their anxiety to. Something real, even though many of those people were not in risk groups. This is the greatest destabilising factor of the psychology of fear – you merely need to be in a state of free floating anxiety for that experience to be manipulated and attached to something that may not be a direct threat. Makes us sound very vulnerable, doesn’t it? We are. Unless we manage our personal anxiety we cannot handle the wider anxiety of society.
At the moment new fears have taken over and once again the free floating, society wide sense of anxiety will attach itself to another “big event”. The good news is that it’s a cycle the individual can break themselves by understanding their own fear response.
Next month we will focus on courage. A great asset and another learned skill.
A shorter version of this article appeared in the August 2023 edition of The Mountain Echo, Underberg, KZN