Fear is a natural emotion. It’s a survival instinct that provokes a heightened emotional response designed to grab our attention. Any emotion that does that is healthy and normal. The thing with fear is that we often react instinctively instead of exploring the sensation. It can become a normalized way to react to the world, a justification for having anxiety, speaking before we think, or trying to control our environment and those around us.
Fear, like any emotion, is information. It’s not designed to make us reactionary, yet most of us haven’t learned this and don’t understand what to do with it. Fear can showcase itself in dominating ways, meaning that our own fear, when unconscious, becomes unhealthy to us and those around us.
For example, let’s say you’ve had a stressful thought about a challenging situation at work, and your mind unconsciously gets pulled into that story. Your nervous system is now in a heightened state of reaction, which means if your partner or child walks into the room to talk to you or demand something, you will likely be reactive. Reacting is different than responding; a reaction in this scenario could be impatience or agitation.
Another example could be that your child goes outside without shoes on and you find you’re frightened they will get cut or bring dirt into the house. These are not unusual concerns; however, fear is cunning if left unchecked: instead of recognizing that those are minor things not worth getting upset about, your nervous system will want to jump into protection mode. You may then end up yelling or speaking in an agitated or anxious tone. Our fear then migrates to the person we’ve reacted toward, and, that person now has to figure out what to do with it.
We can learn to be curious and non-reactionary by taking a few breaths, asking ourselves what concerns us, and recognizing it’s not a life-or-death situation. This is our opportunity to self-regulate, calm ourselves, and gather perspective and respond instead of reacting out of fear. It also allows us to take our complex nervous system out of the driver’s seat in non-life-threatening situations.
When we don’t recognize our reactions, we end up (unintentionally) causing harm to the other. We teach that being reactive and dramatic is normal. The other person can either recognize what we’re doing, self-regulate, and call us out, or, especially in the case of children, they can learn this behaviour and start reacting to the world in more dramatic ways, ultimately leaving them feeling frustrated and lacking self-aware behaviour.
Funnily enough, while I was writing this, I had a moment of panic — I thought I’d forgotten that I needed to be somewhere. I jumped up, heart racing, mind unfocused, about to run out the door when I realized that what I needed was to slow down and think. I called the person I thought I was covering for, and sure enough, she didn’t need me. I just got my days confused. I’d gone into survival mode instantly; my sympathetic nervous system was on high alert and it took me 10 minutes to settle back down. It’s amazing how reactive we can be, but with practice we can catch it, redirect, and think about what we’re doing instead of projecting our fear, panic, anxiety, anger, and frustration onto others.
When we not only recognize how we respond but also have practices that help us ground and support our own mental well-being we are affected in positive ways. Not only that, the people around us benefit from our behaviours. Practices like staying curious, meditation, yoga, mindful walking, or mindfully doing anything help us learn to soften and move less reactively.
Recovering from being reactive takes time and is a lifelong practice. The goal is not perfect it or become so ‘good’ that we don’t have to think about it. Thinking about it is what helps us.
xo, Noelle