Pre-experience - issues with people dealing with fear

 You don’t know what the person in front of you have experienced. You don’t know what they are worried about or scared about or fear.

You – intersect with all their fear.  Compassion is key to helping overcome. And don’t make assumptions.

Based on a presentation I watched.  Daca/undocumented kids in college.   What sort of overt racist experiences have their experienced. How does denial of their lived experience impact them?

This is true of everyone you meet. You have no idea what they have experienced or why they are responding the way they are. Be kind to everyone you meet.

And stop trying to win arguments. Be kind. 

Fear, Anger and Self Control

Thinking rationally and therefore behaving rationally is really hard to do when you are fearful and/or angry.

Yoda said, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. I gotta be honest, the Nazi’s in Charlottesville terrified me. Really terrified me. As a result, I got really angry. In a way I don’t normally get. I haven’t felt emotions that strong in a long while. It took me 3 whole days before my compassion started to kick in. Normally I can find compassion for people in a matter of minutes, not days.

I am sharing this because self-control is important. We can’t make good decisions or even act in a civilized way if we are fearful to the point of being angry. This is what is wrong with people in hate groups. They have uncontrolled fears that are causing them to get angry and fearful.

So how do we regain control?  First, when you can, remind yourself that your anger is based in fear. Then figure out why you are afraid to the point you are angry. Anger is a protective emotion.  Figure out what you are afraid of and why and remind yourself to be compassionate and you should find your fear ebbing away. That is what works for me.

Just please don’t let your fears consume you because eventually – it will lead to hate and hate doesn’t solve anything.

To learn how to manager anger in yourself and others - consider taking this online course - only $7.50 - https://humanistlearning.com/angermanagement101/ 

https://humanistlearning.com/angermanagement101/

Dealing with Negative Emotions and Fear

We all experience fear at some point in our lives. Some of us more than others. How we deal with it and IF we deal with it impact our success in life.

Tiffany asks: 

How do I learn to deal with negative emotions without expecting a positive outcome if I choose to be courageous and take action in spite of my fears? What other motivation is there?

Answer: 

If you are going to take courageous action in spite of your fears - it's because you feel there is something positive to be gained from doing so.  That you might not succeed is part of that equation. If you feel it is important to try anyway - do it.

The way to deal with the fear and the negative emotions is to accept them as legitimate but decide to act anyway.  There is no rule that says - you have to be happy to do positive things.  If something is scary - it's scary.  It might not work out.  But if it is important to try - do it anyway.

The only time I have 2nd thoughts about things like this is if I might get injured or killed by doing so. Otherwise, I just accept the fear and the negative emotions - and do what needs to be done anyway.

The idea that you have to have positive emotions all the time - is unrealistic and unhelpful.  Accept the negative for what it is in the moment.  What happens is that AFTER you have acted in accordance with your moral values despite the pressure not to - THAT is when you feel good about yourself.  In the moment, it's nothing but anxiety and fear.   To get to the happy - you have to get to the other side. And to get there – requires action.

My favorite quote about this is from Winston Churchill.  If you are going through hell. Keep going.

The journey may not be pleasant, but the destination is sure to be better than your present.  Don't try to erase your negative emotions. Accept them and do what is right despite them.

Originally posted at: http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-learn-to-deal-with-negative-emotions-without-expecting-a-positive-outcome-if-I-choose-to-be-courageous-and-take-action-in-spite-of-my-fears

Fear and Anger

Have you ever had someone get angry with you and you don’t know why?  It is hard sometimes to fathom why people act the way they do, especially when they are angry with you for no reason.

As I always say, don’t assume you know why someone is angry. Don’t just write them off as a jerk.  Understand that anger often results from fear.  When people are afraid, they can become very angry.  You know you do, so why should you expect other people to behave any differently?

When someone gets angry at you for no reason, don’t take it personally. Try to figure out why that person is so afraid they are responding with anger. The more you can compassionately help them deal with their fears, the more you can help them become less angry. This is especially important in a work environment where you can’t just pick and choose your customers and co-workers.

Whenever possible, respond to anger with compassion.

Image: "Shouting Man" by chrisroll http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

Love Yourself

2 wonderful sisters who aren't
afraid to be themselves

This post is for my mom and for my aunt. I grew up in a family of nonconformists. We are all unique and we thrive on that. Not quite fitting in is a badge of honor in some ways.

I’m telling you this because I also come from a very happy family. I mean seriously. They all are really funny, love to play and don’t worry too much about what other people think.  We have each other and that’s enough. We don’t need outside approval.

We all know to not worry about what other people think. Either they will like us as we are, or they won’t. And if they don’t, so what. As long as a few people like me the way I am, I’m set. 

This is the key to being fearless and something that I wrote about in my book on how to deal with bullies (TheBullyVaccine.com)  But telling you all to be fearless isn’t exactly the primary reason for this post.  The real reason is because my mom wanted me to do a post that included a song I wrote for my Aunt Lana for her 50^th birthday.  The song is called Ode to Lana and yes, she was delighted and laughed hysterically at it. She’s a wonderful woman, laughs, loves and lives fully and is the biggest Beethoven freak you will ever meet.

Enjoy – Ode to Lana as performed by my old band The Dashboard Messiahs

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Overcoming fear with science

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The emotion of fear is always negative.  Our responses to fear were learned early in life as hand-me-downs, by imitating fearful, ignorant, superstitious people.  If fear is such a powerful force, why do we teach fear to our children?  Fear and ignorance are sort of like the chicken and the egg-which came first.  We fear what we don't understand and we don't understand what we fear.  Irrational responses to fear are very common. 

I remember an incident years ago that demonstrates that fear is learned.  I was visiting a friend one weekend and, while he was tending the bar-b-que, his 4 year old girl started screaming in the bathroom.  I hurried to the doorway and found her sitting on the floor screaming, looking at her finger bleed.  She was terrified!  Apparently, she had never before consciously experienced bleeding.

Rather than make a big fuss over it (I could see it was only a minor wound), I stopped, smiled and said, "I see you sprang a leak."  She immediately became silent and bewildered.  I then asked, "What do you do when you see a leak in your garden hose?"  She put her finger over the leak.  "That's right," I said.  "Hold your finger on it for a couple of minutes and it will stop bleeding."

She then started giggling, got up and ran to her mother in the kitchen shouting, "Look Momma, I sprang a leak." That little girl reacted to a new situation, in which she sensed danger, in much the same way motion pictures and TV shows portray emotional reactions to bloody injuries - by screaming.  But once she better understood the situation was a normal occurrence and there was little danger, her whole emotional response changed from fear to the joy of enlightenment.

Many of the fears children learn, they learn by default.  The parents don't attempt to explain the natural world in a scientific sense, either because they don't (or won't) make the time or don't know themselves.  If children are not encouraged to think at a very early age, through the use of science and the scientific method, their emotions will easily be controlled by others later in life because of their ignorance.  A keen interest in the nature of things - science - sets the foundation to emotional responses. Scientific knowledge and skepticism deflate erratic emotional responses simply by removing the anxiety of doubt and fear of the unknown.

Perhaps, sometime in the future, emotions will become based more on knowledge than ignorance; reason than fear.  Emotions will then become a positive constructive influence instead of the negative, destructive influence it seems to be today.

Guest post by Frank Prahl (Excerpted from his essay Reason, Emotion and Humanism). Frank is a Journalism graduate of the University of Houston; Past president of the Humanists of Houston and later, Humanists Involved in Greater Houston and has been a Humanist Advocate for more than 15 years. 

Be Brave

Fear can be immobilizing. But you should never let fear get in the way of doing what you know is right. Yes, it can be scary. But you have a moral obligation to act. We can all become immobilized by fear. And not just legitimate fears. We are also all plagued to greater or lesser extent with fear of the future, fear of rejection, and even fear that we might actually get what we want. My personal affirmation when faced with these sorts of fears is “I will not allow myself to be paralyzed with fear.” It has worked for me.

I bring this up because in the past week, it has become obvious to me that almost everyone is afraid of potentially violent Muslims. Now clearly, not all Muslims are violent, but there is definitely a section of that community that is and they have us all scared. Even I am afraid. There are writing projects I want to do but am afraid what would happen if I did. And this is what the recent Draw Muhammad Day was all about. Unfortunately, people were too afraid to participate in it.

Well here is our official affirmation. When it comes to violent Muslims, I think the world needs to collectively state – we aren’t going to be afraid of you anymore.

Fear or Sanity

We Humanists are very big on reason.  It isn’t that we don’t honor our emotions; we just think that as fun as they can be – they aren’t always that reliable when it comes to decision-making.  Long story short, we respect our emotions and we allow them to have input, but we don’t let our emotions make our decisions for us.  We use our reason for that.

I bring this up because there has been a lot of fear mongering going on lately.  And making decisions based on fear usually doesn’t end well.  That is because fear tends to distort reality and making good decisions depends entirely on dealing productively with reality.  After all – you don’t want to do something stupid because you were too fearful to get your facts straight.

As a current example - one side of the health care debate is telling people that if they support health care reform – you or someone you love will die!  Pretty scary – but easily proven as lies.  There are plenty of perfectly rational reasons why you may or may not support health care reform.  Fear of death panels, rationing or the specter of socialism should not be amongst those reasons.