Fear. Danger. Tragedy. Our news cycle is full of the most catastrophic stories. Day in and day out, as a culture, we experience a barrage of negative, fear-inducing information about incidents in our backyards, all the way out into the wide, wide world. Having friends living abroad, they express fear of coming home to the States. “What is happening to our country?”, they ask. Everything seems dangerous these days. Most especially for children.
Let me start by saying, we have never lived in a safer time. Let that sink in. In multiple ways, we have never been safer. Less deaths, longer lives (this did drop a little last year, by a few months), stricter safety standards across the board. Increased knowledge about carcinogens. Better workplace safety measures. So, why does it feel so unsafe.
I’m going to talk about this from an attachment lense (attachment is a psychological connectedness that occurs between humans and lasts for a long period of time). From an evolutionary standpoint, we attach for safety reasons. To avoid danger. Looking for danger is as essential to survival as breathing. In the absence of true, present danger, we look for more existential dangers to protect ourselves from. Our news cycle thrives on feeding us exactly what our mind says we need to know to protect ourselves. Why do we spend all this time looking for danger? If we recognize danger, we can protect ourselves. We can prepare, problem solve, and protect.
Life is inherently unsafe. I don’t mean this in a physical violence way, although that is certainly a part of it. No matter where you go on this globe, there are physical, emotional, psychological, financial, basic need threats. To deny the reality of an unsafe life is naïve. I always like to say, “sometimes life sucks.” How is our perception of safety impacting society today, though?
It is isolating us, rather than attaching us to others. Life is no longer unsafe…people are unsafe. We helicopter over our children, translating our fear to their sweet growing minds. We breed anxiety about the “what ifs” of every situation. We expand our belief in control over external events in a way that inhibits experiencing all that life has to offer. Simply put, when we live in a space of continued avoidance of danger, we increase our internal experience of anxiety, and paralyze living.
The next time you find yourself running from a perceived danger, slow down and think “what danger am I actually concerned about here?” Just notice. Pay attention the your body. What is it telling you? Are you feeling tension in the chest, shoulders? Do you have a knot in your stomach? Is there a rise of blood moving up your body? Just notice, and start to see your responses. If they are protecting you, then keep on. If they are inhibiting you, keep noticing. That’s where the next steps can start to be made. Living in a space of fear will continue to inhibit our abilities to relate to others, to open ourselves to understanding in the face of discomfort, to raise children that can navigate the dangers in their own lives. Let us not continue a culture of fear, but rather one of resilience, resolve, and acceptance.