Fear is everywhere these days. It is more contagious then the flu. Some of it is very much based in reality, but there is also the risk of spreading fear simply to prey on our vulnerabilities.
It doesn’t take much to spread fear through society. A handful of words, stated with conviction, delivered with authority and repeated in the echo chamber of the media will provoke fear in society.
Definition of fear mongering: spreading discreditable, misrepresentative information designed to induce fear and apprehension. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “monger” means a dealer, trader or trafficker.
Fear mongering is a confusing psychological assault on people. Even when our logic tells us that perhaps the fear is overblown and distorted, we can become overwhelmed and fall victim to the idea that our safety is truly at risk.
We live in a time when fear can become viral and virtual, traveling at the speed of sound. Voices of politicians and the headlines from the media are amplified and repeated with such frequency that the repetition in and of itself can make something appear more significant or more based in truth than it actually is.
In other words, more people are vulnerable to messages of fear than ever before.
Our fear is compounded by a sense of volume. More people catch it quicker than in any other time in history. And this is increasing the magnitude of the dangers posed by widespread fear.
The problems of widespread fear mongering are threefold. The first concern was stated best by security and safety expert Gavin de Becker: “Recognizing real danger is the key to real safety.”
Fear mongering is not about real dangers. It is the art of taking an incident and using it to threaten the general population that there is an immediate possible danger lurking relatively near enough to do terrible harm. Fear mongering distorts the dangers.
Fear mongering also results in responses that are not necessarily increasing safety. In other words, people are busy trying to protect themselves from something that is not a threat.
Remember fears about Y2K and all of the preparation that was done for this nonevent? But then when Hurricane Katrina hits, we are woefully unprepared.
The levies were a problem for years and a well-documented concern, but no action was taken. The devastation and trauma in the aftermath of the storm has continued for years.
A second concern is described by Dr. Marc Siegel in his book “False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear”: “Free floating communicated fear is harmful.” Our immune systems become overloaded. We become sick. The fear is not contained to our thoughts. It literally makes people sick.
As I watched our economic crisis unfold recently, my first thought as a therapist was that I would be seeing more clients with serious illness, and more clients vulnerable to heart attacks, cancer and other illnesses that spike when a person is under stress.
The third problem with fear mongering is systemic. We are putting our resources and efforts into protecting ourselves from things such as screening for shoe bombers on a daily basis at every airport in America, or patrolling the Whidbey island ferry dock at every boat.
We should be putting our resources into problems such as improving our education system, or feeding people who are hungry, or ensuring health care access.
Supporting people to protect themselves from fear mongering is an important life skill in our times. It’s important to look closely at the data, the percentages and the numbers.
How many people are affected? Given the number of affected people, determine if the threat is widespread and threatening the whole population.
Specifically locate where the threat or danger is taking place. Determine your proximity to the danger geographically. Listen to the exact words being used by the media, politicians or “experts” communicating danger or alarm.
When we question the fear mongers, we become free of manipulation and unnecessary stress, and empowered to protect ourselves from true dangers.
Sarri Gilman is a freelance writer living on Whidbey Island and director of Leadership Snohomish County. Her column on living with meaning and purpose runs every other Tuesday in The Herald. She is a therapist, a wife and a mother, and has founded two nonprofit organizations to serve homeless children. You can e-mail her at features@heraldnet.com.
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