Fear Itself
We are wired to fear when others fear.
The lie of separation is in the truth of empathy. We FEEL each other. Our nervous systems are tuned to one another and co-regulate.
They DO resonate. We ARE tuned in. We don't try for this. In fact, we must practice to overcome our reactivity to this truth as it occurs.
Many self-described "empaths" are people in love with their own projections about what they feel from others. We are ALL empaths, and the stories we invest in about the feelings we co-create with other human systems shape our experience of connection and relationship.
Now, back to fear.
Fear is a powerfully motivating tone. Fear is not merely an emotion, it's a TONE of a nervous system, a nervous system tuned to threat, protection, defense, and possibly violence.
As such, fear is the nervous-system disposition we are most sensitive to perceiving in others.
When we sense another human in fear, our own system goes on alert and seeks the threat. We want to know what the other person fears, because fearing what others fear kept great great great grandpa safe in his hunting party.
If we do not find a threat, we begin to sense the fearful one as a threat. A person in fear, remember, is tuned to threat, protection, defense, and possibly violence. If you can't find the chump, you're the chump; if you can't find the threat, you're the threat.
This is a subconscious process, I'm putting words to it, but it's vaster and faster than I'm describing.
A person in fear is tuned to threat, we can't see a threat in the environment, we assume they see *us* as the threat, and, knowing how others might respond to a threat, our own defenses begin to rise and respond.
All in about .4 seconds.
All without a conscious thought about the dynamic happening, all we know is we suddenly feel ill-at-ease, wary, and find our energy backing away, quickly or slowly, according to our experiences and practices.
This is what prevents experiences of connection for people who are highly anxious, self-conscious, or otherwise afraid in social settings. Their fear prevents safety in the other's nervous system, the fear they inspire in the other presents the same exact way to them, like the other is seeing them as a threat, and it reinforces the experience that social settings are scary, that others are wary and unwilling to connect.
Fear perpetuates fear perpetuates fear. The more fear you were raised on, the more practice you have relating in fear-state nervous systems, and the more sensitive you are to the slightest spike of fear in others.
Unfortunately, the only thing to do is relax. A fear state is literal tension literally held and practiced and engaged by your muscles, it is a collection of practical habits of the body. The stories merely validate and perpetuate the fear-state of the body.
The good news is that we can simply relax.
The bad news is this has been simple and available the entire time, it's quite simply not as easy as it is simple.
We feel, on every level, that the fear is important, that it's the only intelligent way to feel, given the circumstances and our past experiences. This is in every part of us, body, brain, nervous-system. That is what consciousness is.
But consciousness can also choose to acknowledge and override this state, can be in what is happening and also make choices from that place.
I've chosen to relax on a roller coaster, in the midst of someone yelling obscenities and insults at me, in scenes of traffic and travel which I was taught could only be approached and navigated in fear.
All that is required is noticing the fear and choosing to relax the body and the consciousness, using the energy instead of letting it rattle around in familiar tension-patterns. It's simple, but that doesn't make it easy. It’s possible, but that doesn’t make it morally correct or mandated.
It’s your sovereign, sacred right to present and express exactly how you choose. If fear is what you were taught, you can choose something else you prefer.