Fear in the Year of the 2020 Panicdemic

Rampant fear is the disease to be ‘feared’ more than any virus - and is far more infectious and has far more potential deleterious outcomes for humanity – as we are seeing with this pandemic.

Fear, of course, is a very normal emotion that all sentient beings will experience to some degree, especially during unprecedented, global crises, as we are experiencing now. It is a primal energy to help ensure our immediate physical survival. Fight, flight or freeze are our inbuilt, automatic responses to immediate threat. Fine, necessary and even life saving in the short term but very detrimental if maintained in the long term.

Extreme fear is a powerful motivator in the short term but will never bring about health or wellbeing in the long term. It cannot, as the energies are disparate.

We know that, physiologically, prolonged marked fear will actually bring about the opposite of what the fear is trying to avoid. Fear is about defence and protection but, paradoxically, will diminish our immune capacities if it continues unabated.

Short-term survival responses activate the sympathetic arm (SNS) of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) to propel us into ‘fight or flight’, and this is a very energy demanding process. When the body is controlled by these reactions our immune response is put on the back burner because fighting viruses and bacteria can wait when we need our immediate energy reserves directed to running from the tiger.

The other branch of the ANS, the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which is needed for rest, repair and recovery, also functions less when we are in sympathetic nervous system dominance during our acute stress responses. We know that tools and techniques used to enhance the functioning of the vagus nerve (one of the main branches of the PNS) help to calm and bring equilibrium back to our frazzled nervous systems. Of course the whole system is much more complex than I can detail here, but you get the idea.

Prolonged fear is also inflammatory to the body and we know that sustained inflammation is associated with impaired immune function and is linked to just about every known chronic disease.

There is a big difference between utilising good old common sense, backed by rational knowledge, to do what we need to do to enhance our immune systems and ensure our health and safety - and panic-fuelled avoidance of worse case scenarios. Beyond the immediate, short-term survival response, it is actually common sense that has us avoiding running into traffic, rather than fear.

Fear has us very focused on our immediate survival objectives and this blinds us to what might be going on peripheral to those compelling targets of our gaze. When we are gripped by fear and panic we are not present and this subjects us to all sorts of influences that are not necessarily for our best interests. We lose the discernment that requires a calm, conscious assessment of any situation. ‘When the cat (our conscious presence) is away, the mice will play.’

Fear has been the great controller of humankind throughout the ages, and maybe no more so than right now. There is much more at play here than the actual virus.

At many levels, fear can allow forces to come in to ‘divide and conquer’. We can see how this happens within the confines of our own brains and minds. Panic and fear will cause a dis-integration of the brain, with the more primitive, survival areas of the brain dissociating from and dominating the more rational, executive functioning areas of the brain, such as the pre-frontal cortex. Fine if we need to deal with an immediate threat in a quick, reflex way, but not consistent with rational responses if maintained beyond that.

Life is made up of fractals – repeated patterns on different scales. We can easily see how the fear that we hold within our own beings is extrapolated to the larger scale of our communities, countries and nations. Our attempts to deflect and shut the virus out of our own bodies is equated, on a larger scale, to the closing of borders between neighbours, communities and countries. Hopefully a short-term ploy, as we are communal creatures and isolation will never work in the long term as it goes against our very nature.

Another evident fractal is that the coronavirus causes hyper-stimulation of the immune system, which floods the body, particularly the respiratory tract, with inflammatory cytokines. This inflammatory response (‘cytokine storm’) to the virus is what causes the most damage. Compare this to our extreme, fear-fuelled, ‘inflammatory’ defensive stance, which will potentially cause much more harm to our society (economic collapse, unemployment, social isolation, etc.) than the actual pandemic. Similarly, it pays to examine your own reactions to these unprecedented circumstances, rather than just the circumstances themselves.

We want our immune systems, and their broader projections, to be in a happy balance to appropriately protect us but not be either under-functioning or hyper-stimulated.

In this current climate, fear has become a very expected and accepted emotional and behavioural response and more so now as it is so laced with righteousness and political correctness. In fact, many people are very suspicious of those who do not demonstrate behaviours that are dominated by fear and hyper-concern in circumstances such as we are experiencing now.

It is alarming indeed when, in addition to our own individual responses, organisations, systems, institutions, governments and whole nations are acting primarily out of fear. We can blindly put our trust in these authority groups and expect they will lead us to our salvation but it pays to really examine that trust. As humanity is so innocently gullible and programmable, we listen to the loudest and most dominant voice and can so easily be herded like sheep, particularly when in the grip of fear. As we are now.

Sadly, we have become deeply suspicious of each other because of fear that the virus will be given to us by others – a misconception that we have been taught and bought in to. Though the medical community unquestionably sanctions this belief, and there are natural laws of infectivity at play, I believe that we will get a virus (or whatever), if we resonate with it. This occurs at an individual and collective level.

If there is a pandemic there is a collective energy that individuals within a community share. If we unconsciously align with the collective mind-set we are much more likely to be subject to the pandemic. It pays to hone our individuality at these times, and from there positively influence the collective. Unplug from any negative collective mind-set and re-plug into the collective something more aligned with health and wellbeing. This is very much an individual as well as a collective journey.

We also cannot completely isolate ourselves from viruses and ‘germs’. In fact, we depend upon a healthy mix of microorganisms to inhabit our bodies in a synergistic way, to co-habit with us in a win-win fashion. Though short-term isolation is designed to ‘flatten the curve’ to help mitigate the spread of the virus and allow the health care system to cope with the demand, it is simply not a long-term solution. In terms of enduring ‘herd immunity’ it actually goes against what nature designed.

I am not at all suggesting that we do not take this virus (physical, metaphysical and symbolic!) seriously and I do suggest that we do what we can to protect ourselves and care for others - in a reasonable way. Of course, we should do what we need to do on a physical level to actively protect others and ourselves, as well as abide by any reasonable dictates of our authority groups. However, we are led to believe that rampant fear will protect us, whereas the opposite is true. Fear is very normal, but calmness trumps fear any day and will certainly bring about more peaceful responses, clearer decisions and overall better outcomes.

Hysteria certainly does not help and puts us in the survival/fear loop from which we can make some very selfish, foolhardy and irrational decisions. As said, it is also not great for our immune systems – individually and collectively.

And fear has a tendency to attract to us what we most fear – unless we learn to manage (not suppress) those fears. If unchecked, on a mass level, this is very disturbing indeed. There is a difference between experiencing fear consciously, and being completely taken over and controlled by it. We need to learn to manage our fears and no better time than now.

I believe that no matter how dire our experiences appear to be, there is always the opportunity for learning, growth and positive change. That is, in fact, why we experience crises; to shake up habituated patterns of thinking, behaving and living that do not serve us well but are maintained because we do not consider the alternatives.

We are indeed creatures of habit and do not like to stray from the comfort zone, the familiar and the status quo - until we are forced to do so. We tend to live unconsciously until we are stopped in our tracks for long enough to really examine our lives and, more so, our beliefs and attitudes. As we are doing now.

Milk this opportunity for all you can get out of it. Though devastating as it is on many levels, it is indeed a very rare opportunity for positive change and potential positive effect on the evolution of our species. We will not see this opportunity if we only resist and repulse these very significant events.

At this very juncture, we are collectively confronting our main primal fears – chaos, the unknown, loss of control and change. These all roll into our fear of annihilation. These fears have always been here; we have just been very good at distracting ourselves from them. What a great opportunity to confront these fears head on! Pandemic or not, those fears are with us anyway as part of our human experience. It is just that now they are in a very concentrated form - ‘on steroids’, rather than diluted and denied. Now we really do have the time and space to enter into and disempower those fears.

This experience, particularly, has had us confront our fear of death. This pandemic has not created death; death has always been there but most of us have chosen to ignore its reality until we have been forced to face it. It is not just our mortality that we fear but death of our old ways of being, our beliefs, attitudes and certain lifestyles that may have not served us well but were maintained out of habit. Our false sense of security has been well and truly rocked by these circumstances.

Old fears and anxieties will be triggered by dramatic life circumstances, such as we are experiencing now. ‘Life’ has a way of making us re-visit any significant unresolved fears and traumas from our past. This is not to make us suffer but to help us finally face, deal with and disempower what has been controlling us from our subconscious minds. And anything that is unresolved and harbouring in our subconscious minds will surely eventually adversely affect our psychological and physical health if not cleared.

Do not suppress these fears. Managing our fears is very different to suppressing them and covering them with a veneer of ‘all is well’. All is not well. There is a big difference between facing our fears consciously, so as to put them in perspective and disempower them, and suppressing them and thus being unconsciously controlled by them. As said, we will all have fears, particularly in this current climate. It is a normal human emotion. However, we can choose what fears we will give further energy to and thus amplify individually and collectively. As we have seen, collective fear travels like a wildfire.

Of course these fears, particularly if triggering significant past unresolved fears and trauma, can be very overwhelming and should be greatly respected and met with great compassion. It goes without saying that many people will need appropriate psychological assistance during this crisis and during the aftermath.

Remember that our human systems are very adaptable and can certainly cope with a significant amount of fear - which we will all experience in life and especially during these times. However, when we learn to manage our fear responses this will invite a much healthier outcome for the collective and ourselves.

When we live in fear we really do not live. Paradoxically, when we loosen our fear of death, we more fully embrace life. That does not mean that we do not look after ourselves in an appropriate way but that we do this from a pro-life, rather than avoidance, attitude. We are better served if the objectives we hold are the positive qualities of what we desire, rather than just avoidance of the unwanted. I repeat, like attracts like. Be careful of the picture that you hold in your mind, the words you choose, and what you might be inadvertently drawing towards you and inviting into your arena.

Acceptance of any situation, paradoxically, is the point of change. Acceptance is a very different quality to that of resignation, defeat or despair and does not, at all, mean that we do not change what we need and want to change. Resistance has a funny way of maintaining, and even enhancing, what we are resisting and this is because our lessons, learning and growth potential are related to engaging our experiences. When we get the lessons the circumstances do not need to stay. Life is persistent in trying to teach us and will use any means.

Looking at the ‘bigger picture’ and trying to derive meaning from our experiences might seem like an indulgence or distraction during a pandemic. Addressing the immediate physical reality, and discerning the bigger picture of what we are experiencing, are not mutually exclusive – they are just different levels of understanding of the same phenomena.

Regarding health, we can take the necessary care of the physical details while examining the broader meaning of what we experience. We can go about protecting and healing the body as best we can while realising that there might be a deeper meaning to what we experience.

Do we create or co-create our realities? This is a new age adage that many would dismiss. But what would you prefer to hear – that we are the innocent victims of the random whims of fate – or – that we have some role to play in what we experience, or at least our reactions to our experiences? What version of reality are you going to embrace? Fear and panic about the potential demise of our species, or, the rebound of a more compassionate, loving, healthy and integrated humanity?

Never underestimate the power of positive intent, particularly if it is collective. We need to hold the image of what we want rather than being so focused on the unwanted and worse case scenarios.

Of course we are going to get scared – as I certainly have been, particularly as I am in a foreign country, away from loved-ones, with no foreseeable way of getting home for now. We need to have the greatest understanding of, and compassion for, others and ourselves. It is not about ‘stiff upper lip’ and all that but about not letting fear and panic dominate our perspectives and decisions. It is about letting fear, as it arises, move through our systems rather allowing it to become our way of being.

Our only true defence is our own consciousness and what we feed and do with our own minds. This is an opportunity for self-reflection and self-awareness and opportunity for positive change. What are the gifts and opportunities for growth? How can we forge a better way for ourselves, and humanity in general, through this experience?

At the end of the day, it is LOVE or FEAR. You choose. And whatever you do choose will filter into the collective and affect us all.

Dr Catherine Fyans is a holistic medical practitioner/conscious health facilitator and the author of The Wounding of Health Care: From Fragmentation to Integration