Week 2, Day 1: Fear

The angel said, “Don’t be afraid! Look! I bring good news to you—wonderful, joyous news for all people. (Luke 2:10)

“Biblically Accurate Angels” from a series on YouTube by Jonas Pfeiffer

For us to become conscious, we must realize how much of our usual life is unconscious, automatic, and mind-less. Last week, I talked about how our perceptions affect our consciousness. This week, I’m turning my attention to our automatic responses, parts of our mental and emotional life that precede consciousness.

Today: fear.

One of the amazing features of our brains is the threat-detecting amygdala, which is responsible for our flight, flight, and freeze reactions. It is an ancient part of our brains, which kept our ancestors alive by helping them avoid danger. It did so by being much faster than conscious thought. The amygdala reacts to perceived threat in less than 70 milliseconds, but the more complex part of our brain, the cerebral cortex, takes around 200 milliseconds to process data and give a name to that data. This means that when you are startled — for example, by someone sneaking up behind you and blasting an air horn — you will jump before you hear the sound.

While fear helps us survive, chronic worry, anxiety, and stress cause us to behave in irrational ways that reduce our well-being. A lot of my work as a counselor and a pastor is in helping people deal with chronic worry, a state where our thoughts trigger our own fear response, which triggers more thoughts, which triggers more fear. Trying to talk ourselves out of worry or saying “don’t worry” is not helpful, because the amygdala is faster than our cognition. We can no more think our way out of worry than we can levitate by pulling on our shoelaces.

In our intensive outpatient program for obsessive-compulsive disorder, exposure and response prevention is one of our primary tools for reducing worry. We have to train our amygdala to be less reactive, not by soothing our fears, but by facing them. A systematic, disciplined approach to facing our fears is a feature of both spiritual growth and mental health.

In light of the recent election, and climate change, and global conflict, and a constant diet of bad news, it’s no surprise that humanity seems more worried and fearful than ever. Regulating our fear is an increasingly important skill. By “regulating,” I do not mean suppressing: I mean acknowledging it, being mindfully aware of it, noticing where we feel it in our physical bodies, and leaning in to it. Our amygdala will not listen to reason, but it can be trained.

I get tired of people thinking that “spirituality” is about sunsets over mountain vistas. It’s just as much about facing your fears: staring death in the face, tolerating uncertainty, dealing with uncomfortable memories, and even managing disgust and revulsion.

CS Lewis points out that when angels appear in the Bible, they usually begin by saying, “fear not,” because our first reaction to seeing ultimate reality is more likely to be terror than sweetness.

God in Christ turns the world upside-down, and with that arrival, there will be fear. In Matthew’s story, King Herod will be afraid, and he will turn that fear into violence that will create fear in others. In Luke’s story, shepherds in the field will be afraid but instead will go searching for more of God’s glory.

May we also respond to fear with curiosity and engagement.  

Prayer: Commander of Angel Armies, give us courage in equal measure to our fear.

(Click here to learn more about Daniel Goleman’s term “amygdala hijack”).