What to Do with Fear

Which fears are warranted? How much fear is too much?

“My wolf is not your wolf,” proclaims Erica Berry in Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear. My fear is not your fear.

Though the wolf is a compelling protagonist, what drew me to Wolfish and kept me reading all 432 pages was its interwoven examination of fear. Fear is in the air these days, and it’s been on my mind.

Wolves, on the other hand, I’d never given much thought to before, just as I’d never thought much about sharks. Neither was a feature of Central Illinois, where I grew up, so I never learned to fear them — and as Berry points out, some of our fears are learned. Of course, I’ve had my own fears. In Illinois I feared tornadoes, though I eagerly scanned the skies for funnel clouds throughout my childhood, hoping to see one. Like Berry, and most women, I’ve feared strange men on dark streets, a rational fear in this world. My fear of heights is more visceral than rational, though despite it I’ve unsteadily climbed ladders to install solar on roofs 12 times.

These fears made sense in my world, but a fear of wolves makes little sense in most of the world today. Wolves, though they elicit fear and have long represented danger for us, pose an infinitesimal threat to humans — “above zero, but far too low to calculate.”

Fear, though, never seems to leave us, whether or not it makes sense. If it’s not the wolf, we will always find something else to attach it to.

Fear gets a bad rap, and it can be destructive, but it’s also a natural phenomenon that’s meant to keep us safe. Fear can coexist with a curiosity that drives us to learn and grow — as is the case for wolves, according to Berry. We admire people who seem fearless, but without some fear, both individuals and societies might not last long. Real courage, we know, requires fear; without fear, what masquerades as courage is simply recklessness.

Fear has its place. But these days, the world seems to be brimming over with fear — paralyzing, overwhelming, and sometimes misguiding us. I feel it; others feel it. What strikes me as odd is the contrast between two types of fear that are running rampant: that which is clearly warranted and that which most decidedly is not.

Although humans have lived through tough times before, we’ve never before faced the existential crisis of climate change. Coupled in the U.S. with a democracy at risk, mass shootings, increasing income inequality, and a continuing global pandemic, this makes for truly scary times. Fear and anxiety are natural reactions to these realities.

Yet a substantial portion of the population has chosen to ignore these real risks. Instead, they’re in the thrall of fears that are completely out of touch with reality. Satanic pedophile rings run by Democrats. Death panels. Vaccines embedded with nanochips. Stolen elections.

It’s no accident that these fears are being stoked. To further their agenda, Fox News and its allies have taken advantage of a perfect storm: a population less and less educated, many of whom fear losing their status and privilege; the very real stresses of living in an increasingly alienated society with flimsy safety nets; the propensity of social media to create divisions the likes of which most of us have never seen. I’m sure many more factors are at play. People’s legitimate concerns have been diverted to the abyss of conspiracy theories, in part as a distraction from the real ills of our society. Manipulated by their fears, this group has become highly destructive.

Fear has become twisted and disfigured. To untie it from its knots, we need to face it squarely. We need to question what we fear, as Berry does in Wolfish.

It makes sense to fear actual dangers. It also makes sense to bring awareness to our fear, even if it’s valid, so it doesn’t grow out of proportion and overtake us. We don’t want to be driven by fear, like the conspiracy theorists.

How do we manage fear? The answer, which Berry arrives at through her wide-ranging exploration in Wolfish, is to examine and balance our fears so they don’t take us over. As with most challenging feelings, the means to that end is to work through the fear, rather than to ignore it.

These days, this is a particularly tricky balancing act.

I’ve always been a cautious person with perhaps a too-healthy amount of fear. I’ve faced and thereby alleviated some of my fears, like speaking in public and climbing ladders. For fears that are more tied to worry, I’ve found a method that I need to remind myself to use more often: imagining the worst thing that could happen.

Berry touches on the worst-case-scenario method in an article about ecotherapy, in the context of the overwhelming issue of climate anxiety. I’ve used it in much lower-stakes situations. I began our EV road trip last fall with a high dose of range anxiety, but when I thought about the worst thing that could happen, I had to admit it would be super annoying but not devastating. Facing my fears and taking them to their logical conclusion helped me relax and enjoy the trip.

Exploring worst-case scenarios is a much taller order when it comes to the collapse of democracy or the devastation of climate change. Yet it’s worth doing. It can even lead to “reinvesting in life,” as Berry’s ecotherapist suggests.

The truth, though most of us don’t want to think about it, is that things are already very bad — and they could get much worse. In my lifetime, we could face mass migrations, food shortages, economic collapse. It’s hard to get on with daily life when considering these possibilities.

So, what do we do? I keep coming back to the final scene of Don’t Look Up, which

David Roberts

rightly called “the first good movie about climate change.” I usually hate disaster and apocalypse movies, but this one felt oddly cathartic and uplifting, despite its dark topic. Though the ending isn’t happy, it’s satisfying in a deep way that manages to remind us of the beauty and love in our world.

We don’t know what will happen. I hope it won’t be as bad as it looks, but hope, despite Rebecca Solnit’s exhortation to hold out for possibilities, may not get us far. While allowing for hope and heartbreak to coexist, it may be time to face our greatest fears: that the world as we know it is headed for some kind of major collapse, and that it could happen soon.

You can crumble in the face of that possibility, or you can look up — and all around you. To the faces of people you love. To your pets and other animals. To the beauty of nature, which we’re part of. To the beauty we humans have created in every time and place we’ve inhabited. To this sweet old world.

Though Lucinda Williams’s song is about suicide, it has the effect of reminding you what’s worth living for. Though Don’t Look Up is about the end of the world, it has that same effect.

Fear, as Berry comes to realize, is about love. We fear losing what we love. And we have a lot to love on this little planet. We really do have everything, and unlike in Don’t Look Up, that’s not yet in the past tense. It’s worth enjoying what we can while we can — after all, our time here was always going to be limited. And it’s worth working to save this sweet old world.

A Litany for Survival
By Audre Lorde

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours;

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.