Free Yourself from Fears (11 page)

Because people often go to the doctor for reassurance that they are not ill, they may
not
go when something really is wrong with them and they need treatment. The doctor or dentist is a bringer of bad news. This is a fear of an imaginary future and can be dealt with by the worry pattern (page 72) or the fear to action pattern (page 69).

Sometimes people avoid visiting the dentist or doctor at all costs; they would rather be ill or in pain. Relaxation exercises (see page 212) are useful for becoming calm before or during the appointment.

Fear of heights

Fear of heights is common and is probably left over from the instinc-tual fear we have of falling as infants. However, fear of heights is not inevitable, else there would be no mountaineers and no pilots. Being uncomfortable with heights is not a problem unless it stops you flying, living above the ground floor, or appreciating a wonderful view.

As long as your vantage point is safe (such as a balcony) then there is no real danger.

Deal with fear of heights by using some of these skills: J Use a relaxation pattern (page 212).

J Use a safety anchor and relax your body to calm the fear (page 220).

J Look and see what mental pictures you are making (usually of you falling or being whirled away into space and then falling).

J Dissociate from the pictures.

J Picture yourself enjoying the view and then enjoy it.

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COMMON FEARS THAT HOLD US HOSTAGE

Fear of elevators

Elevators manage to combine two fears: fear of enclosed spaces and fear of heights. When I visited one of the tallest buildings in the world, I felt a little uncomfortable. We were in Hong Kong and one building on Hong Kong Island with the unexciting name of Two International Finance Centre has over 80 floors. Visitors can take a lift only to the 55th floor, but this was quite enough for me. The lift was very good: it ascended for less than a minute at a constant acceleration, so I did not feel I was moving. The view over the bay was magnificent.

Fear of elevators and heights are dealt with in exactly the same way as other fears:

J Relax (page 212).

J Use a safety anchor and relax your body to calm the fear (page 220).

J Look and see what mental pictures you are making (usually pictures of the lift plummeting out of control or the lights going out and being stuck between floors).

J Dissociate from the pictures.

J Picture yourself enjoying the ride and concentrate on where you are going to arrive rather than on the elevator ride itself.

Fear of death

As George Bernard Shaw said: “Life does not cease to be fun when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.”

Many people fear death; it is the ultimate loss—loss of life. This fear keeps us safe: it stops us taking stupid risks. Fear of death only becomes a problem if it preoccupies your thoughts or makes you anxious. Fear of death is similar to other worries about the future, but here we know that eventually it will come true. We just do not know when.

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One reason death has the power to frighten is that we deny it most of the time. Nearly everywhere in the world it is illegal to die of old age, the World Health Organization does not allow it. Everyone must die of a specific cause; “old age” is inadmissible on a death certificate, even though doctors know it is an adequate statement because our bodies are not exempt from the law of entropy.

Only one third of the adult population of England has made a will. It is not that the others have nothing to leave, but a will is an uncomfortable reminder of your own mortality, as if to think about death might somehow invite it. Yet making a will is common sense: it allows your affairs to be settled more quickly and in a less distressing way for friends and family. Denying death gives it the power to frighten us and means we may be unprepared.

Death is a fact of life. Everyone will die, and this is what gives life its meaning. There is a proverb: “Dream as if you will never die, but live and act to achieve your goals as if you will die tomorrow.” Our dreams should be wide and unlimited; they define the scope of our life. Then we should take action and put those dreams into reality.

Without a sense of urgency, the dreams remain just dreams. Death makes us take action. Actors cannot give a good performance if the curtain never falls, athletes cannot pace themselves without a finishing tape, and musicians cannot shape their performance without a final chord. Death is not something to be afraid of; death need not be painful.

One thing we can do to reduce the fear of death is to make it an adviser to tell us what is the most important thing for us to do in the present. Here is one skill you can use that will make the idea of death enrich your life right now.

The next skill is best done in a quiet place in a relaxed frame of mind.

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Skill for freedom

Death as an adviser

Imagine yourself in the far future, looking back on your life now.

What do you want to have accomplished by this point?

What important goals do you have that remain dreams?

What would it feel like to have accomplished these things?

Is there anything you need to do now to prepare for the time when you die and are no longer here to take care of people and do the things you enjoy doing?

What advice can you give to the you now, from this place in the far future?

How important are the worries of your present self from this distant point of view?

What is the most important thing that you need to do now?

Come back to the present moment, and reflect a little on what you have learned.

In the words of a Tibetan proverb: “It is better to have lived one day as a tiger, than one thousand years as a sheep.”

Think of this next time you feel unreal fear.

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Turbulent Minds

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad
people will find a way around the laws.

PLATO

WE ALL HAVE INDIVIDUAL FEARS that come from our personal history. Our culture also adds to our burden of fear. “Now is the age of Anxiety,”

wrote W. H. Auden nearly 50 years ago in his poem “A Baroque Eclogue.” An eclogue is a short pastoral poem, although Auden’s work was far from pastoral. It was about the human quest to find some identity in an increasingly industrialized world. It won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1948.

The postindustrial society is here; we live in unquiet times. There is an undercurrent of vague fear, like shapes in the mist, hard to pin down, but we may feel it when we turn on our television, listen to the radio, or surf the internet. This miasma of fear does not belong to anyone; it is our collective heritage. This chapter is about these shapes in the mist. Once we can see them clearly, we can deal with them more easily. We can unlearn the cultural thinking that gives these fears their power.

Dangerous places

First, the clear and present dangers. Some countries are inherently more dangerous than others. There are countries wracked by war, where violent death is commonplace. There are many excellent books UNQUIET TIMES AND TURBULENT MINDS

by war correspondents about what it is like to live in such places, full of authentic danger.
Forbes
magazine maintains an updated list of the world’s most dangerous destinations. At the end of 2004 it listed Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, Liberia, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Zimbabwe as the most dangerous destinations (not necessarily in that order).

In every country, there are places that are more dangerous than others. And in every big city, there are areas where only the very confident, the very knowing, or the very foolish will tread at night.

Geneva-based Mercer Human Resource Consulting keeps another list of 200 of the most dangerous cities in the world, based on factors such as crime levels, law enforcement, and internal stability.

Luxembourg is the safest city according to this study. The Central African City of Bangui is considered the least safe. Bad news for the Central African Tourist Board.

Even normally safe cities can experience disaster. For example, Madrid is a very pleasant and safe city, yet it experienced a terrible bomb outrage in 2004. Tokyo is also a safe city, but a few years ago a terrorist group released poison gas in the metro.

When people feel comfortable and safe, disasters like these are not just terrible—they are surprising. They make people question their basic assumptions about their personal safety and how the world is.

We are not as safe as we thought. What else might happen? Such disasters usually lead to stricter laws in the hope of controlling the future. Politicians pledge that this kind of event must never happen again.

Personal safety

Feeling safe is a basic human need. Whatever the dangers of the place where we live, we adjust and take sensible precautions—sensible for that area. For example, I live in São Paulo, Brazil. There are no terrorist threats, but there is more crime here than in most European cities. There are many more poor and homeless people. An ordinary 87

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wage earner is privileged. Most people live either in closed condominiums with patrolling security guards, or in high apartment blocks, again with guards and security on the gates. Houses have grilles on the windows and high walls, often with electric fences.

At night, cars approach red lights slowly, trying to keep moving. If the light is still red when they reach it, they go through anyway if they can in safety. This is sensible in a city where you are at risk of being robbed in a stationary car late at night. Even during the day, a red light is often taken as a suggestion rather than a legal requirement. In contrast, there is little danger of being robbed in your car in most parts of London, so people respect the lights. Brazilians think this is crazy. Londoners think Brazilians are crazy, but when you put the behaviors in their cultural context, both are sensible.

It reminds me of the joke about a man hailing a taxi late at night in Brazil. He gets in and starts to chat with the cab driver. The driver approaches a red light and goes straight through it. The man says nothing (probably being a diplomatic Englishman, not wanting to make trouble), but when it happens a second time, he cannot stop himself.

“Excuse me, but shouldn’t you stop at red lights?” he asks.

“Oh, don’t worry, my cousin taught me to drive. He always goes through red lights and he has never had an accident.”

The passenger stays quiet until the cab driver goes fast down a one-way street in the wrong direction.

“Excuse me, wasn’t that a one-way street?”

“Sure,” says the cab driver, “But my cousin showed me how to do this. If you go really fast, you can get through before you meet any traffic coming the other way.”

“I see,” says the passenger, hanging on to the seat belt and wondering about his chances of getting another cab at that time of night.

Then suddenly the cab driver starts to drive with exaggerated care.

He stops at every light, red or green. He obeys all the traffic signs.

“Thank you,” says the passenger. “I feel much safer.”

“So do I,” says the cab driver. “My cousin lives around this area.”

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Many expensive cars in South America are bullet proofed as a matter of course, because the rich are in danger of being kidnapped. Bullet proofing is as common as a 10,000-mile service. In England, people would think you were crazy if you bullet-proofed your BMW. In South America, people go even further. They make the car impregnable and fit a sound system so you can talk to someone outside without having to leave the car or wind down the windows. These are sensible precautions for rich people in large South American and Central American cities. You can be robbed in any city, though. You have to take sensible precautions based on where you are.

Laws and safety

Our safety always depends on the goodwill of other people. Anyone with a grudge or a crazy idea can cause a lot of damage with existing technology, and we have entered an age where they are willing to carry out their threats. Unquiet people make for unquiet times.

People with crazy ideas do not play by the rules and the results are unpredictable and frightening.

We try to make the world completely safe by removing the dangers one by one. When we recognize a new danger we pass legislation to try to ensure it does not happen again. When someone goes berserk with a gun, we pass new gun laws. When a dog savages a child, there are curbs on dangerous dogs. These are good responses, but passing a law does not remove the danger. A law does not stop people. It may deter them, unless they have nothing to lose. It does ensure that the people who break it are punished (but only if they are caught). The quote from Plato at the beginning of the chapter shows the paradox.

Laws mostly deter law-abiding people.

In Europe and the United States, familiar freedoms are vanishing because some people have abused them. The UK is going to introduce identity cards, voluntary for now, but they will surely be compulsory in ten years. Governments like to control their citizens, and freedoms once gone are hard to reclaim. There will always be a 89

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social debate about whether everyone should suffer because of the actions of a few madmen. This debate was especially strong after the September 11th terrorist attack.

Danger and the media

Why is living perceived to be more dangerous now? One reason is that the media constantly present danger and the threat of danger.

Contented people living safely in their houses are not news and do not get reported. Violence, unrest, and the threat of disaster are news.

They get reported (and often exaggerated). Many people feel a bizarre sense of pleasure at the possibility of disaster. It may be bad, but then at least they can say “I told you so.” It is perversely satisfying to be able to top your friend’s horror story with one a little worse. The