WHEN THE WOLF IS AT THE DOOR

AS IRRATIONALITY AND FEAR REPLACE COMMON SENSE, IT’S TIME TO EXERCISE EMOTIONAL SELF-REGULATION

Iwasn’t going to write about current events and yet as I regard them and the global impact, this German proverb resonated for me: “Fear makes the wolf bigger than it is.”

We are seeing how people react with unreasonable fear and with that, a heightened threat response demonstrating behaviours that in the normal scheme of things would be called unreasonable. Yet in this time when reason is exactly what people should be using, they aren’t.

What is happening for normally rational people to either defy common sense to act in concert with community needs by supporting physical distancing or self-isolation, minimising the risk of either contracting or worse passing on this virus, or acting with such fear that they are hoarding general grocery items to such an extent that the supermarket shelves are bare?

I know that people can always find a way to justify and rationalise why they do what they do. Like you I am a person too.

This overly reactive state acts like an emotional contagion. Just check out your Facebook feed if you have one and, if not, good on you. The behaviour is remarkable because people aren’t setting out to be intentionally rude or even angry. They are in the grip of fear and in many cases caught up in the catastrophising that makes the wolf bigger than it is.

So coming back to that proverb and to current times. When we allow fear to drive us our internal dialogue jumps to worst case scenarios and the question “what if…?” pops up. With the brain being negatively biased, we will find solutions anchored in the extreme in order to self-protect either our beliefs, decision or behaviour. That negativity spreads quickly and – just like a virus, funnily enough.

If we seek to understand our fear – and by that I mean feeling it, acknowledging it, naming it and then engaging to use it as a way to explore our internal root cause – we have a greater opportunity to see the wolf for what it actually is – a wolf. That’s it.

Given that emotion does not exist outside us, emotion is most definitely our choice. So to manage whatever the threat may be or the fear that presents, exercising emotional selfregulation while this is all happening is going to be important.

There was another quote that came up which said in life “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional”, which means stepping back to anchor in reason, rationality, resilience and resolve by accepting the situation is what it is and that we are going through a major change globally and at some point in the near future we will be past this.

If that is the case, as we know, let’s focus on doing what we can to make that future one you and others want to be in.

For me that means making the fear small and being kind.