Fear

Feeling under Threat

As I bundle the kids off to school I was struck by an underlying feeling of threat, of something not being right. My brain took me to the fact that it has been a long time since we had written a blog post and how I MUST do this NOW, and how IMPORTANT it was. I thought of what I often tell clients to do ‘take a moment’ and I did (for me it is a nice deep breath) and then looked at what had just happened.

I had gone into full steam action, combined with a real sense of urgency that was in fact not proportional to the act (our business will not collapse if I don’t write a blog post but in my mind this was what I was feeling). I then reflected on what was happening for me from a physiological and evolutionary point of view.

As a mum I was worried about how my children would be at school. The action of sending them to school had set off my fear response. And as I felt the fear my body responded, my breathing had changed, my nervous system became activated. However, it wasn’t me walking into school, and so I (without realising) had responded to the physiological feeling of threat and needing action and started to scan for what danger there was. My brain settled on our business and the fact I hadn’t written a blog post for a while and how this must be it. How I must do it now, or else. I felt fear, I scanned for a reason and then somehow writing a blog post (or not as the case was) became a massive problem.

We have an evolutionary drive to scan for danger – think of cave people coming out their cave and scanning for danger before leaving. If they saw something move, they would then scan for what it is. We survived by looking for the danger, predicting the danger (even if it didn’t exist). In today’s world the threat comes in different forms, but our brain still works in the same way.

So then how to address this – as you can see have taken action. I am writing a blog post about it. However, before I did this I went to my body and helped to regulate it. I acknowledged the threat and took three deep breathes (which helped my nervous system to calm) and then with a more regulated brain and body working together decided that I would write a post, but also acknowledged that I was really scared about how my kids would do today. I allowed myself some time to feel this and comfort myself. To acknowledge how normal this was. And now as I prepare to press post I continue to comfort myself and may just go and get a nice warm drink and reflect on the wonderous, complex being that makes us human!