Letting fear burn through

I, like many on the West Coast right now, am looking out my window at a world I do not recognize. I’ll repeat the facts briefly, as they can be found more accurately elsewhere. Nearly 1,000,000 million acres have burned in Oregon as of today. Many towns have been incinerated. People have lost their homes and their lives. Our air quality is the worst in the world. Washington and California suffer the same impacts, to varying degrees. It’s hard to describe the feeling of looking out your window and seeing a haze-filled sky and a red dot of sun. To remind your brain to stay rational is difficult. The physically oppressive nature of smoke, the inability to go outside safely, the constricted breathing when one does, and the sight of people wearing apocalypse-style respirators makes for a frightened state. It looks like a climate-changed future indeed.

I will share what I’m doing to adopt a more survivable perspective. I hope it provides camaraderie to someone as they recognize their own tangled and torturous emotions in another.

Hearing stories of vast loss and feeling powerless and scared, I become filled with rage over climate change, the culprit for more frequent and more intense wildfires in the west. I feel hatred for the fossil fuel industry, climate change deniers, unethical politicians, and everyone in between who doesn’t care. My rage becomes so heavy it’s like a big, evil baby in my arms, relentlessly crying and pulling at my hair. I go on loops of arguments with anonymous parties, rattling off facts and figures in my head, trying to paint a picture to….someone…of how serious the situation is, and how we really must do something about it now. I look for entities to dump my anger onto. My rage is like a tumbleweed that rolls around picking up material in its path to grow bigger and bigger. I am yearning for control, and my indignant anger gives me illusory power; it makes me self-focused and self-righteous. 

But below my anger, and more crippling than all my hatred, is visceral fear in my body. I feel fear for my life and my way of life; fear over my future being taken away from me. Imagining the Pacific Northwest changing forever makes me weep instantaneously. My thoughts go to incalculable extinctions, ecosystem collapse, water shortages, spreading disease vectors, seismic shifts in human settlement, and civil unrest arising from all of the above. I envision a devastating landscape for years to come. When I get to this place, I am a scared animal: frozen, heart pounding, chest constricted. I am afraid to make a move, waiting for an end to everything.

I know now that my anger is a way to avoid the primary emotions of fear and sadness, which are what really need my attention. At times like this, we must sit quietly and tend to our fear, which is the accurate location of distress. Not subdue or interrupt fear, but feel it wholly. 

I encourage you to practice a short exercise if you relate.

Sit in a chair or on a meditation cushion. Take a few deep breaths, with the out-breath being longer than the in-breath. Deep breathing stimulates the vagus nerve, which activates the parasympathetic nervous system, helping you to relax. This works — you are not too smart or evolved to feel the benefits, trust me.

Breathe attention into your fear. Invite it to get as big as it needs to be. Get curious: where in your body is your fear? What does it feel like? What’s the color, sound, picture you see? 

Ask your fear, without sarcasm or impatience:

• What is happening right now?
• What are you trying to say?
• What is asking for attention and acceptance?

This is hard to do, and you need some time. But emotion actually lives in your body and this is where you need to go to address it. I guarantee you will find something below your anger.

I benefit from soothing my fear with healing words; remembering that others share my grief; and entertaining the possibility that the future holds unexpected, wonderful things. Depending on the moment, I choose a thought that feels good and repeat it to myself:

• “Right now, I am safe.”
• “Many others are suffering and feeling the same things I feel.”
• “There is space for all my fear and sadness.”
• “I do not know what will happen in the future.”
• “Humans are boundlessly creative and resourceful.”
• “There is always something I can do.”
• “There are bigger forces out there than me.”
• “This was all here before humans, and will be here after humans.”

Giving my fear space to unfold into its full size, and seeing that I do not die or lose my mind as a result, is a powerful practice for me. We sometimes believe we literally will not survive our emotions. If you get specific about what is happening inside you, and let it grow, peak, and unfurl, you will be able to move on.

Dealing with fear in a kind and curious way is a new approach for me. To learn more about this philosophy, I recommend Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach. An accessible meditation teacher and clinical psychologist, her work addresses how to sit with fear and other emotions by practicing mindful awareness and compassion. She has a meditation called “Meeting Fear with an Open and Engaged Presence.” An excerpt is below: 

“With each in-breath, feel your willingness to gently connect with the waves of life that are unpleasant and disturbing. Breathing out, let go and feel how the waves of fear belong to a larger world, an ocean of openness. You can surrender your fear into this vast and tender space of healing.”

You are not alone in your fear; you have many companions. You can expose your fear and let soothing practices, helpful thoughts, and kind people heal you. Connection to others is the antidote — go and share your feelings with a friend. Not only your thoughts, but your feelings. Tell them what you’re doing to cope with difficult times, and what is and isn’t working. 

As we roll into another week of off-the-charts air quality and newsreels of horror, I notice I feel different each day. On Friday, I was gloomy and resistant to anything positive; I was all curse words and clenched teeth. Saturday, I woke up determined to control what I can (my thoughts and actions). I exercised, went to a bookstore (my ultimate medicine), gave money to several fundraisers for wildfire victims, and dropped off needed supplies at a donation site. I’m sure there will be similar cycles ahead.

Dark days and painful events are not optional in life. But instead of being a victim of circumstance, I’m trying to get better at recognizing how fear and anger manifest in my body, and living with rather than avoiding these mysterious and unavoidable visitors. I think it’s slowly becoming more natural. I wish the same for all of you.