There is a lot of fear out there in the world. And there are a lot of people out there telling you to be afraid. The bogeyman is coming to get you – be very afraid. The deficit is killing the economy • Government spending got us through the pandemic • Vaccines will give you autism • Vaccines are the only thing that will save you • If you interfere with my religious freedom to not bake that cake, you are violating my rights • If your behavior isn’t in line with the actual teachings of Jesus, you are not a Christian • Georgie Soros and the Illuminati are forming one world government • Gerrymandering is killing democracy • The Muslims /the Jews / the Evangelicals are coming to get us • Undocumented workers are taking our jobs • Do you want to come pick the tomatoes and cantaloupes? • The rich are the job creators • Small businesses create jobs and opportunity - Everybody and everything gets its turn at being the bogeyman.

Whether you fear death panels, creationism, being limited to one hamburger a month, cannibalism, being told what you can and can’t do with your body, or believe that cows farting is causing climate change, you all are aware of the fear-based insanity we have been living through. And everybody is doing it – certain members of the clergy, quite a number of politicians, and various media empires catering to whoever will listen to them, are using fear to manipulate the masses into frothing-at-the-mouth levels of fear and anger. This is nothing new, but it has reached levels that are moving us toward the point where we have all taken leave of our senses and trust no one and believe nothing.

Any political leader, media figure, or someone in a corporate/business environment, trying to scare you is someone to run from. Usually they tell you either they are the ones to fix it or it can’t be fixed. So do as you are told. Don’t think for yourself. Facts don’t exist. Um, yes they do. They are not interested in the greater good. What they seek to do is pit you against friends, neighbors, family, in order to serve their own ambitions or their political or business agendas.

There are scary things happening that do need to be addressed with a quickness. But the answer is never to give your power to others and then cower and quake in fear, nor to get so angry, as a response to your fear, that you are incited to harm others or yourself. So let’s take a small step together toward addressing all of the fear that is out there and, hopefully at the same time, take some of our power back, thus robbing the bogeyman of his power over us.

When our fears come up, they tend to cluster in certain groupings. We all have patterns. That is normal, expected and human. So, it is always helpful, when some hobgoblin is trying to push your buttons, to know which button is being pushed and then take their finger off your button.

For some of us, we fear that we will somehow or for some reason be abandoned or rejected or humiliated, or betrayed. Now these all work together in all kinds of combinations. But as example, I fear being abandoned, left all on my own to fend for myself and, in being abandoned, I will also feel rejected. And because I was rejected, it is so humiliating to me that “they” would do this to me, that I feel betrayed by those I loved or trusted or relied on. In whatever combination or in whatever arena of my life the fear presents itself, this is where I go. I was rejected because I was not good enough, says the fear, and that feels humiliating to me. My trust was betrayed and now I feel humiliated for ever having trusted whomever. I fear friends, family, people will abandon me. You see how this can go. For many of us, though we each have our own pattern of it, this is the button that gets pushed when we are afraid.

For others of us, I fear the punishment of a martyr. No matter how hard I have tried or have worked, no matter how much I have loved or given, no matter how much I have personally sacrificed, no one will appreciate it. No one will understand what I have been through, how I have suffered, fearing they will misunderstand my good intentions. Or, I am being expected to do things that are beyond my responsibility, beyond my paygrade, if you will, beyond my capabilities. I am afraid of getting punished for things that I had nothing to do with. Martyred somehow, for some reason. “Why should I suffer and only get one hamburger a month when it isn’t my fault?” “They did or didn’t do . . . whatever. Why am I being punished?” You see how this can play out from the absurd to real work situations or within relationships. “After all I have done for you . . . The sacrifices I have made, the things I have given up.” The fear of being martyred and punished in the process.

A third grouping of fears for some of us is the fear that if I am not perfect – at work, as a parent, in an intimate relationship, as a friend – that I will get blamed. That I will fall short, for some reason, of my own expectations of myself, much less everybody else’s expectations. Afraid of not getting it right. Afraid of being wrong or incorrect or misguided or having misunderstood. What that really means is I will blame myself or others will blame me for not being perfect. The demand of perfection is often what many of us substitute for lack of self-trust. And when we have not learned to trust ourselves, we are open to being manipulated by those who seek to make us doubt ourselves and be fearful.

Others of us fear exclusion. It is not the same as fear of abandonment. Everybody else will get something but I will be excluded or left out or it won’t work for me. You see a lot of this societally in the anger that so many have about some group or another supposedly getting advantages or tangible benefits that I am being excluded from receiving. And that makes me mad because I am being excluded but they are not. I am being left out. And that fear triggers a lot of people.

Now, these are not the only clusters or groupings of fear. And, again, we all have our own patterns. When you look at yours, you will be amazed at the consistency of that pattern. Look at where you go when your buttons get pushed. You can start taking your power back just by recognizing what is happening and by refusing to give your power away to a habituated response to someone trying to make you feel afraid. You will find, as some darned Democrat once said, that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. And in recognizing that, you will have learned a universal truth that transcends politics, media and religion.

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

There is a lot of anxiety run riot in the world right now. It is everywhere and is about pretty much everything. The world has entered uncharted territory and we are uncertain of where our lives or our world are going. Uncertainty often produces anxiety. Problem is, thinking about anxiety makes us anxious.

Many of us are so used to living with it, that we don’t give it a lot of thought. It is kind of there in the background but, hey, it’s only anxiety. We get used to the feelings of unease, apprehension, nervousness. “I’m just feeling a little out of sorts or off center or I’ve got things on my mind but it is no big deal.” Actually, yes, it is.

Anxiety, left unanswered builds, suffocates you mentally, emotionally and spiritually, and eventually can destroy your health. “Come on. It’s not big deal and I’ll get to it later. I’ve got bigger fish to fry right now. What’s a little jitters?” Now, as it is a big subject, we are going to start with how do you even know you are anxious? Right? If what I said is true, that we become so accustomed to it that we don’t realize that we are at sufferance of it, then how do we know?

My fave is food. Eating when I am not hungry. Many people call it stress eating. Standing in front of the open fridge at 3:30 AM grabbing out the fixin’s for a turkey and cheese sandwich. “Well, I was having trouble sleeping and I always sleep better with food on my stomach.” You feed your spouse their favorite meal and they’ve eaten until they nearly fell out but 30 minutes later they are rummaging through the pantry looking for a bag of chips because they are feeling peckish. How is that even possible?

The presence of addictions – chemical or mechanical – are a sign that we are trying to run off anxiety. Chemical addictions whether food, booze, drugs, coffee, cigs, chocolate, sugar. That chocolate that you just gotta have. That cig before you commit murder. The food consumption that borders on or crosses over into binging. If I ate it fast, it didn’t count. If I didn’t enjoy it, it didn’t count. Needing to fill my mouth. Habituated chemical addictions as way of doing anxiety.

Mechanical addictions. The nail biters who will chew their own fingers down to their first knuckle. The hair twisters who aren’t even conscious of how much they do it. The jaw clenchers and grinders. I had a boss who clenched and unclenched her jaw all day, every day, regardless of what was going on around her. She was oblivious to it. My roommate in college who ground his teeth and jaw so ferociously every night that I could hear it from down the hall. The folks who can’t stop jiggling their leg, bouncing that knee up and down at ever increasing speeds. Running off anxiety.

Some people pick fights, usually about insignificant things. “How many times do I have to tell you to put the cap back on the toothpaste? It is unsanitary and messy. Can’t you ever respect my wishes? How come everything always has to be your way?” And off we go. One guy’s boyfriend came home and launched into a tirade about who knows what. When he was finished, the guy asked him, “So what has any of that got to do with me?” “Why can’t you ever listen to anything I tell you?” Usually they aren’t or you aren’t really even angry. Just looking to pick a fight to run off anxiety. And even though the fight usually starts over minor or inconsequential things, the person being attacked gets suckered in and will fight back and it can escalate and terrible things get said and emotional damage done and trust gets broken all because I was feeling anxious. Potentially throwing away a loving relationship to run off anxiety.

Another way many of us handle our anxiety is to worry about everything. Everything. Constantly. It can almost become obsessive. “Do my tires look worn to you? I am thinking that they are starting to wear out. Maybe I should go check them.” “Well, it’s dark outside right now and you just bought them six months ago so it is unlikely that they are about to give out.” “Did you see the rash in that commercial? Doesn’t that look just like this red spot on my elbow? My God, I better go get checked out for psoriasis.” “Your elbow is red because you’ve been leaning on it.” “Yeah, well, just in case.” What if the lunch meat in the kids’ sandwiches wasn’t stored properly? How many eggs are there in the fridge? I worry and I worry and I worry. Things will rotate on and off the checklist of things I worry about but by trying to be hyper-vigilant and aware, by worrying about everything, maybe I can keep the bad stuff at bay. Running my anxiety through worrying.

Some people turn into martyrs. You go to get your COVID vaccine and you even have an appointment and they not only keep you waiting but they take other people first. And you know that they deliberately did it to you. The server refills everybody else’s water glass except yours and you know it was premediated. The busybody at work who is so busy helping everybody else with their work that they can’t get their own done and then can’t understand why nobody appreciates all that they’ve done to help everybody else. “Nobody understands me. Nobody ever helps me. I guess I’ll just have to do it all myself,” followed with a heave and sigh. Martyring themselves as a way to distract from the anxiety they are feeling.

Some people go into depression. The weight of the depression gets so heavy that they can’t get out from under it. Not feeling “a little down” but really depressed and it can take weeks, months, years to escape the suffocation of the depression brought on by anxiety.

Others go into righteousness and blame. There is a lot of this out in the world right now. But it gets to the point of absurdity. “The world is going to hell in a handbasket because the rotten liberals are a bunch of satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles, blah, blah, blah.” It makes me mad because if I had known I was a cannibal, I could have saved a fortune at Kroger over the years. In the 10,000 years of recorded human history blame has never solved anything. Accountability yes, blame no. But there is tons of blame in our world. And righteousness whose sole purpose is to make the righteous feel superior to and better than whomever is the object of their scorn. Running anxiety by blaming and being righteous.

And, finally, procrastination. The people who let the mail pile up for weeks or months but they’re gonna get to it. That closet that I’ve been meaning to clean out and sort through forever but I keep throwing stuff in there instead. That two minute phone call that I need to make for work but I can’t make it on Monday because they are just getting back to work and I don’t want to bother them. Then Tuesday comes and I’d call but they are just really getting back in the swing of things so I don’t want to be a nuisance. And on it goes and now it is Friday and the week is over so I’ll call next week. The bill I need to pay. Procrastination is how I do my anxiety.

If any of this sounds familiar, good. Because one of the steps of escaping being smothered by your anxiety is to know you have it and being aware of what you do to run it off. And then you can start looking for alternative, less destructive ways to express it.