Feelings, Facts, and Fear
Feelings are often confused with facts. Between stimulus and our recognition of a response, there is “software” that runs, and we come to conclusions without an epistemology - a way of knowing if our conclusions are correct.
Unfortunately, aside from the innate human tendency to do so, the way mental health people speak about our emotional lives leads many to treat their feelings as facts. Sometimes they are, but this is a messaging problem on our part. It’s more of a confusion between experience and interpretation. The philosophical term for this is “naive realism” - that what emerges in my consciousness is true. There are methods available to minimize this problem.
More specifically though, I was thinking a little about fear this morning. For most, our relationship with the experience of fear is “I am in danger”, rather than in my view the more useful, “I should pay attention right now.” Attention is a whole other problem.
When we get scared, it pays to be more present. It is useful to be curious. It’s really useful to educate ourselves about the thing. It’s extra helpful to connect/be a part of a community. If we can’t recognize and begin to deal with fear in these ways, it emerges as impulsivity, “anxiety” (better defined as the physiological responses to pushing down feelings that are trying to emerge”), aggression, xenophobia. Qute a bit that we are seeing in the public square.
