Fear responses are widely promoted and embraced as a psychological concept. That is: fight, flight, freeze, and maybe fawn (people pleasing). If you consciously or unconsciously feel some level of fear or discomfort, one or more of those responses can help you reach safe harbour again. With the fear, there will probably be an accompanying quick surge of cortisol, adrenaline, or other chemicals. There will be urgency and immediacy, maybe some level of terror or anger.
But let's go back a step. People experience fear when they perceive threat. Sensitivity to threat has the huge power to shape behaviours in day-to-day life.
Threat and the workplace
In the workplace, “here’s an alternative approach” could be interpreted by someone with an elevated threat sensitivity as “you’re doing it wrong and you’re incompetent and your job is on the line”.
When we suddenly have to talk about ourselves there can be a spike of threat or insecurity. In a meeting, we’re asked to introduce ourselves or say something interesting about ourselves. Perhaps there’s a threat of judgement, a fear of being boring and uninteresting and unfunny and having nothing to say. Maybe there’s a fear of having to be spontaneous and make something up on the spot, with no framework or template to use. We have to back ourselves in an impulsive and creative way that is difficult. Instant feedback on the faces of people is terrifying.
Outside the workplace, “so what do you do for work?” might provoke a similar response. It can feel like such a loaded question people may feel they have to justify their entire existence. A freeze response might result, or some level of flight through a self-effacing remark and a rapid changing of the subject.
There can be rational reasons for discerning threat. It is what our brain has learned to do as a survival strategy. Such tactics may well have been useful, or even vital, once upon a time. But that usefulness may have faded over time.
The risk of humiliation is never far away in professional life. It feels like it should be because we are grown-ups now. This is not the playground. But the stakes are so high because your job is important and how you’re judged is important. Your performance and the related income needed to pay your mortgage or rent or feed your kids: that is important.
A senior manager questioning some data when passing you in the corridor might be perceived as a threat to all of those things. Fear and panic results, and your response is borderline incoherent. Perhaps overly defensive, perhaps avoidant, perhaps counter-accusatory, perhaps even threatening.
Threat and sport
Threat is at the heart of many ball games and team sports we play from very early in life, supposedly for fun. You have the ball, and therefore the power and control. But lots of other people want it, and they are ready to confront you and take it from you. Opposition players and maybe players on your own team too. That threat can promote the urgency, immediacy, and psychological immersion that people love about playing sport. Everything else in life can just fade away while the game is on. A deeper instinct can take over. It might attune us to operating well under pressure, thinking fast and making quick decisions. Our history of threat, family environment and our level of safety as children can influence that instinct, self belief, how we cope with threat, and how easily we envelope ourselves in the game. Negative experiences and lack of safety may promote physical self-doubt. They may make people unsure of the game and their ability to play, their ability to make quick decisions. So perhaps they panic or submit under the pressure, concede possession, pass to the wrong player, give up. And this affirms how we respond to threat and pressure historically. We are essentially just rubbish and everyone is out to get us.
Threat and anxiety will always exist because life is uncertain. We are not always safe.
Driving puts us in a vulnerable position where we feel cocooned in our own personal space, yet always highly sensitive to threat and fear, sometimes manifested through frustration or road rage. The body’s central nervous system can react in heightened ways at certain times, in a way that is totally rational. Such responses can absolutely be reasonable and even necessary.
Renewing threat sensitivity
If you frequently discern threat, criticism, persecution at every turn, it could be worth considering if it’s rational and how it impacts behaviour. You might consider how you relate to the threat or how you communicate the feeling of it. The story of the self as a perpetual victim can be a restrictive factor, impacting broader trust and growth. Is that defensive knee-jerk reaction necessary in that moment? Does it serve to protect you, or does it represent an irrational insecurity? Is it affecting your relationships? Is it somehow comforting because it promotes a story of stuckness that can’t ever be changed?
We develop threat sensitivity because it was needed to survive, to protect our interests in the face of dangers. But consider an update to the current reality. Does the idea of failing at a new challenge represent an existential threat? Maybe it's a chance to learn more about yourself and the implications of failure are not so great. Take a step back, walk away, look out the window, do some breathing exercises to slow that quickened heart-rate. Ground yourself through physical tapping or another technique that restores a sense of presence and acceptance. Hold and nurture the idea that you are, actually, safe.
