Fear Versus Anxiety

I am a big believer in people making personal risk assessments for themselves, and where appropriate, for their families. I have written before about what risk is: the intersection between assets (things, persons you want to protect), threats (those things which could harm your assets), and vulnerabilities (those things which a threat could exploit, inadvertently or deliberately, to harm an asset). One of the reasons I believe it is important to make such assessments – and regularly update them – is that it forces you to consider the potential threats your assets face (you are also an asset), which in turn reduces anxiety. Anxiety and fear, are often talked about as if they are the same thing, however they are not, and it is important from a personal safety and self-protection standpoint to understand the differences.

The easiest way to understand the differences between the two is to define fear, as the fear of the known, and anxiety as fear of the unknown. From a practical standpoint, you would be anxious walking into a bad neighborhood, late at night, where you know that you’re potentially in danger, but you don’t know exactly what the danger is, or what form it will take; it is unknown and unforeseeable. Anxiety is a type of fear that we don’t cope well with, and that we’ll do almost anything to avoid, even making potentially bad choices in the process e.g. if a car pulled up to us as we were walking through that neighborhood, and a friendly voice told us to get in quickly because we’re in danger, there’s a good chance that we might do this, as this known fear (getting into a car with a stranger), trumps the unknown fear(s) in our situation/environment. We will trade anxiety for fear, even when we consciously know it is to our detriment. By making risk assessments – even dynamic ones, when we are in a situation – we are forced to acknowledge the dangers and threats that we face; this is how to turn anxiety into fear, and fear is good because that is something we can work with.

Many people become confused when a woman who has been in a physically abusive relationship, ends up with another abusive partner, then another, and another, etc. Whilst there are certainly character traits and behaviors that certain people give off, which abusers are quick to pick up on, it is also true that women (and men) who have been in abusive relationships, subconsciously and emotionally seek such relationships in the future, because they are familiar with how they work and operate – they know what to expect. To be in a different type of relationship, would/could cause anxiety e.g. how are they expected to behave and act, or respond in certain situations, etc. Human beings are creatures who crave familiarity, we are not good with change, and we seek to avoid it, even when that change is for the better. Change takes us into the unknown, and in the unknown exist “fears” that we don’t know how to control and manage.

This week I was on an Active Shooter/Killer course put on by A.L.I.C.E. (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate). There are many similar courses, such as “Run, Hide, Fight”, which are trying to move schools – and other institutions – away from the historical concept of the “traditional” lockdown. In a traditional lockdown, when a rampage or spree killer enters the building, the response is to lock the doors (if possible) and hide under tables, etc., and wait for Law Enforcement to arrive and deal with the killer. This is an outdated and ineffective method for several reasons, one being that most active shooter incidents don’t last longer than 5 minutes (there are of course exceptions), and it usually takes law enforcement 8 to 10 minutes before they are on site and able to initiate a response i.e. it’s all over before they begin. The current thinking is to empower individuals to choose different survival strategies and solutions, such as running/evacuating, barricading rooms and physically countering the killer if there is no other option. In light of all the statistics and facts, as well as taking into account our natural responses to danger (freeze, flight or fight), sitting under a desk waiting for law enforcement to turn up and save the day, is not a good solution. The problem is that it is a familiar one, and people/institutions/organizations are unwilling to move away from it.

When you make a risk assessment, you look directly at the threats you face, and consider the vulnerabilities, that these threats could take advantage of, to cause harm to your assets. If you are a school principal, one of your assets is your student body, the individuals who attend your institution. A potential threat is an active shooter/killer. The issue is that most people, in considering the risk of such an incident, look first at familiar and known solutions (such as law enforcement turning up and dealing with it), to deal with their anxiety over it, i.e. reduce it to a fear, rather than first considering their vulnerabilities e.g. they don’t have looking doors, that their doors could easily be breached with a single round, etc. Once you consider each vulnerability that a threat could take advantage of, you start to turn your general anxieties into specific fears, and this is a much more productive means of reducing risk, than running ahead and bypassing this step in order to get to the solutions (risk is the intersection of assets, threats and vulnerabilities – you reduce your vulnerabilities, you lower your risk).

When we recognize that anxiety and fear are not the same thing, and that by making risk assessments, we can turn the unknown into the known, we not only make ourselves safer, but give ourselves the ability to manage and control our fear emotion. The only way to deal with anxiety, is to turn the unknown into the known, and this means ascertaining and managing risk.