Practical exercises on dealing with fear
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Practical exercise on dealing with fear
(These materials, created by Carlos Martin Beristain, a psychiatrist from Bilbao, are the outcome of numerous workshops on fear management that have been held over the last 18 years in countries where there is an armed conflict, such as Guatemala, El Salvador and Colombia. They are part of an experience done and shared together with many peasant organizations, indigeneous human rights groups, Church groups, and victims of violence in those countries. They are tools for community work where people have to face violence and terror. They are based on the idea of personal and collective empowerment to confront repression, while giving mutual support to be able to face the consequences of terror and engage in the struggle against its causes.)
Proposed agenda for a workshop on dealing with fear:
A) THE FEAR STRATEGY: Fear as part of violence
First it is important to contextualise the fear experience. Many of the consequences that we find in the people affected by violence are intentional. You can explain how fear is regularly used to:
break community experiences and organisational process. Many times these experiences are criminalised, and treated as suspicious. This inhibits the participation and the people and they lose their capacity for solidarity.
to intimidate the people. When this happens the people who are directly affected can become paralysed as well as those who identify with the victims. In this context the rest of the population is unaware and don't care what happens to the people affected.
change the people's ideas. In many cases, violence is used to change how people think and feel. When fear becomes chronic, people can start distrusting others and start questioning their own values. This way people can start thinking that is not good to organise.
This presentation can be followed by a discussion to help people to: 1) understand what is happening around them 2) see that fear is a collective experience because of the situation that is lived 3) understand the social aspect of the problem faced
After the discussion, it might be good to prepare a short description about the effects of fear and violence.
Exercises to identify the consequences of fear
1.Ask the members of the group to refer to an experience when they felt fear. Divide into small groups so that everyone can participate. One person takes notes about the consequences of fear. Afterwards, in a plenary write up the central ideas on the wall. An other option is to make a drawing of a situation where they felt fear. Discuss the drawing, focusing on the subjective experience (what you thought, how you felt, what happened to your body, how did you reacted, etc.), not simply re-constructing the facts.
2.Next comes a trust game. Trust games help to highlight situations of insecurity or fear, and of confidence in yourself and the group.
Tree and Wind Form a tight circle of 6-7, with one person placed in the middle. The person in middle should be told to place their feet solidly on the ground, close their eyes and let themselves fall to one side (as if you were a tree being moved by the wind). The rest of the group is around him or her, with their hands in front of their bodies and they pass the person that is in the middle from one to the other, without any brusque movement and not letting the person in the middle fall. It's important that all in the circle are coordinated to make the tree move from one side to the other. After a minute, another person from the group goes to the middle. It's important that all the people can participate, so that they can share their experiences. After the game:
1) Write on a big sheet of paper the feelings and experiences that everyone had during the game. 2) After that, relate these impressions to fear. Compare some real situations where fear appears or some consequences of it, with what the group has said.
After that summarize the consequences of fear, such as:
The body reacts in many ways (stomach pain, heart beatings, fast breathing, shaking, etc.) These are ways our bodies express anxiety. It is important to learn to control some of them, for example relaxing your body and not going with the negative sensation that is produced. Fear can feedback if you don't deal with it in a positive way, it can continue growing. The worse that can happen is not to do anything.
Impulsive reactions are also consequences of fear. In an extreme case you may panic. Impulsive reactions (reacting without thinking) are also a defence mechanism. In order to control those impulsive reactions it is important to prepare a response so as to be able to use it when in the midst of fear. You loose the sense of reality because you don't know what is real and what is not. The person has to make an effort to look at the situation in its context and not let it carry you away. Fear helps to perceive the risk It is a defence mechanism that appears in dangerous situations. Many people have saved their lives because of fear. Fear also needs to be seen as something positive. When you only look at fear as something negative, it is easy to deny. Then people don't ask for help, and the result ends up being worse.
B) TO CONFRONT THE FEAR
There are two kinds of fear:
Fear produced by a concrete threat (fear of the dog the that bites) Fear of the uncertain threat (fear of the dark)
This second part of this agenda is focused on “naming the fear” and to help us move from our “fear of dark” to the “fear of the dog that bites” so that way we can be better prepared. Ask the participant of what their fears/worries are. Write these on a big sheet of paper without commenting them. When this is done read them and summarise the fears expressed. In small groups have people discuss: What can we do to face them in a better way?
This process of naming the fears can help with three things: 1) people can express things that they had hidden and therefore lower their anxiety, 2) see that many of those fears are common, there is nothing wrong with you if you have fears, 3) as you name the fear, the fear becomes more concrete and you can see the threat more objectively and then prepare yourself better.
The next step will be to identify concrete alternatives like:
- methods of prevention
- information needed to face fear
- security measures
- attitudes for the moments of danger
- developing solidarity
- learning to relax and to think better and lower the tension
It is important to end the workshop discussing the value of the various alternatives that we can use against fear, to end on the positive. It is important that the workshop helps the people to share experiences, identify their reactions and to know better how to deal with problems. The facilitator's role is to bring people through a process that goes from analysing the reality that you live, sharing negative emotions, re-valueing the positive experiences that people already have, to identifying solutions and alternatives.
