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How to deal with fear and uncertainty
00:34:10
The world can feel chaotic and overwhelming right now. Mindfulness can help. Today, a conversation with therapist and meditation teacher Tara Brach.
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- [00:02]
Ella Hay
Hey there, it's Ella Hay. I hope you're having a great weekend today. I wanted to bring you a conversation I recently had with someone whose work I've followed for a while. Her name is Tara Brock. She has a PhD in clinical psychology. She's a therapist, and she's also spent years studying Buddhism and mindfulness. She teaches meditation, and she's written several books, including one called Radical Acceptance. Recently, I found myself turning more and more to Tara's work. I just went through a health crisis, which is why you haven't heard me much on the show in recent months. I caught it early, and I'm better now and in the clear, but during those months, I was dealing with a lot of fear. Tara's meditations helped, but even if you're not going through a health scare, the world is really scary right now. A lot of us look around and see wars, climate change, economic uncertainty. Just a lot of overwhelming things we can't control. So today we're going to have a conversation about fear. From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Elahe izadi. It's Saturday, May 17th. Today, how fear shows up in our lives and what we can do about it. And at the end of the episode, Tara Brock will lead us through a guided meditation. I visited Tara's home on a rainy afternoon, and I started off by asking her to define mindfulness and meditation, especially for people skeptical of this approach or who feel like they could never meditate.
- [01:48]
Tara Brach
Yeah, well, Western psychology and Eastern psychology both acknowledge that one of our capacities is to be mindful of, to have metacognition, to be aware of what's happening and not be so tossed around by it, not be so tossed by the waves. So mindfulness is a universal human capacity. Like compassion. It's in our nervous system. And so you'll find in many religions and in many humanistic traditions training in how to be. Be more awake, more mindful. So mindful just simply means to be aware of what's happening in the present moment without judgment. It's simple, and it's really challenging.
- [02:31]
Ella Hay
Yeah, it's like the challenging piece of it is how simple it is. Like, wait, no, there must be like a complex equation here, right?
- [02:37]
Tara Brach
Yeah, exactly.
- [02:40]
Ella Hay
So, you know, one of the things that really drew me to your work is how you talk about fear and how to live with it. Later on in our conversation, I do want to get to and dig into strategies on how to work with fear. But first, you know, I'm a journalist. It's my job to not just stay informed myself, but to inform other people about what's going on in the world. And that can feel very overwhelming these days. No matter what your persuasion is, your perspective is. And I just think that's true for a lot of our listeners, that there is a lot of fear out there. So I'm curious, what forms do you see fear taking in people's lives right now?
- [03:16]
Tara Brach
Well, first I want to confirm, I mean, every study is showing fear is spiking, particularly young adults, adolescents and young adults.
- [03:24]
Ella Hay
Why do you think it is in adolescents and young adults, especially now?
- [03:27]
Tara Brach
Because there is more social isolation. There's more of the impact of media which separates and we are herd social animals. And actually connecting with each other calms fear. When we remember our connection, fear is really this suffering of not feeling, belonging to, not feeling connected. So it hits, I think, younger people more because our younger generations are much more insular right now. And the more isolated we get, the more we actually cycle through our minds. Our minds have a negativity bias to latch onto what's wrong. So we get more negative thinking, which then perpetuates a biochemistry of fear.
- [04:08]
Ella Hay
Can you describe negativity bias for those who aren't clear on what that is?
- [04:11]
Tara Brach
Yeah, we have what's called a survival negativity bias, which means we scan for what's gonna go wr because we're trying to protect our survival. So we will glom onto whatever we see that appears threatening way more quickly and way more tenaciously than something beautiful. That's the negativity bias. And there's a joke my father used to tell of a telegram that the mom sends to the son saying, start worrying. Details to follow. So we're ready to glom on to what's wrong. And it's being fueled right now because in reality, reality, with all the global crises that we have, I mean, the climate emergency actually is our larger body, the Earth, in great distress, and our nervous systems pick it up. There is danger, and fear is nature's protector. There's nothing wrong with fear.
- [05:06]
Ella Hay
So let's talk about that first. How would you define fear? And that can also get into why we shouldn't be afraid of fear.
- [05:15]
Tara Brach
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's a really good question. I mean, fear, all emotions are intelligent. They're all part of our survival strategy. We are wired with fear for a good reason. It's to alert us that there's a possible danger that we need to then prepare for and in some way protect ourselves against. And so Right now, fear is being triggered in a really huge way in a lot of people. And when it's not processed, it causes us trouble because unprocessed fear locks into our nervous system. And then even when there's not danger, we are ready to respond as if something terrible is about to happen. It leaves our nervous system feeling like something's wrong.
- [05:57]
Ella Hay
So when you say not processed, like, not even having an awareness that it's.
- [06:00]
Tara Brach
There, well, or else aware that it's there, but not paying attention in a way that helps us digest it and make sense of it and integrate it into a larger perspective, which is where we're going on this.
- [06:12]
Ella Hay
Right, right, right. And it does seem like. I don't know, I feel like a lot of fear can come down to the recognition of lack of control. You know, personally, for me, I haven't really shared this publicly, but I recently went through a big health crisis and I had to prepare for a major surgery. And I had this experience of I was overcome with fear of being afraid when they were going to wheel me back and put me under. And I was, like, preemptively already, like, terrified of the fear I was surely going to experience and realizing that that fear had to do with the lack of control over the situation. I mean, I'm unconscious, but I feel like a lot of people can relate to this ideal. And, like, how do you sit with that feeling of, I know what's happening. I know I'm scared of something that hasn't even come to pass. I know it's because I have no control. But how do you sit with that feeling of a big scary thing and feeling like you can't do anything about it?
- [07:13]
Tara Brach
Well, before I talk about a strategy to sit with it, it comes out in different ways for different ones of us. For some, it might be perseverating a fear of fear. For others, it might be total disconnect, shut down, numb. For some people, it goes to anger and blame. Like, I shouldn't be feeling like this, or the world shouldn't be like this, or actual outward hostility and aggression. I mean, really, when you look at what's behind either thinking of strongmen, leaders who need to have power over others, it's this need for control comes out of a deep insecurity. And when we're really secure, when we're really feeling belonging, we do not need to power over others. We don't need to violate others. And it's the same thing for when there's a sense of real danger in the society. Many people, because they feel so powerless and they have no agency. They go into despair, hopelessness and resignation. So that's just another expression of the fear. And there's a story I love of people bringing their deepest difficulty to this wise sage. They have to go through the wilderness to get to this person. And she says to them, I just have one question for you and that I want you to ask yourself. And that is, what are you unwilling to feel? And the understanding is that if we start being willing to feel what's actually there, any of the difficulties in our life, we can find the space of heart and presence to be able to work with it.
- [08:52]
Ella Hay
That's really interesting, especially the expression that you mentioned of the numbingness or shutting out. I did some reporting a few months ago on people who were actively trying to stay away from the news because they felt such a sense of, I can't do anything about what's happening and I don't have any control over the situation. So I'm gonna turn, make my world as small as possible. And, you know, that's an understandable instinct. But what you're sharing is that's actually another expression of fear.
- [09:25]
Tara Brach
That's exactly right. Now, I wanna say that it's wise to do a diet on news. I mean, that is intelligent. It's intelligent to guard our attention. It really is. Our attention is our most precious asset. And it is absolutely. There's billions of dollars and the most intelligent, you know, strategies in the world to grab our attention. So it's really intelligent to limit news, but not to cut off. Because it's our world and our world, we're part of our world. And when we cut off from our world, we might feel a little less immediately fearful. But deep down, our nervous system knows the belonging to our world. We're all connected. And that chronic anxiety and that sense of something's wrong is still there. So we do need eventually to ask ourselves, what am I unwilling to feel? But sometimes the fear can feel like too much, and we start to feel it. It just feels a lot. So there are two ways to work with fear, okay? And one of them is to calm it down some. And probably the most researched and tried and true strategy is with the breath. And it's. The first step is to pause. And I call this a sacred art of pausing. Because if we can just pause our actions just for a moment, we actually interrupt the whole chain of reactivity that fuels fear. Just a pause. And I love the phrase, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life. Create a clearing, the Pause is the grounds for any real shift in our heart and our psyche. And we're able to then do what I call the U turn. We go from reacting to what's outside us to reconnecting inside with our strengths, our resources. And when it's fear in there, when we do the U turn and we find fear, the way to work with it, with mindfulness, is to ask two questions. And one is, you know, what is it that I'm really feeling right now? What's it like? And the other is, can I be with this, or can I let this be? And in the Buddhist tradition, there's a story of the Buddha giving talks in large groups, and Mara was the shadow side. The fear, the anger, the hatred. And there's an incident where Mara was around the outskirts of this group that the Buddha was teaching to. And the Buddha's loyal attendant, Ananda, saw Mara and said, oh, no, Mara's here. What are we going to do? But the Buddha said, no worries. And he went over to Mara, to this shadow side, and he said, I see you, Mara. Come, let's have tea. And this is a really elegant psychological rendering of the power of mindfulness. Because in a moment of mindfulness where we see the fear, we can say, I see it. Okay, it's fear. It's fear. Thank you for trying to protect me. It's fear. And come, let's have tea. Let's be friendly. Because if we can see it and allow it, we become bigger than the fear. That's why mindfulness is a superpower. We become the ocean. That can include the waves, but we're not thrown over by the waves. There's this saying that if you trust you're the ocean, you're not afraid of the waves. And if you don't, you'll be seasick every day.
- [12:54]
Ella Hay
Well, and also in this story and in what you're sharing, there's this idea of separating yourself from it as like, it's part of you. It's there, but it's not you. Even this idea of instead of being like, I'm afraid, like, I have fear, like, you're not so identified with it that you lose the rest of you. Like, you see it as like a thing that is like, maybe next to you or you're having tea with the fear, but it's not that you're so overcome with it, that that's your whole identity.
- [13:25]
Tara Brach
That's exactly right. And it makes all the difference in the world. Your relationship is entirely different. Because if fear is a wave or a current that's part of you. You can honor it for being there and listen to its message even. But it's not. And this is very practical. This isn't, like, theoretical. I'll give you one example story that really caught me. Was a lieutenant in the army. Had to take anger management course. His superiors required him to because he was an anxious guy, but it came out as anger. So those courses included a lot of mindfulness training. And one day he was at a supermarket, and he got into line. He had a big cart full of groceries and had to get that and go home and do work. In front of him was a woman with a child with only two items. And she and the registrar were oohing and ahhing over the baby. And he just went into. He just got that flash of rage. And that's when he remembered mindfulness. And he paused. The sacred art of pausing. And then he asked those questions. You know, what is happening inside me? Okay, naming it. Okay. Anger. Anger. Fear. Fear. Afraid. I'm not going to get everything done. My world's going to collapse. You know how it is. We don't get everything done. And so he was making friends with Mara, and he was feeling it and breathing it and letting it be there. Everything settled down enough, so when he looked out, he saw the child was really cute. When it was his turn, he said to the registrar, you know, that child was adorable. And she said, oh, thank you. That's my daughter. My husband was killed in Afghanistan last year. And so my mom brings her over to visit twice a day. And I think of that story. I mean, every time I think of it, that everybody we meet is struggling hard. Yeah, everybody. I mean, not everybody's just lost somebody, but. Oh, my gosh, in this current world, it's scary. Everybody's struggling hard. What if we could pause? What if we could pause and draw on that superpower of mindfulness and just say, what's happening? And can I be with this? And then find enough settling down so we could respond to each other with a quality of compassion versus a sense of an other out there that we can't relate to.
- [15:49]
Ella Hay
Yeah. Yeah. That irritation or rage that can come up when, you know, sometimes I'm driving and I wonder, like, each person in this car, what's going on with them, you know, and if we. If I were able to pause and just. And take that in. It's unknowable. Everyone has a struggle. Right. And it can be easy to forget that when you're so wrapped up in your own.
- [16:11]
Tara Brach
Exactly. When we're wrapped up in our own. It's like everybody else is traffic, but not us.
- [16:17]
Ella Hay
Yeah, I'm the protagonist on this road.
- [16:20]
Tara Brach
Right on the center of the universe. Everybody else. Yeah, an unreal other. So it's really, really helpful to call on, you know, to pause and to do these two questions of mindfulness. You to see what's happening and to hold it with kindness, to just give it space. Sometimes if we're really stuck, we need to really strengthen that sense of self kindness. And that's maybe the last thing to share with all who are listening right now, which is that fear always has to do with disconnection. In some way. We feel disconnected and a moment of real kindness, real compassion, or somebody else holding our hand, it helps to really heal it. And so I have developed a very quick and handy mindfulness practice that builds in self compassion. That's called the rain practice.
- [17:21]
Ella Hay
After the break, Tara leads us through the rain practice and other practical ways to work with fear. We'll be right back.
- [17:35]
Robin Caban
I'm Robin Caban, and I'm the senior critic at large for the Washington Post. I write about politics and race and the arts. You know, there's so much information and misinformation coming at people. And for me, a critic's job is to really cut through that and attempt to direct people towards what is of value. Subscribers are definitely the most engaged, and they're the ones that I feel like I'm most often having a conversation with people who are really engaged in our culture and engaged in civic life in a way that can be really transformative. When you subscribe to the Washington Post, you support this kind of journalism. Learn more at subscribe. I'm Robin Givhan, and I'm one of the people behind the Post.
- [18:38]
Tara Brach
There are a lot of things in our daily life that we can do that help us to get larger than fear so that we are more able to basically have space for it. And one of them, I already mentioned is guard your attention. Don't unnecessarily stir it up, which really makes a big difference. Another is through the day, take pauses, slow down. You know, I've always found that when I slow down, if I go half, half pace, I see twice as much. So slow down. It breaks the trance because we really are in a trance a lot of the day. A big one is intentionally connect with others. I mean, we are just habituated into more isolation than ever before in history. And even if it means just once a week contacting somebody, not by email, you know, by phone or Doing a gratitude practice at the end of the day by email with somebody that keeps you linked or smiling at strangers. Just connect, connect, connect, and get into nature that there's again, so much research on it that being in nature helps us reconnect with who we are with the elements, and again, enlarges us so those are daily life practices that really make a difference.
- [19:54]
Ella Hay
You mentioned, Tara, this concrete approach, this other approach or method that you've developed that has become popular, and it's called rain, which is an acronym. Can you tell me what the acronym stands? For?
- [20:06]
Tara Brach
Sure. RAIN stands for recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture. And the times that we most need to come back to center and get resourced are the times that we have kind of a limbic hijack where we're really reactive and we forget how to. So RAINN gives us this handle, this kind of easy to remember set of words that actually brings us back in a powerful way. And recognize this. It works best by mentally whispering, what's going on? Okay. Fear. Okay, Sadness. Okay, anger. And just naming it. And there's a lot of research that when we mentally note what's happening, it activates the prefrontal cortex and it quiets down the amygdala. So it's a very researched strategy. So naming is the first. That's the first part of mindfulness. And then allowing means basically like saying, this is a wave in my ocean. This belongs. Let it be here for this moment. May it be here. May I be with it. I often use the word yes. It's like saying yes to reality, and that really helps. And investigate means it's not mental, it's not cognitive. Investigate's really in the body. It's like, okay, where am I feeling this? How am I experiencing this? And often it's a clutch in the chest or gripping in the belly.
- [21:33]
Ella Hay
So it's not like, oh, what's the root of it?
- [21:35]
Tara Brach
It's like investigating. My mother did this to me and my father didn't look, which, like, we.
- [21:39]
Ella Hay
Want to use our brain so much to figure it out, but it's just, where is this? Where am I feeling it in my body?
- [21:46]
Tara Brach
That's the most important question. The last part of investigating, and this is an inquiry, is how does this part want me to be with it? You know, and what does it need? Does it need, you know, understanding, forgiveness, compassion, love? And then the last part of rain Nurture is to offer what's needed. Either you can offer it to yourself or imagine it coming from some larger source. And I'll give You an example here of just very recently a man who's part of our larger meditation community and he lost his job with usaid, has two teens. And besides, just the devastation of this has been for his life, for decades serving, it's really, you know, heart service and the fears around not being able to support his family. And so we practiced rain together. And the R of rain went right to fear. And he just mentally just fear, fear, you know, allowing, thank you for trying to protect me. You know, it's a good phrase to say. And then as he investigated, he could feel that clutch and he felt like a very young child in there, that his life was out of control and he had no way to manage things. It was a very young feeling of threat. And when he asked that question, how do you want me to be with this? He said, I. And I just really want to remember that others are with me. You know, my family, I want to remember my family's with me, my friends are with me, that I'm not alone in this. And also that others experience this too. And so the nurturer was. He was just kind of calling on his own wise self just with that message of, you're not alone. Others are feeling this too. And it reconnected him with the larger field of humans and beings. That gave him space. And he said afterwards, and this is. I call it after the rain. Just like after a real rain, you know, everything kind of flowers. It's really useful to go slow right after you've done rain and sense the quality of presence that's opened up, because that is really the gift. And for him, he could really feel this sense of being that sea or ocean of presence. And he conclude they were still there, but he wasn't overwhelmed by them. He had space and he could remember love and he could remember possibility and hope too. So it was very powerful for him. And it's not a one shot. He's had to do it again and again because fear is strong. And we need to lay down those neural pathways that take us back to the strength of who we really are.
- [24:36]
Ella Hay
It's like the power of habit, right? There's all this research around. If you think a certain way, your neural pathways will develop those groups and that's how you're gonna think. So it's almost like what you're describing is like retraining your brain to think in a different way.
- [24:49]
Tara Brach
Neurons that fire together, wire together. Yes, it's really true.
- [24:54]
Ella Hay
I guess the after the rain is also what I'm curious about, this sense of possibility that opens up. Is that where the action happens then?
- [25:02]
Tara Brach
Yes, exactly right. When we're caught in the waves, there is no creativity, there's no vision, there's no sense of possibility. We're in fight, flight, freeze and collapse. Those the different.
- [25:17]
Ella Hay
Oh, I haven't heard of collapse before. Yeah, I'll add it to my repertoire.
- [25:20]
Tara Brach
Actually, Fawn is another one too. Fight, flight, freeze, Fawn, collapse are the most recent ones. And you can really see it in today's society. But that's the gift of it. It's that after you've done the steps of rain, you actually return to a kind of wholeness of being where you have when you're in a limbic hijack, you're cut off from your frontal cortex, from reason, from morality, from empathy, from compassion, from mindful. After the rain, you're reconnected. It's an integrated whole so you have access to the best of who you are. So then when you act, you're coming from a much more intelligent, open hearted space.
- [26:02]
Ella Hay
Tara, would you be so kind as to lead us through a short rain meditation?
- [26:07]
Tara Brach
Yeah, I'd love to. I love the rain practice. I do it every day in some form. So yes. So the invitation is to consider this a pause and to take a few moments just to feel your breath. Let the breath collect you. You might take one of those long deep in breaths and then a slow out breath and sense of letting go. One more time. Inhale deeply, slow, steady out breath. Letting go, letting go. And then let the breath be natural. You might just scan through the body and notice if there's any areas of particular tightness or tension that are ready to let go, softening, releasing maybe the shoulders, the hands. And now scan your life and sense if there's a situation that in particular is setting off anxiety or fear. Could be in your personal life, in a relationship or work. Might be in relating to the world, to the different global crises that we are really caught in. Not to pick something that feels traumatizing because that won't serve you right now, but something that brings up anxiety or fear. And as you do that, as if you're watching a movie, just kind of hone in a little, zoom in so you can sense the circumstances that activate you. If it involves another person, see their face, hear the words. If it involves a situation outside yourself, get an image that feels real to you. Go to the place in the situation that's the worst for you that most triggers the worst part. And let your body and your heart feel what it's like when you're activated, you begin the rain. Practice with recognizing by simply noticing whatever's most predominant and mentally whispering what it is. So it may be that it's anger, maybe that it's shame, maybe that it's fear or anxiety. Whatever feels most predominant. And if there's a few different emotions, you can name them and just sense which one's most calling your attention right now and then allow it to be there. And that means not to resist it or judge it or push it away. You might sense, like the waves in the sea, that it belongs. You might mentally whisper yes, which is just an acknowledgement of the reality that it's here. Then begin to investigate. You might sense where you feel it in your body. Maybe the throat or the chest or the belly. And it can help if you put your hand on your heart, even if you've never done this before. It's really a way of right early on bringing some friendliness to the experience, some kindness. Feel where you feel it in the body. It might be a clutching or gripping tension, tightness, the throat, chest or belly. You can even let your face express what you're feeling. If you haven't done that before, it's very powerful. Just make the expression that helps to bring you in touch with the feeling more even your posture. And if you went right to where you feel most vulnerable, you can ask, how do you want me to be with you right now? What does that fear or distress want from you? What kind of attention does it want you to see it? To offer kindness, forgiveness, acceptance, understanding. To sense what it needs to nurture means we let ourselves be touched by kindness. And you might sense your high self, the most wise place in you, that which is witnessing and compassionate right here. To offer to the frightened place, the vulnerable place. What's needed, and it might be words. Sometimes it helps to say, I'm here and I'm not leaving. Sometimes it helps to say, trust your goodness, trust your strength, trust your heart. Sometimes it helps to say you belong or it's okay. Just offer whatever message you think might might be comforting in this moment. And if it's hard to offer it from your own being, just imagine a loving and kind being offering it an ancestor, a parent, a child, your dog, a spiritual figure. And sense that the message and the care can go right through your hand into your heart. You just imagine it as light and love just bathing your heart, softening, relaxing. What's in there, really washing through that vulnerable place with tenderness. Notice what happens and for these last few moments, just sense the quality of presence that's here, noticing the difference between when you started, the self that was caught in emotion and perhaps a little more space, a little more sense of being, the ocean that includes the waves, that field of tenderness that has room. And know that this is more true about who you are than any story, and that when you act from this place, you're part of the healing in this world. You might take a few full breaths when you're ready to open your eyes. And thank you, friends, for exploring this today.
- [33:22]
Ella Hay
Tara, thank you so much for offering that to us and having us in your home and having this conversation with me. I really appreciate it.
- [33:30]
Tara Brach
It's a pleasure to be with you, my friend. Yeah. Thank you.
- [33:33]
Ella Hay
Thank you. Tara Brock is a therapist and mindfulness teacher. You can learn more about her and access her meditations on her website site. We'll include a link to it in our show notes. That's it for Post reports. Thanks for listening. Today's show was produced by Emma Talkoff. It was mixed by Sam Baer and edited by Maggie Penman. I'm Elahe Izadi. We'll be back Monday with more stories from the Washington Post.