Reduce fear by becoming the agent of your own future

Earlier this week I found myself with some time on my hands and the house to myself. So I decided to do something for me. First I took action on my physical fitness by exercising to a keep fit video. Usually I keep fit by walking a few miles early in the morning with my neighbour, but she was on holiday, so I was left to my own devices.

Then I took action on my mental wellness by nurturing my brain. I love to listen to podcasts and lectures on a wide range of topics. Radio 4 is a rich source of incredibly interesting material and I’d remembered there was a fascinating lecture I’d been listening to last December. I’d only heard the first half because I reached my destination before it ended.

Towards the end of each year the BBC broadcasts a series of talks known as the Reith Lectures, named after the corporation’s first Director-General, Lord Reith. The lectures are delivered by prominent people with the aim of advancing understanding and debate about significant current issues. I’d been aware of them, but this is the first time I’d taken time out to listen to one.

And the reason I was so interested was that the title of the lecture I’d only half caught was ‘Freedom from Fear’. It’s considered to be a fundamental human right and is one of the four freedoms highlighted by US President Franklin D Roosevelt in a famous speech to Congress in 1941. The Reith lecture was delivered by Dr Fiona Hill, a highly regarded foreign policy and intelligence expert. The phrase that most caught my attention was that, whilst no government can totally protect its citizens from danger (there will always be some level of danger, like violence or abuse from others, threats from foreign powers, natural disasters, domestic crime etc), a good government can protect its citizens from fear by encouraging self-reliance and ‘agency’.

And, whilst Dr Hill was talking in terms of national policy and world peace generally, the concept that we can be free from fear by having a sense of agency fits well with the work I, and my colleagues, do with our clients. A sense of agency means the feeling of control we have over our actions and the subsequent consequences of those actions. It’s the feeling of being an agent in a particular outcome. And when you have that sense of being in control, anxiety and fear disappear.

As I often say to my clients, if we have total control over a situation, we are totally responsible for the outcome of our actions. If we have no control, we have no responsibility for the outcome. Fear often arises when events are out of our control.  Or when we believe events are out of our control.

Clearly, there are threatening situations around the world that we have little control over as individuals. But even then, there may be something we can do to gain a sense of agency, a sense of contributing to making the world a better place. Perhaps making a donation to a charity that seeks to redress a harmful situation, like providing tents to people made homeless by an earthquake, or planting trees to mitigate against deforestation or protecting children against abuse. You can help people who are struggling financially by putting your unwanted items on free recycling websites, or clearing out your kitchen cupboards and donating in-date groceries to the local foodbank.

Fear can also arise when we don’t recognise that we have an element of control. I see this most often in the therapy room with relationships. A client may be anxious because their partner is uncommunicative or argumentative. The starting point here is identifying how much control the client has. I help them understand that they have no control over their partner’s behaviour. Their partner behaves like they behave for their own internal reasons. But what the client can do, is to decide how to respond to that behaviour. They switch from being a passive recipient of the other person’s conduct to being in active control of how they respond.

The same principle applies to any situation where we feel out of control. Maybe be there’s something going on at work, like a bullying co-worker, an overfamiliar boss or an exploitative work environment. Here there are many ways of creating a sense of agency rather than passively accepting the toxic behaviour. Taking action could range from raising a grievance with the HR department, to joining a union, to getting professional help with updating your CV so you can look for another job.

And if you feel that the world is run by global corporations who are only interested in profit at any cost to their workforce and the environment, there are plenty of ways of combatting that sense of helplessness. Take positive action to support local businesses. If you have the time buy from local greengrocers, bakeries or farm shops. It’s not always more expensive and the quality is often so much better. If you can’t source a product locally, try to identify a UK-based supplier, so you’re supporting the UK economy. And if you can, avoid the mega suppliers like supermarkets and Amazon. By supporting a small business you’re not only taking control away from the giant corporations, you’re handing it to small, family-run enterprises who are more likely to treat their staff and customers better.

When you take action in this way, when you have that sense of agency, you put yourself in control and your sense of fear disappears.

So, it’s time to get in the driving seat and become the agent of your own future.