How to not be terrified
Which I am a lot of the time lately and maybe you are, too
At this exact moment, sitting in my writing chair with my cat lying on my empty backpack on the floor beside me (don’t ask me, it’s her favorite summer spot), and the sound of rain out the window, I am not terrified. That is the exception in my life over the last week or so. Much of the time terror is my default.
Part of the problem is that because I have a book coming out (SEX OF THE MIDWEST! Pre-order it here!), I’m on social media a lot more than I’d like to be. On social media, the algorithm wants me to be terrified. Substack Notes added a “Trending” feature to its homepage, which means unless I hold my hand up to cover that spot on my screen, the terror will be right there in front of me.
Instagram has picked up the lovely trick of interrupting my feed with posts from Threads. All of those posts are terrifying and each time I pause to stare at them, trying to make out whether they are something I should legitimately be terrified about or not, the algorithm takes note. When I go ahead an click on that post, the terror has won once again.
I think many things in the world right now are legitimately terrifying. People’s lives are in danger in a very real way. It is unclear if this thing called democracy is going to survive much longer. Also, there are always things in the world to be terrified about. And, yes, almost everything about our media and news are designed to terrify us. This is not an exaggeration. That is the whole business model. Keep people terrified.
I will also say that I have fewer reason to be terrified than many other people right now. I’m white and middle class and (mostly) able-bodied. I am a tenured full professor which gives me a great deal of job security, though I’m a professor of sociology and gender studies, which are not particularly safe disciplines right now. I’m not sure if there are any safe disciplines right now. We own our own house (literally just made the last payment this summer) and we might be the last generation able to do that easily. I am a U.S. citizen and so far, neither the National Guard nor the military have invaded my small town.
Still, I am sometimes terrified and so I thought it might be helpful to share some things that help me be less terrified.
- Writing this post about how to be less terrified. Which is to say, getting out of my own head and remembering that I’m not alone. Other people are also terrified. Perhaps it would be helpful to both them and me to admit this to each other. Perhaps we can find some comfort in our common terror. And perhaps it will help a little in finding our way out together.
- Find other people who are doing the good work of helping us not be terrified. Because a lot of us are scared, there’s a lot of stuff out there on social media and the news that boils down to this—“PANIC! PANIC NOW! NO, NEVERMIND, IT’S ALREADY TOO LATE TO PANIC!” This is not helpful.
Other people have a gentler and, frankly, more effective approach. People like
at Chop Wood, Carry Water (whose weekly good news roundup saves me very Monday morning). And at Good Queer News! And at The White Pages. Find those people. Support them. Maybe become one of them.
- Remember that for so many marginalized people, terror has often been the default. This kind of terror is new for me, but for so many people in the United States and around the world, it’s old hat. This, of course, is not a good thing. No one should live with this kind of fear for their lives and their homes and their families and their livelihoods and their freedoms. That so many more of us are terrified now is not a victory, but…
- We can learn a lot from the example of people who have already been living with this kind of terror. Mostly what we can learn is that it is possible to live through scary times like these. Even in scary times, we can find ways to resist. We can find joy. We can create. We can create some amazing fucking things. I mean, just take the example of Black folk in the United States, who while living in a country that has wanted to destroy them from the very get-to, have created pretty much every musical genre that we call American.
Suffering is not necessary to creating amazing shit like hip hop or country music (fight me, but there is no country music without the banjo and the banjo is an African instrument), but creating shit is surely one tried and true method for survival in hard times.
- Focus on one good and helpful thing I can do right now. I remember listening to a podcast (it might have been Reply All?) where someone was talking about all the anxiety they have about climate change. They interviewed someone who was an actual climate activist and asked them, did they feel a lot of anxiety about climate change? And you could tell the activist was sort of puzzled. Like, no, I’m not anxious because I’m doing something. Or at least, their moments of anxiety were far outweighed by their moments of purpose and, yes, optimism.
I think about that conversation a lot and I believe that one of the surest ways to not be terrified is to, you know, do something. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. It can be a very small thing, because small things add up. It’s not hard to find small things to do. Pick one. Go do it. It’s so simple and yet so effective. More about my one small thing below.
- Understand that our terror is the whole point. Early on in this year of horror, I saw someone post an inverted triangle (I cannot find it now so I tried to re-create it) that laid out a specific plan for our terror. At the top of the triangle, all the stupid shit that they throw at us non-stop. I’m not going to list it or point to it here, because the goal is to not pay attention to it.
At the bottom two layers of the triangle, the things they might actually do and the things they are now actually doing. These two bottom layers are really all we should be paying attention to. Everything else is distraction. Everything else is to keep us terrified, because our terror is the point.
They want us to be perpetually terrified because if we are terrified, we are paralyzed. We are immobilized by despair. We are overwhelmed into passivity. Terrified is exactly where they want us. So to not be terrified is already a victory.
- Obviously, all the other things. Take a walk. Make art. Breathe. Pet your cat. Look at the sky. I wrote my own list of how to get through back in November of last year. I stick by it.
What things are helping you be less terrified? I’d love to hear all about it and assemble an even longer list in the comments.
Okay, now for the one small good thing I’m doing—running a contest to give away a signed copy of my book, SEX OF THE MIDWEST! To enter the contest, you first have to make a donation to one of the two organizations listed below. Make a donation in any amount and either reply to this email with a pic of your receipt or post the pic in the comments on Notes. One donation = one entry. Donate to both organizations for two entries. Contest for U.S. residents only (sorry, the shipping overseas is too much). Entries close on midnight on Oct. 10 and I’ll pick a random winner this weekend.
Donate to either ACLU of Indiana (we need all the free speech help we can get here) or Project ID (which helps all kinds of people get official ID so they can vote and get jobs and housing and all that good stuff that you need to, you know, live).
Check out SEX OF THE MIDWEST in the Washington Post roundup here. Also an excerpt with another story you can read and a great introduction from
at here. Pre-order your copy here. And details about events in Cincinnati and Indianapolis coming soon!
Robyn therapy. Thank you.
Excellent reminders. (And wow, Kiese Laymon!)