Coping With the Most Basic of Fears
We human beings walk around with many basic assumptions about life. We assume, as we live moment-to-moment, that we and those we care about—and root for, and even know as acquaintances—will live. Barring anything that brings the possibility of death, the fragility of life, to our consciousness, how could we not? Most of us don't live with the ongoing awareness that death could come at any moment. It's too terrifying. And yet, confronting and coping with this fear can help us on (and off) the bike. But how?
We've spent quite a bit of time in this column confronting our ageless nemesis, anxiety, and its family of clever siblings: fear, stress, tension, worry, nerves, and pressure. We've focused on these foes so frequently because any of them can so easily distort our thoughts, interfere with our performance, and prevent us from discovering more of our potential.
Many prominent psychologists, philosophers, and others who reflect on such things see all anxiety as emanating from the fundamental human fear of death. Sam Keen, in his foreword to Ernest Becker's landmark work, "The Denial of Death," summarizes two of the key aspects of Becker's philosophy:
"The basic motivation for human behavior is our biological need to control our basic anxiety, to deny the terror of death...since the terror of death is so overwhelming, we conspire to keep it unconscious."
More: The Dangers of Passing on the Right
We have been forced—tragically, and for some, traumatically—to emerge from our denial. And in looking at how you can deal most effectively with the reality of crash risks, let's start there: with denial. It's not necessarily a bad thing.
Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, in her book, "Shattered Assumptions: Towards a New Psychology of Trauma," explores times when our "fundamental assumptions are seriously challenged" and the injuries that can result to our "inner world" during those times. She writes:
"It is probably an understatement to conclude that psychologically, denial has been underappreciated. [During times of] trauma, denial is far from a maladaptive mechanism suggesting psychopathology. Rather, it is a useful and valuable process that reflects the survivor's extraordinary predicament...Denial enables the victim to reestablish some equilibrium and confront the threatening experience in smaller, manageable doses."
Trauma is, of course, a very broad spectrum of human experience, from mild to severe. Yet denial and other strategies for coping can be invoked regardless of the severity. Notice that in the experience I described above, I was literally and figuratively quite a ways down the road before I felt anything beyond concern for the fallen cyclist.
More: When Flesh Meets Earth
