Overcoming Fear: Unchaining Growth in an Age of Safety-ism

It doesn’t take a savant to notice that there’s much to be concerned about as we assess threats that are clear and present dangers in this world. From severe weather events, to gun violence, to racism, to wars, to environmental toxins and more, there are multiple reasons to take pause. However, the evidence speaks loudly to the fact that if we let our lives be ruled by fear we will not only miss out on life, but stunt our ability to grow and flourish.

In our 24/7 news and social media cycle we’ve become conditioned by an endless flood of dross, alarmists, conspiracy theories, and political hacks that awaken the urge to live our lives in fear of everything and everyone. We’ve become addicts to self-protection, not realizing that for all of our efforts to control our world we are actually handcuffing ourselves from the learning and growth that hardship and challenge bring.

Jonathan Haidt, in his new book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, expands upon earlier research that defined “safety-sim” as a culture or belief system in which safety has become a sacred value that people are willing to make tradeoffs demanded by other practical and moral concerns. Though this mindset has permeated culture for both adults and children, for kids it stifles their ability to engage appropriate risk-taking needed to develop social emotional and life skills.

Allowing fear to be in the driver’s seat, Haidt’s research confirms, puts children in a defend rather than discover mode. The defend mode is characterized by a scarcity mindset, a fixation on scanning for dangers, and a propensity to cling to only the relationships you know. In contrast, the discover mode opens the mind to risk-taking, frames challenges as opportunities, and builds the psychological immune system that increases resilience and grows personal agency. The bottom line is, when adults allow fear to inform how they guide and nurture kids, they are actually doing harm to essential experiences needed for learning and growth.

Growth only happens, in the proximal zone of development, as we stretch beyond our current state of comfort. In his book, Serious Fun, experiential educator Mark Collard says the primary goal of education is to invite people into their stretch zone. People most often default to where they are most comfortable, which may feel good for a while, but it doesn’t activate emotional, intellectual, social, or physical challenges necessary to learn new skills, embrace a new mental framework, or develop new relationships.

Kurt Hahn, founder of the Outward Bound Program in Germany in the 1940’s believed that well-meaning educators who flatter and humor the young not only do a disservice to the community, but also damage the individual by depriving him of opportunities of self-discovery. Students in Outward Bound were invited into real and dramatic experiences that elicited a wide range of natural human reactions – fear, joy, fatigue, respect, hunger, laughter, pain, love, and more. These experiences provided fertile ground for stepping out of comfort and into stretch zones where limits were tested, skills were formed, and identities were shaped and transformed. Core components of the program included; stress, hardship, problem-solving, reflection, evaluation, and service. When the bar is raised to this level of challenge, incompetence is uncovered and failure is embraced as part of the process.

At the end of the day, if we as people and as a society desire positive growth and change, then we must reject safety-ism and replace it with courageous engagement with appropriate risk-taking. It doesn’t take long when you look around to see that fear has a strangle hold on individuals and communities that is stifling learning and snuffing out experiences raise the bar on challenge. The question is, what will it take to overcome our addition to safety and to step into the stretch zone?

I once heard a story about a person who visited a native American family who had a toddler who was trying to enter a kitchen, but they were struggling with a swinging door. During the visitor’s conversation with the parents, they noticed that they were perfectly comfortable letting their child struggle and work to get through that door. This concerned the visitor to the point of asking the parents if they could help, and they responded; “No, she will learn through the struggle the lesson that is needed, and this will serve her well in life.”

If we are to unchain growth, we too must patiently and courageously learn through challenge and struggle which means stepping out of our comfort zones. A quote that has been attributed to Franklin Roosevelt says, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” In these days, with so much at stake, the future of our children and our society stand in the balance, and if we risk nothing, then we risk losing everything. Let’s choose together to step into growth.