Frightening the fear monster away
May 11, 2004 | 12:00am
Would you dig your hand inside your kitchen sink knowing there’s a sharp-bladed incinerator that could make mincemeat out of it?
Would you own a music box that played a haunting melody with a ballerina doll twirling in a wall of mirrors?
The above were all drawn from Hollywood movies, but my answer would still have been a resounding nyet, zilch and zero.
A psychiatrist told a group of us that in real life, we each have our respective cache of "psychic debris" representing all the negative thoughts, fear and phobia that had affected and/or influenced us through the years. Some have forgotten and have locked the experience in the subconscious, but the memory could return if the mind was stimulated by some familiar object and/or personal encounter in the present time. Others have been permanently affected by the experience while in worse cases, some feed these fears up to their twilight years.
She gave us two examples.
A patient instinctively froze at the sight of musty-smelling basements. Under hypnosis, she recalled a dark episode in her life that happened when she was only six years old. Their gardener scooped her in his arms and brought her to the basement intent on doing something wicked and sinister to her. Thankfully, their housekeeper noticed her absence from the playroom and rescued her in the nick of time. That experience came flashing back whenever she sees a basement.
Another case was that of a successful businessman who refused to flush the toilet. He would always ask someone to do that for him. His doctor found out that when he was a toddler, his nanny used to scare him to submission by submerging his head into the toilet bowl. He was terrified and abused by the nanny.
Children are born with no concept of fear and it makes them curious, candid, spontaneous and trusting of authority and elders. On the other hand, if children were not made aware of the existence of danger, how can they be protected from kidnappers, abductors/molesters, poisonous bites and all the bad elements that come in all shapes and sizes? Would there be a way to introduce the concept of fear without necessarily turning them to suspicious and cynical persons?
Try children’s books.
A bookstore in Melbourne called The Reader’s Feast has devoted a section on classics and new stories for toddlers and preschoolers that tackle fear in a restrained manner. The stories have just enough edginess to send a rustle of discomfort into those dainty lacy boots and buttoned overalls. The authors advocate the importance of recognizing danger, which only shows that even at a tender age, it pays to come prepared and be on guard.
The first is the poem of Mary Howitt about "The Spider and the Fly" with drawings by celebrated artist Tony DiTerlizzi who drew inspiration from the classic Hollywood horror movies of the 1920s and 1930s.
"Will you walk into my parlor?" said the Spider to the Fly. The spider continued to entrance the fly with the different parts of his house, but the fly demurely declined until the spider changed his tactics to work on the vanity of the fly. He complimented her good looks and told her of his beautiful looking glass that would show off her pearly and silvery wings, her brilliant eyes, her robes in green and purple and her diamond-bright eyes. The bait worked and the fly was caught in the spider’s web, thus proving the author’s 174-year-old warning against those who use "sweet words to hide their not-so-sweet-intentions."
The second book is about having dragons in your life (You’ve Got Dragons by Kathryn Cave and Nick Maland) explaining that one should keep one’s eyes wide open for dragons in all shapes and sizes; that dragons don’t look all the same and some dragons could mean us no harm. Such dragons should be honored and that children should meet and learn from them.
In summary, dragons are not as powerful as one would think because no dragon could be more powerful than oneself.
And the last is about everyday things that could be frightening (Some Things Are Scary by Florence Parry Heide and Jules Feiffer), like stepping on something squishy in your bare feet, seeing a big warning sign but you can’t understand what it’s saying, holding on to someone’s hand that isn’t your mother’s when you thought it was, being on a swing when someone is pushing too high, playing hide and seek and you are the "it" and you can’t find anyone, stepping down from something that is higher than you thought, climbing a tree and you don’t remember how to get down, etc.
The third book especially gave a warning that some things could petrify, no matter how old you are. "Telling a lie is scary, not remembering where you parked the car and worse, thinking that it was carnapped is scary, having your best friend move away is scary, getting scolded is scary, and knowing you’re going to grow up to be a grown-up is scary."
Add to this, starting a job, losing a job, standing before a panel of judges, witnessing your parents fighting, owning a credit card and charging beyond your capacity to pay, turning over a new leaf, getting married, raising children, forgetting things, growing old alone, and so on and so forth.
I heard a school teacher once tell a group of first graders that when the "fear monster" rears its ugly head, they only need to think of happy thoughts and watch the fear monster shrink into a tiny dot that one can brush off and shoo away.
How I wish that could work as well for scared-stiff grown-ups!
Would you own a music box that played a haunting melody with a ballerina doll twirling in a wall of mirrors?
The above were all drawn from Hollywood movies, but my answer would still have been a resounding nyet, zilch and zero.
A psychiatrist told a group of us that in real life, we each have our respective cache of "psychic debris" representing all the negative thoughts, fear and phobia that had affected and/or influenced us through the years. Some have forgotten and have locked the experience in the subconscious, but the memory could return if the mind was stimulated by some familiar object and/or personal encounter in the present time. Others have been permanently affected by the experience while in worse cases, some feed these fears up to their twilight years.
She gave us two examples.
A patient instinctively froze at the sight of musty-smelling basements. Under hypnosis, she recalled a dark episode in her life that happened when she was only six years old. Their gardener scooped her in his arms and brought her to the basement intent on doing something wicked and sinister to her. Thankfully, their housekeeper noticed her absence from the playroom and rescued her in the nick of time. That experience came flashing back whenever she sees a basement.
Another case was that of a successful businessman who refused to flush the toilet. He would always ask someone to do that for him. His doctor found out that when he was a toddler, his nanny used to scare him to submission by submerging his head into the toilet bowl. He was terrified and abused by the nanny.
Children are born with no concept of fear and it makes them curious, candid, spontaneous and trusting of authority and elders. On the other hand, if children were not made aware of the existence of danger, how can they be protected from kidnappers, abductors/molesters, poisonous bites and all the bad elements that come in all shapes and sizes? Would there be a way to introduce the concept of fear without necessarily turning them to suspicious and cynical persons?
Try children’s books.
A bookstore in Melbourne called The Reader’s Feast has devoted a section on classics and new stories for toddlers and preschoolers that tackle fear in a restrained manner. The stories have just enough edginess to send a rustle of discomfort into those dainty lacy boots and buttoned overalls. The authors advocate the importance of recognizing danger, which only shows that even at a tender age, it pays to come prepared and be on guard.
The first is the poem of Mary Howitt about "The Spider and the Fly" with drawings by celebrated artist Tony DiTerlizzi who drew inspiration from the classic Hollywood horror movies of the 1920s and 1930s.
"Will you walk into my parlor?" said the Spider to the Fly. The spider continued to entrance the fly with the different parts of his house, but the fly demurely declined until the spider changed his tactics to work on the vanity of the fly. He complimented her good looks and told her of his beautiful looking glass that would show off her pearly and silvery wings, her brilliant eyes, her robes in green and purple and her diamond-bright eyes. The bait worked and the fly was caught in the spider’s web, thus proving the author’s 174-year-old warning against those who use "sweet words to hide their not-so-sweet-intentions."
The second book is about having dragons in your life (You’ve Got Dragons by Kathryn Cave and Nick Maland) explaining that one should keep one’s eyes wide open for dragons in all shapes and sizes; that dragons don’t look all the same and some dragons could mean us no harm. Such dragons should be honored and that children should meet and learn from them.
In summary, dragons are not as powerful as one would think because no dragon could be more powerful than oneself.
And the last is about everyday things that could be frightening (Some Things Are Scary by Florence Parry Heide and Jules Feiffer), like stepping on something squishy in your bare feet, seeing a big warning sign but you can’t understand what it’s saying, holding on to someone’s hand that isn’t your mother’s when you thought it was, being on a swing when someone is pushing too high, playing hide and seek and you are the "it" and you can’t find anyone, stepping down from something that is higher than you thought, climbing a tree and you don’t remember how to get down, etc.
The third book especially gave a warning that some things could petrify, no matter how old you are. "Telling a lie is scary, not remembering where you parked the car and worse, thinking that it was carnapped is scary, having your best friend move away is scary, getting scolded is scary, and knowing you’re going to grow up to be a grown-up is scary."
Add to this, starting a job, losing a job, standing before a panel of judges, witnessing your parents fighting, owning a credit card and charging beyond your capacity to pay, turning over a new leaf, getting married, raising children, forgetting things, growing old alone, and so on and so forth.
I heard a school teacher once tell a group of first graders that when the "fear monster" rears its ugly head, they only need to think of happy thoughts and watch the fear monster shrink into a tiny dot that one can brush off and shoo away.
How I wish that could work as well for scared-stiff grown-ups!
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