I was terrified and this is how I stepped out of it
The Intelligence of Terror
Not many people know this about me but my family (maternal family specifically) survived what some call a genocide, some have called it mass exodus and others have called political unrest in Kashmir, India in late 1980’s. Growing up I heard stories from my cousins of the night they stayed hidden under their beds as teenagers holding ladles and utensils, given to them by their parents in case they needed it for self protection. Or countless references I heard from my grandparents reminiscing their old house with the apple trees and a big backyard that they fled from in a hurry leaving behind almost everything they had. When I think back, I remember “Refugee” and “Migration” were trigger words that used to set people off in unexpected ways which at the time I didn’t understand.
And honestly, I didn’t pay much attention to any of it then. I heard those stories and references, I was interested in their lives and asked questions. But my childhood and life experiences in the city where I grew up were very different. Hence, my perspective and sensitivity to this topic wasn’t, and still isn’t, as accurate.
As an adult, I felt I didn’t relate to this history as much as some of my peers did. I respect it and am grateful for my family and the rich culture. I definitely love the food, the people and the festivals. But I always felt that because my life experiences were different and I couldn’t relate to their experiences beyond stories. Until recently, when I experienced the terror that parallelized me and left me really realizing how naive I was to think that I wasn’t affected by this history very much.
A few weeks ago, there was an anonymous letter sent to an Indian person in Irving, TX (which is a city not too far from where I live) that expressed frustration at the presence of immigrants from certain countries and threatened harm to all people from those countries. I got a text from a family member alerting me to this and asking me to be careful. To be honest, I am more surprised at my own reaction than at the letter.
I felt an intense terror. I wanted to cry and run but I didn’t know where to. I could tell my fight or flight responses were turned on as my body became numb. My thoughts continuously went to my grandparents and my family’s experience, I wondered if history would repeat itself, I thought to myself how they must have felt, I started thinking of all the reasons why my life was in imminent danger, how I was getting signs from the universe including the random conversation I had with a friend earlier in the day about genocides and history. I was also sure that the car that paused briefly in front of our driveway was an ambush. It was an irrational fear but it was all consuming nevertheless.
This was the intelligence of terror.
Over the last few years, I have been persistently engaging in emotional intelligence and mindfulness trainings. After 30 mins or so, some of the things I had learnt started surfacing in the back of my mind. I heard a faint voice tell me, you are experiencing the emotion of terror. These thoughts are just the intelligence of terror. They are not real. After a couple of hours of going back and forth, I sat myself down for a meditation to calm my mind. I wouldn’t say I was able to shift out of terror from that but I was able to create enough distance between myself and the emotion of terror to know that I have the power here and how I choose to behave now will be crucial in defining the life I live.
Maya Angelou said, “You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot — it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.”
This applies to emotions too. As easy as it is to blame the situation and justify the terror that I was experiencing, I know that emotions are learnt. Someone else who had a different history, a different set of experiences, a different exposure to emotions would have reacted to the same situation very differently. Some might be indifferent to it and ignore it, some might experience rage and attack back, some might stay peaceful and some experience fear like me and want to run. In that moment, I had the opportunity to acknowledge that I was connected to my ancestral past in a much deeper way than I had realized, through the emotions that they had experienced and now I was experiencing. I was able to acknowledge that I am experiencing terror and this and 100 times worse is what my family and grandparents must have experienced in the past.
Acknowledging this emotion, gave me another opportunity. It gave me the opportunity to define who I choose to be going forward. I knew that the intelligence of terror is telling me to hide or run and I also knew that doing that is going to reinforce terror. So I asked myself what kind of a person do I want to be, and what emotion would I like to experience. Even though I couldn’t access these emotions at that moment, I wanted to experience courage, love and compassion. I wanted to be a courageous person who was logical but wasn’t scared into paralysis by a news article. I also knew I wanted to be a loving and compassionate person who believes in basic human goodness and oneness. I asked myself, what would that kind of a person think and how would she behave in this moment. In other words, what would be the intelligence of compassion, love and courage if I had access to it (The classic, fake it till you make it strategy). I told myself, “I would think the person who wrote this letter had a tough day. They were likely going through a lot. And for every one person who thinks this way, there are a thousand more who don’t. I also thought that I would ideally like to go for a walk right now because the weather is so nice outside”. Now these thoughts weren’t any more real than the all consuming thoughts of fear but they started moving me in the direction that I wanted.
The next step was the hardest step for me. I decided I am going to go for a walk around the neighborhood and enjoy this weather. It wasn’t easy to step out and I was really scared while I was walking. But by the time I finished walking, I felt less terror and more courage. The terror didn’t disappear completely. But I know I started the process of retraining it that day so I can experience more courage over time. Sometimes the hardest step is the most important one.
To be clear, I am not advising anyone to ignore threats and be less cautious, and I am also not saying threatening people is okay. I am using this example to point out the intelligence of emotions. Sometimes, we should listen to them and sometimes it serves us better not to. We all need to decide that for ourselves based on our situation, circumstances and intention. But I do believe that evaluating our current emotions should always be on the table.
I used to think fear is warning me that I shouldn’t do the thing in front of me. Pain means stop, right? I learnt over the last few years that that’s not always the case. Fear is warning me but it is warning me that something new is present so pay extra attention. I need to evaluate that something new and decide whether this is good for me or not. Like the pain from putting my finger on a flame is telling me to retract versus pain from working out is telling me you are building new muscles. The same way, we need to be able to interpret the meaning and subtleties of our emotions before we decide to act on its intelligence.
