Here’s how to define Manipulation through Fear,
Fear is used as a tool of manipulation to undermine belief in the personal capacity to thrive.
As an emotion, fear can be a full-body experience which creeps into every aspect of awareness. Without much effort, fear grabs the heart, clouds the mind, and tightens the body with dread and worried anticipation.
As the primary tool of manipulation by Power-Over, fear seeks to undermine self-worth and to question personal ability to create a safe, happy, and productive life. The manipulative bent of fear convinces that personal value is false and unobtainable, reinforcing fundamental doubt about self.
Often filtered through Mass Consciousness, fear is employed to coerce behavior and define emotion, with the intent to fuel the agenda of those exerting Power-Over.
Most importantly, fear questions the integrity and safety of the unknown, especially strangers and non-local groups. Fear is a master at separation, at dividing, at creating false barriers to connection.
Instilling fear as a control mechanism inhibits self-trust utilizing natural human awareness of consequence and connection within possible events and actions. The implicit worry of If-Then causation leads concern that the threat embedded in the fear will materialize, causing harm and disruption. While blame is focus primarily stuck in the past, fear glues attention to and action toward a future impotent in the moment. Attention pushed to what is not actual in the present moment deters response, dilutes capacity, and turns attention away from where personal agency is possible. In this motion, fear encourages the presence of self-absence.
If you aren’t careful.
If those people get their way.
If that political party wins.
If that isn’t stopped.
On and on, fear pushes at possibility and distorts truth in order to push behavior and thought in preferred directions. Even when the If-Then causation chain holds truth, fear pushes thoughtless reaction rather than thoughtful response.
Fear itself becomes habit and the go to motion to effect change. The future painted with fearful possibility becomes the norm and the expected motion. This conditioning makes it even more difficult to release and step away from every moment of life based on whatever the fear du jour might be.
To access the dynamic motion away from fear’s direct influence, here’s the release path:
Transform fear into personal resiliency.
Fear is best addressed by a willingness to give fear direct attention, challenge its assumptions, and receive its gifts so that personal response is not overwhelmed by implied threats and doomed possibilities.
Embraced within personal resiliency, fear can provide a moment of transformation where the worst possible becomes the foundation to create and embrace the best ever. To respond this way requires the ability to respond quickly and adapt in the face of adversity. This type of response also requires the opposite objective of manipulative fear – namely a belief in self-worth and self-trust.
Manipulation through Fear is an excerpt from my book, To Do Your Work. To read other excerpts from this work-in-progress, start here.
To learn more about the concepts within To Do Your Work, begin with this article: The Spiritual Practice of Personal Power.