Threat

What is a threat to you?

In the world right now and throughout human history, we have been under threat by many real and serious problems. War has plagued our species and with Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine, the early stages of WWIII are emerging which is a massive threat to all life on earth. Many might disagree about climate change but I do see it as a serious threat to life.

These are genuine physical and existential threats to everyone, but not all threats can be defined in this way.

A threat may not be physical violence with injury and death, it may not be a volcano erupting and blacking out the sun it may be something closer to you and more personal.

One threat that many of us experience comes from the very unpleasant feeling of jealousy. You may imagine your partner is cheating, or doesn’t feel the same as you or is simply getting attention from others and you get jealous of this. More often than not this is an imaginary threat you have invented due to your own insecurities, I have. The threat feels very real but it is not. Of course some partners do cheat and many couples don’t share the same feelings which makes the threat real to an extent, that’s if you perceive it as a threat or just a fact of life. Emotional involvement can easily amplify a threat level way beyond a concern to a personal catastrophe.

Many threats we perceive are invented entirely by ourselves. Recent years have shown this explicitly with the Covid-19 Pandemic. This event has not only had greater impact that pretty much anything in my lifetime it also generated more conspiracy theories than any event I can think of. The assassination of JFK, 9/11, Area 51 and Adolf Hitler combined have probably caused less outlandish ideas of what is happening in the world. Those who create these non-existent threats (microchips in vaccines, Government experiments) are likely feeling threatened generally and are seeing threats that are not there as they are in constant combat with the world. It’s less to do with mega-events like Covid than it is with internalised fear and trauma that materialises as ideas of how the world is.

Assuming what others think of us is another commonly invented threat. I know many people who assume others see their worst and it’s often not the case, what you are dwelling on is unlikely on the mind of others around you.

Religion is full of threats, do good or go to hell, it’s a sin to feel pride, the floods of Noah where god is so upset with humans he starts a fucking genocide.

Many of us feel threatened when someone questions us. This feeling of attack is often related to feelings of being attacked before, but someone questioning isn’t inherently an attack. We all need some resilience to these thoughts otherwise we will be at war with others at all times.

You might feel threatened by lack of money, or the possibility of losing your job or by climate change and in many cases these will become self-fulfilling prophecies. If you think you will lose your job you can easily make it happen by underperforming due to your anxiety. This is why it’s a positive move that we discuss mental health more than ever, particularly in the workplace but if you don’t discuss it you may just look like you aren’t good enough. The threat of people knowing you struggle will often stop us saying something. What if they judge me? What if I lose friends? What if my boss thinks I’m useless?

Lying to ourselves in big and small ways is common, it can be a safety mechanism but it is a temporary one. The lie may seem more comforting than the truth so its natural to do but lies lead to more lies and this is often when people believe things that are very untrue, like the earth being flat or Covid doesn’t exist. These lies create both real and imaginary threats and its your own doing. Being caught in a lie, even one designed to protect can be a threat to you in reality, because you can lose the trust others may have had for you.

Feeling threatened is horrible and whether it’s a threat of your own creation or a real one you will still feel fear, anger, despair and you may just want to escape. Maybe you’ll want to face the threat and deal with it but you need to know what the threat is before you can fight it. Can we fight climate change? With collective change we can. Can we fight an internalised fear of being judged by others? Yes we can. You might need help or you might be able to tackle it on your own but again it’s knowing what that threat is. If you know you’ve created it yourself then you can fight it.

Most of us have faced some real threats, maybe eviction from your home, maybe fighting at school, maybe being attacked at night. There is an ongoing problem for women, many don’t feel safe walking around at night. There have been a number of cases in the UK recently where women have been attacked, raped and killed in this scenario. Some just going home from work, some after a night out, some… well, it doesn’t matter because these things shouldn’t happen at all, at night or broad daylight. If all women think that all men are potential attackers, this is an imaginary threat because most men are not. However, it is a rational fear because it has happened in reality so the threat is real, but exacerbated by the imaginary side creating more fear.

Fear is a defence mechanism, it keeps us alert when at risk, it keeps us wary of dangers and it’s natural to kick in when we feel there is a chance of threat whether it comes or not. Being evicted is an every day problem but for a few people, being constantly scared of it would be irrational for me, but maybe if you have no real income it becomes a real threat. What is a real threat to women at night is not a real threat to myself as a man, the real threat of eviction for some is not as prominent for me. What puts one person at risk doesn’t put all at risk on a personal levels. The real threats to all of us are war, pandemics and climate change. But other real threats are less tangible, social problems, mental health, poor quality of life are real threats that are harder to quantify.

In my own life I saw threats as much closer to myself, bullies, poverty and relationships failing amongst others. I now know to overcome these threats is entirely down to me, whereas Climate change is one that is universal. I think more about the bigger threats to existence and society because I’m older and little wiser but have some perspective.

Being terrified of something new is normal but once you have lived through it and survived you may have built some perspective and resilience.

Threats can be more of a problem for some than others. You may have deadly allergies, physical disabilities, be in a cycle of abuse, suffering from a chronic condition or be in a social minority. Racism hasn’t been a threat to me in the way it has to black people, as a man, sexism hasn’t been a threat. We should understand that part of privilege is not being threatened. Just being born black or gay means society will threaten you, even more so if you live in a country that has laws criminalising your sexuality or institutional racism which is stopping you at every point. Knowing that others have different threats is important, I have worked in charities for decades and what we are essentially doing is helping people who are more threatened.

The term endangered species has been around for a while, and refers to an animal or plant that is in such low numbers that it’s at risk of dying out entirely. Additionally the phrase is typically used where human intervention has caused the risk to that species. Certain groups of people have been subject to their own species’ atrocities and faced extinction (Australian Aboriginals, Rohingya Muslims, Jews in WWII and many more) Genocide is something I’ve never had to face as a personal threat but many have. Imagine your entire race, your people are potentially going to die out? Despite our own fear of threat we seem to keep doing it to each other.

I’m sure I have made people feel threatened, particularly in the work setting as I say what I think and expect things to change for the better and I will do what it takes. This relentless approach to positive change is often seen as threatening to others, quite often because it’s simply a change and people fear change. Disrupting the status quo is for me a positive thing but for many others it is a threat to their way of existing.

People who feel threatened frequently will often find it hard to imagine better outcomes, by being able to do this it makes it easier to manage things you see as risks. It’s not an easy thing to change but it essentially means rationalising something. If I thought I was at risk of being fired from my job I would rationalise it by looking at my performance and seeing if there is any reason to think it. If you are neurotic generally this is really hard to do and it’s easy to focus on the negatives, they always seem more pertinent than the positives, you need to address a problem but good things can be left aside. Threats stand out purely because they trigger fear and anxiety and can overwhelm you with negative thoughts even when the majority of your life is good. Phobia is a word thrown around often when it’s not appropriate but those who do suffer from phobia (an irrational fear of something) are often feeling this way due to trauma and knowing something is irrational doesn’t stop you feeling it. These usually take years of therapy to work through. It is an imaginary threat but the feeling is very real for those who struggle with phobias. Many mental health conditions are related to fear and thinking threats are real when they aren’t (paranoid schizophrenia, OCD, various mood disorders all can have this feature) And these can cause people to react in extreme ways.

We cannot remove threat from our lives, climate change is real, Covid-19 is real and Putin has certainly attacked Ukraine. Do I sit here in fear of Putin attacking the UK, or Covid-19 coming back? No, but I know they can and I can rationalise my reactions. This is all we can do, is control how we respond. For those of us who sense imaginary threats the response needed is the same. It’s about how you respond to the threat, how you cope with it and rationalise it. Unfortunately women do need to be careful at night and black people do need to be worried about institutional racism but we can respond as a society to these things to remove the threats that shouldn’t exist.

We don’t have to worry about being eaten by wild animals and most of don’t live under volcanoes that are about to erupt and we now have technology that can warn us and subsequently reduce the risk related to the threat. This is a rational response to an irrational action (living beneath a volcano). I can’t say there is a rational response that will remove the threat of Putin, I hope there is and I hope we can collectively find a rational response to the threat of climate change and institutional racism amongst other societal and existential threats.

Some may argue that being threatened keeps you alert and forces us to address issues but I think the world would be better if we did face less dangers whether they are real ones or not.