Habituation

[Facing Fear – I]

The nervous system decreases arousal on repeated exposure to a stimulus. If you tap your arm in the same spot long enough, you will find that it will go numb. Familiar stimuli is, well, familiar. It has to be. Hardwired into your genes is the the ability to redirect energy and attention to novel stimuli.

Habituation is critical when it comes to anxiety. Our first response to anxiety is to avoid it, or, at least, avoid what we assume is the cause of it. X stirs in me feelings of anxiety—do Y instead. The problem is that through avoidance, we are preventing our nervous system from habituating. X remains novel and therefore remains anxiety-inducing.

Avoiding anxiety short circuits the body’s natural way of dealing with (and overcoming) fear, and instead substitutes it for habits that actually maintain it.

Most change—personal or cultural—causes anxiety. It’s scary (and it’s okay to say that). Avoiding it is the best way that it will remain scary. We need responsible, compassionate, and often guided exposure to the cause of that fear. We need a type of habituation to the change we know is necessary but scares us the most.

For the next couple weeks, I will name (which is one of the first steps of exposure) what we fear most. Most of them are changes in the air, and most of them are proving to elicit anxiety in people like us that are unwilling to continue in ways like this.