Managing Fear in the Age of Distributed War

Silence on the other end of the line could mean the call dropped. I looked at the screen.

Nope, still showed a Seattle number. I waited.

A sigh, then Cindy’s exasperated voice:

“Let me get this straight.

You are the only foreigner in the village for miles.

You’re a female living alone, in a culture that doesn’t do that.

You’re the only one staying in a UN compound that has been evacuated for security reasons.

You’ve fired one driver for being unreliable.

You’ve exposed the landlord for corruption, so basically threatened a local power-broker.

You’re unarmed and carrying lots of cash.

And the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army based nearby gets drunk every night.

Holly! What is it about this level of risk that feels acceptable? Get out!”

My friend was right. What was I doing?

I had come to this part of Southern Sudan to get a field office built and staff hired in advance of a UN program to repatriate Sudanese refugees living in Uganda. A male colleague had been working on this project for a year with no progress–and I had come in strong, aggressively determined to pick up the pieces before we lost funding.

Meanwhile, tensions between local militia and the SPLA had turned violent. The UN had ordered its staff back to base in Uganda, where they were feebly (in my view) attempting to continue their work from afar. I could have done the same, but I was stubbornly refusing, knowing from experience that there was no way the project would be completed if I were not on the ground to hold people accountable.

But had I been too heavy-handed with my standards? Was I taking an unacceptable level of risk?

Operating unarmed in highly insecure locations requires thinking grounded in the reality of your vulnerability. My security comes from the local population. I need them to see me as valuable and sincere in my intentions to help them. This trust takes time to build. But time was limited.

Ultimately, I decided to utilize a different tactic: leverage protection from a local influencer. Not far from Wudu, there was a Comboni Mission with four nuns who ran a local school. The nuns were loved, and the school and gardens were highly valued by the local community. For the final month of the project, I was gratefully given hospitality at the Mission. It was a trade-off that enabled me to safely deliver my own mission (bonus, the nuns were a delight).

~~~

While I was raised in safety and comfort, over time, I learned to manage in scarcity and discomfort. In humanitarian work, fear was a daily factor. My experience in Southern Sudan made me realize if I was going to operate with fear as a daily member of the team, I needed a framework for decision making.

Eventually, I learned to manage it by recognizing a key distinction: The fear that raises the hair on the back of your neck–the kind that tells you where not to walk and who you can’t trust–saves your life. Listen to it, take action, and move through the fear to the light.

But then there’s the fear that invades and sets up camp inside your body. You know it when your chest feels tight for days, your stomach stays nauseous, and you mind won’t let you sleep. You’re in a state of living in fear because at a deep level, you know the odds are stacked against you. It’s toxic and distorts your perspective. Living in fear makes you a danger to yourself and to anyone who relies on you. If you find yourself living in fear, you must get out.

~~~

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen security tightening for Jewish and Muslim communities all over the world. With violence in the Middle East livestreamed 24 hours a day, this stark example of an identity-based conflict has reached into our lives through direct connection, compassion, and outrage. Whether you are Jewish, Muslim, Israeli, Palestinian, Democrat, Republican, or none of the above: all of us can see ourselves somewhere in the cast of characters on the frontlines. We can all relate to feeling scared for our personal and family safety. This tactic of terror is when fear becomes dangerous – not just personally, but globally. This is how localized conflicts become world wars. And it’s how global conflicts become localized violence.

Welcome to the age of distributed war.

Where rockets fired thousands of miles away threaten your family, co-workers, and community. More people than ever will feel helpless, angry, and for a dangerous few, called to action. More immediately, what can you do about it? What is the mental model for handling this situation?

Here’s a couple examples of these quandaries in action:

On the individual level: I have a Jewish friend whose son is in Jewish preschool. In the first week after the Hamas attack on Israel, security tightened at the school and she decided to keep him at home. However, this situation meant she couldn't serve her clients with full focus and her work and mental health began to suffer. She reached out to me with her dilemma: If a Jewish parent’s values are to have their child in a Jewish preschool to build Jewish pride, but they become overwhelmed by the fear of an antisemitic attack–what is the stronger value to uphold? Staying at the school and forcing themselves to embrace the risk? Or pulling their child from the school and being ok with the fact that they needed to put their feelings of security first in order to show up elsewhere in life with a clear head?

On an organizational level: Watch out for groupthink on boards and management teams, making reactionary decisions based on fear without thinking about long term impact. For instance: How much damage has been done the past few weeks by progressive organizations making quick statements that felt right in the moment but didn’t consider long term how it might affect their strategy, and wasn’t in line with their values?

Managing Fear to Live A Life On Your Terms

When we feel safe, we don’t have to think as critically. We don’t have to question if we are prepared for the unknown. Under threat, we are hard-wired to pick sides. We lose sight of nuance and context. In times of fear and uncertainty, the quality and clarity of your thinking equals the quality and clarity of your decisions. Thus, each one of us has a moral obligation to ourselves and the people we love and serve to ask: Is this fear keeping me alive and giving me a course of action? Or is this fear gnawing at me constantly, clouding my judgment, and not letting me see what choices and changes I need to make to live life on my terms?

Honing your instincts and intuition for survival is precisely the opportunity of this time. You won’t be able to fully calculate the threats you perceive. But you can calculate the impact of your choices on you.

To that end, here are the core questions I ask myself when I am feeling uncomfortable and having a hard time deciding whether it's time to stay or get out:

1. What is the tradeoff for the choices I am making to be here? Is that acceptable?

2. What is possible only because I am here? Am I willing to give that up?

Your answers to these questions can bring clarity to whether or not you are living within an acceptable level of risk–and how to move forward with a balance that feels in line with your values.

Need an outsider perspective to help you manage fear to live life on your terms? Let’s talk.

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