#face the fear

[vintage-tigre]

[labelleizzy]

Sandstorm on Playa, 2015, my second Burn. Dust storm, really. It's crazy fine alkali dust, and when you get caught up in one, it can get dense enough to dim the sun. You hunker down, breathe slow and steady into your filter mask, keep your goggles on.

I was freaked out the first time, but as with anything else you get to practice dealing with, once you know how, you can just Deal With It. 😎

[crps-chronicpain-ptsd]

The struggle is real. The reality is confronting & hard to accept.

Chronic pain problems •

Dying burning struggling •

[theparentalmagazine]

[kickgrrl]

I really want to get jump spin kicks down, but my biggest fear, (and I wonder how many non but want to jump spin kickers are with me on this), my biggest fear is I'll fall over and randomly burst in to tears. I'm OK with looking silly, bruising, bit of a jolt.

BUT NOT WITH CRYING

[evolutioncounseling]

We tend to pay the least attention to the aspects of our situations that require the most attention. We pull this seeming contradiction off through the use of the various defense mechanisms, through repressing, projecting, or rationalizing the problem away until we’re only dimly aware it even exists. What’s interesting to note though is that everyone has their own psychological soft spots, their own areas of life they feel compelled to ignore. What’s assiduously avoided by one person is easily, almost effortlessly tackled and overcome by another. Therefore from our psychological point of view what compels us to ignore the aspects of our situations that urgently require our attention is not the individual content of the object being ignored but rather the specter of existential anxiety floating in front of it and blocking the way forward by inspiring those discomfiting feelings of dread. It’s this dread that diverts us from ever even approaching, let alone tackling and eventually overcoming, the problem. If a terrifying monster were looming above you in a dark alleyway what would you do? You’d probably run, and if you could run fast and far enough this survival strategy would work. When it comes to our continued physical existence, running away from the threat sometimes is the best way to reduce it. Our existential problem as human beings is that we’re not just biological animals we’re also spiritual animals. We live on two planes, the physical plane and the symbolic plane. As such we’re constantly seeking to turn the physical into the symbolic and vice versa. We unconsciously believe that what works for one can and should work for the other, that these two states of being, the physical and the symbolic, are easily transferable, that they’re one and the same thing actually. In the context of this article we humans often seek to apply the biologically programmed flight mechanism of the flight or flight response to our symbolic life problems, believing that the same strategy of running away in the face of physical danger can be effectively applied in the face of symbolic danger too. And in a way it is effective in that if we’re successful in repressing, projecting, or rationalizing away what’s going on for us then our existential anxiety is reduced. But in the symbolic realm the monster we’re running away from is all in our heads. The existential anxiety blocking the way from approaching those aspects of our existence that urgently need our attention usually doesn’t pose a threat to our physical survival. Therefore in the symbolic realm of human life the maxim ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself’ is excellent advice. When we face the fear head on and push through it, reminding ourselves that the monster poses no great threat to our physical survival, we find that the actual object behind the fear, the object we’ve been assiduously avoiding through the use of the various defense mechanisms, isn’t scary after all. With attention and effort it can be tackled and overcome.

[lesserjoke]

Book #150 of 2024:

Face the Fear by Chris Archer (Mindwarp #8)

This installment of the 90s middle-grade Mindwarp series moves the larger story forward, but as the second volume in a row to take place entirely in the dystopian future, it doesn’t feel especially distinctive. There’s less worldbuilding on display too, with the majority of the plot concerning the superpowered teenage protagonists sneaking into the enemy’s base to plant a bomb, rescue their friends, and hijack the time machine to return to their present. Slaughtering the Omegas en masse feels like a pretty major escalation of the stakes, since the heroes had previously only killed them individually in desperate self-defense, but as with the morality in having Ashley use her mitosis to create sacrificial clones of herself, it doesn’t really get examined or debated much here. I can’t help but compare this unfavorably to similar developments in K. A. Applegate’s Animorphs, which would have given rise to plenty of angst, guilt, and dread over the lack of an easy answer.

(It’s also wild that both cases do have everyday American teens carry out what any reasonable observer would have to call acts of terrorism, and that this novel in particular seems to blithely endorse the strategy. For a title that came out in 1998, one wonders how a delay of only a few years to post-9/11 might have impacted that storyline.)

I’m disappointed by the poor follow-through, which extends to the overall goal that the kids are pursuing at this point. Are they trying to get home just to resume their regular lives, or is there something they can do back there to avert this timeline in advance? Why bother striking a blow for the resistance by taking out the facility, if the whole scenario is going to be undone and prevented later on? Or if it’s not, why are they fleeing rather than sticking around to continue the fight and overthrow the inhuman conquerors? These are fairly basic questions of motivation and logistics that sadly don’t get addressed at all, and while that was understandable back when the characters were in the dark and the genre was an X-Files conspiracy thriller, it’s less acceptable now that they appear to have all the relevant facts to make informed decisions.

In the end, two-out-of-three missions succeed, destroying the target and leaving the good guys reunited with their classmates but still stranded in 2118. With only two books remaining, I’m hoping author Chris Archer has a satisfying conclusion planned, as this antepenultimate adventure ultimately doesn’t do much besides deliver some solid action thrills and incrementally shift the status quo.

★★★☆☆

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