Things That Scare Us

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5/8/20 - From snakes, to ocean waves, to people's unstated political ideologies, we talk about our fears. Plus, journalist Eva Holland on how fear lives in the body and her new book where she unwinds trauma, phobia, and grief.

Transcript below.

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Spotify.

CREDITS

Producer: Gina Delvac

Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman

Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn

Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.

Associate Producer: Jordan Bailey

Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed

Merch Director: Caroline Knowles

Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci

Design Assistant: Brijae Morris

Ad sales: Midroll

LINKS

10 Things That Scare Me podcast

Mary HK Choi’s podcast Hey, Cool Life!

Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear by Eva Holland

The Monarchy of Fear by Martha Nussbaum

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TRANSCRIPT: THINGS THAT SCARE US

[Ads]

(0:45)

Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.

Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.

Aminatou: Ah! I'm Aminatou Sow.

Ann: I'm Ann Friedman. So today we're talking about fear and our guest a little bit later in the show is the journalist Eva Holland who has a new book out called Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear which feels kind of timely.

[Theme Song]

(1:25)

Aminatou: Hi!

Ann: Hi friend.

Aminatou: Hi, it's a rough day over here. How's it going?

Ann: I'm doing okay. You know, minute-to-minute, day-to-day I guess is the answer. I feel like my temptation is like when I am texting friends to check in or whatever to ask for the like how is this week so far? Or really limiting the amount of time because it's just such a . . .

Aminatou: How are you right now, this moment?

Ann: Yeah, how is right now, this moment for you?

Aminatou: Right now this moment for me is rough but the show must go on so let's do it.

Ann: A friend of mine posted something this week about how like people who usually cope with their anxieties or uncertainties by making plans are really struggling right now and I was like wow, suddenly all of my intense meal planning, all of my work to-do lists which are always a thing, like I do those things all the time, like forever an editor, but the level to which I am committed to them right now and relying on them was really thrown into some relief. So my answer is how am I doing? I am making extensive plans about kind of low-stakes things that I can control. I think that's my most accurate answer. And I'm making some really ridiculous meals. That's my other answer. [Laughs]

Aminatou: Oh man, Ann, that sounds delicious and cozy and once again I am sad not to be quarantining with you.

Ann: Ugh, I am also sorry you're not quarantining with me. Today's episode topic is like -- well maybe a bummer, maybe not. I can't decide.

Aminatou: I am not bummed out by it.

Ann: So today we're talking about fear and our guest a little bit later in the show is the journalist Eva Holland who has a new book out called Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear which feels kind of timely but also maybe not? Maybe it's just always?

Aminatou: I know. I was excited to listen to you do this interview because I feel the same way. I was like am I interested in fear because of right now or am I also someone who is always interested in all the things I'm afraid of? And I think for me the latter is more true. I am a person who is afraid a lot and also someone who loves to be afraid so it's, you know, it's like two sides of the same demented coin.

Ann: Have you listened to the WNYC Ten Things That Scare Me podcast?

Aminatou: No, no.

Ann: We maybe talked about it before.

Aminatou: No. Tell me about this podcast.

(3:52)

Ann: Well I'm kind of -- I sort of want to rip it off a little bit and do it with you here because the premise is that they have guests who are sometimes like known, famous people and sometimes just average New Yorkers who are not famous record themselves listing ten things that scare them. And one reason I find -- one reason I love it is it's very short. You can kind of like listen to a little one at the end of some other podcast you've listened to, just tack it on. But I also love the fact that it showcases different ways that people interpret afraid of, you know?

So for example some people will say I'm scared of spiders and stubbing my toe or whatever and someone else will be like I'm scared by the reality that everyone I love will die. You know what I mean? [Laughs] Like it's a real spectrum of answers. So should we play? Do you want to list?

Aminatou: Yes let's do it. Tell me -- I have not written my list down so it'll, you know . . .

Ann: Me neither. Well maybe we should trade off.

Aminatou: Okay. I am very, very, very afraid of snakes.

Ann: Like the Indiana Jones pit of snakes? [Laughs]

Aminatou: I'm not one of those people that's afraid of spiders or whatever. It's not the bug factor of it all; it is the specific . . . like it's the specificity of the snake itself. I don't like that it slithers. I think I maybe watched Anaconda too young as a kid and there was this Indian film that my cousins made me watch when I was like a baby about a cobra that was basically attacking everyone and I think that is the root cause of my fear of snakes. I have seen snakes in person. It was not as dramatic as I thought it would be but it's not a thing that I'm down for. I don't even like seeing the snake emoji so I'm going to put that in the fear category.

Ann: Mine which I sort of realized kind of late in life is I'm scared of ocean waves. I'm not scared of being in the ocean. I'm not scared of even like deep ocean or the idea of oh, I'm swimming off the side of a boat somewhere where I can't . . . I know the floor is way beneath me and I'm way, way up suspended. I am more scared of the idea that the waves are just relentless and they keep coming.

(6:00)

And it's been an interesting in the last decade of my life fear that developed probably because I did not interact with waves or ocean at all like for the first 20 years of my life. But I also now have nightmares related to it.

Aminatou: Wow.

Ann: Like my stress dreams are always tsunamis and I feel like it is not unrelated to me being scared to like dive under the waves.

Aminatou: That's -- wow, that's a heavy one.

Ann: Is it? I don't know. I guess like . . . but I also . . .

Aminatou: I mean afraid enough that it also gives you anxiety dreams I think I would put in the heavy category. And I also think that it's -- like my worst kind of fear is a thing that you enjoy doing, like an aspect of it being scary. So like swimming or being out in the ocean, that's awful.

Ann: It's funny, I don't think that's my brain being like I'm so scared of waves that you're having dreams about it. It's more like when I'm anxious about something else that manifests as a wave if that makes sense. Like I'm anxious because I have deadlines or like I'm having a problem in a relationship I care about or I'm feeling really stressed and the way I experience that is as a wave. I don't know, it's a weird thing. It's also I'm interested in it because like I said it's not . . . unlike your kind of snake childhood phobia it feels like it's come up for me later in life.

Aminatou: Fair.

Ann: What about you? You want to go again?

Aminatou: This one is interesting.

Ann: I love this game.

Aminatou: I love this game because it's making me think -- I'm thinking so much about what the meaning of fear actually is, you know, because my late in life thing that has crept up is I have become a really bad flyer and I've watched it get worse as I was a teenager then later in my 30s it is just out of control. Now am I afraid enough of flying that I'm not on a plane? No. I'm on a plane all the time so it's actually nuts that I'm afraid of flying. [Laughs] I did have one time where I was so terrified I didn't get on the plane, like I was having anxiety about that and something else and I was at the gate and I just decided to get on the plane. But, you know, I would say that that's a pretty good track record for someone who claims to be as afraid of flying as I am. But it's just, you know, I don't know what it is. It's like the turbulence freaks me out. The various noises freak me out. It's probably also low oxygen and existential dread at the same time, you know? Being in the tin can in the sky. There's no way that you can just like think about yourself floating 40,000 feet above the earth and not start to think about your life in some sort of ways. [Laughs]

(8:30)

So this one is interesting and I have a couple of different coping mechanisms for it. This fear is the one fear that I like -- I will really try to rein it in because otherwise it will hamper my lifestyle in a serious way. So, you know, I went to therapy for it. I have apps on my phone for it. It's a thing that I'm consciously always trying to work on as a fear. And I would say to varying degrees of success. Now in the pandemic I was like I don't ever want to get on a plane again and I imagine my next flight will be interesting. This one is weird. It's like developed later in life. I would say that it's pretty bad. I have like a physical reaction to it but also I'm like I'm still doing it so unclear.

Ann: It's funny you mentioning also this pandemic moment. One thing that I am very aware of right now that I'm afraid of is I have to work very hard to not let myself spin out into these kind of worst possible future long-term scenarios. And I'm talking about like reading some news about voter suppression or election officials failing to account for this moment when they think about making changes to how people are going to vote or rather not making changes. And then I start to spin out to oh my god, what if there's no presidential election at all and this is how this horrible Cheeto becomes a dictator? You know what I mean? I really go to the very not implausible but I would say I have tried to keep myself from thinking about the chain of events that could happen based on things that are happening right now.

(10:10)

And that's always true, right? Like you can always do a chain of events based on current events that looks horrible and apocalyptic and even worse than it is right now. And I think that for me that has just never been a more present hazard maybe. It's a lot harder for me to tap into a place where I'm like oh, this is how we get a bunch of social safety net programs or something like that. [Laughter] Like my mind is not going to that scenario which is, you know, not 100% implausible that that could happen but ugh, yeah.

Aminatou: My policy baby, I love it.

Ann: [Laughs] I mean yes and also, you know. I was watching a PBS Nova documentary about the planets all about how Venus and greenhouse gases have created a hellscape and I had to turn it off because I was like the future of Earth is a Venusian hellscape. [Laughter] Like really that is not a normal part of my personality. Normally I can watch space documentaries without spinning out so I know there is something happening with fear and loss of control and the chaos of this moment in my mind even if I am trying to suppress it.

Aminatou: That's so real Ann. That's so real. [Laughs] Like I want to laugh about it but I'm like yeah, I can't handle that documentary.

Ann: Okay, but shout-out to PBS Nova. I love that they interview actual scientists. [Laughs]

Aminatou: I know. PBS has been my lifeline these days. It's the best. Okay, I don't quite know how to explain this fear but it is . . . like I am always afraid that I don't know what's going on not in the sense of like . . .

Ann: [Laughs] Sorry. Sorry to laugh at your fears.

(11:55)

Aminatou: I know Ann, can you please take my fears seriously?

Ann: I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

Aminatou: You can laugh because really I'm rambling and I'm trying to really get to the bottom of it. It's not that I don't trust the people in my life, like in my interpersonal relationships, but I guess I just do not trust that people are being -- and by people I mean society -- is being honest. And so this fear for example is like . . . this fear manifests in Donald Trump winning an election or Brexit. It's not like I'm some sort of naïve, progressive oaf who thinks everything will go my way. In fact I'm always shocked when things go my way. But I think that there are certain political events that happen that make me deeply distrust my own instincts and the trust in the social fabric. Like I don't know how to qualify that. That's what makes me spin out all the time is when I'm reading political polls or whatever and people in Ohio are like "Yes we would like to reopen the economy." This poll is made up obviously. [Laughter]

You know, or people in another country are like "Yes, white nationalism! Bring it back to me." I'm like it's 2020, why are we backsliding? Why does society look one way on paper then when people go in voting booths they make other kinds of choices? And I think that this fear is tied into the fact for me that I try to be fairly transparent and I am always assuming that everyone is operating on the same kind of transparency level as me and I find -- consistently I find that is not true.

Ann: It's interesting. I have a related fear but I feel like maybe the contours of it are a little bit different and it's that I share that sentiment of like I just don't know what's going on but for me it's less about maybe what I think the world is versus like how voters reveal it to me and more about how -- it's more related to just bubble effect right? Where I'm talking to my friends and we all agree that white nationalism is really not a good look. [Laughs] But then I realize or I know that that is not true of everyone and those are people who, you know, are so far -- are removed from my experience to such a degree, you know what I mean? Like there is something about that fear of I have no desire to go back to a way of operating in this country where there are six national news outlets and everyone's all watching them together and those people control the narrative for everyone. That does not sound good to me. But the flip side of complete polarization and there is nothing that is truly agreed upon also is a source of fear and I really -- I think at the heart of it it's about not knowing what a middle ground looks like, like a productive and positive middle ground to those two things.

(14:55)

I will say one interesting thread in this book, Eva Holland is really on a quest to kind of get rid of some of her fears. She has a fear of heights. She has a fear of car accidents. She has a lot of fears related to losing her mother and people who are close to her. You know, not wild, out there phobias, like pretty common things that people are scared of, and she's really trying to cure herself of those fears. I really found myself wondering as I was reading the book like isn't this just a necessary part of being a thinking, feeling, empathetic human? Like what's the point of trying to cure ourselves of all fears? And that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to treat trauma or things like that. I'm not trying to be that overarching about it. But I do feel like the kind of fears we're talking about now are a result of being human beings who are in the world.

Aminatou: Whew. I remain very excited to listen to this interview. I think it's interesting to hear you go through the list of things she's afraid of, you know, the people dying and heights or whatever. And every one of those that you said I was like oh yeah, I'm afraid of that or I think I'm afraid of that or I've been afraid of that at some point in my life. Like heights is always a thing that I forget I'm afraid of heights until I'm somewhere very . . . like I do the whole trek then I'm on a hike somewhere and it's like oh, I'm actually afraid. Why did I forget this? [Laughter] Then it's a miserable -- the last switch back is always the most miserable because at that point I'm fully tapped into the fear.

(16:25)

But, you know, I guess I'm just thinking of it so much as fear being something you can overcome and also something that can have either an outsize impact on your life or something that you can learn to be in control of. And so the fears that are being born in this moment of pandemic, I wonder how long they're going to last, you know? Is it something for the rest of my life am I going to have these same fears? Or will this moment pass then I'm going to be scared shitless of something else? Unclear.

Ann: I know. Or whether it is a moment to overcome certain things because we will be so happy to be out in the world again. Like when I do silly Instagram Live dance classes alone does that mean I'll be less afraid of doing group-coordinated exercise in the future? Stay tuned. I don't know. [Laughter]

Aminatou: I want this fear gone for you and for me very selfishly.

Ann: Ugh, I really . . . we don't know. We don't know what's going to happen.

Aminatou: Right, we don't know. But also, yeah, also I think that so much of it is I'm interested in how you conquer those things. Like how . . . and so much of the battle really is recognizing what the fear is and then coming up with a plan for it. But I think that I'm also interested in this conversation because I think that there's still a lot of shame around things that people are afraid of. I think we all understand that we all have fears but you feel so alone in them sometimes that talking through them with other people makes you realize that oh, it's actually pretty common and also there's maybe a way out of it.

(17:55)

Ann: Right. Or that it feels stupid and frivolous, right, to be afraid of the thing you're afraid of.

Aminatou: Right.

Ann: Like my aforementioned dance class fear. [Laughter]

Aminatou: Listen, when this is all over you and I are going to a dance class. That's what I want. That's what I want for my birthday next year, thank you.

Ann: I wish you could see how my body just constricted much like a large snake. [Laughter]

Aminatou: No! Not a snake reference!

Ann: But no truly pitting my desire to celebrate your birthday against my desire to never try to attempt coordinated moves in a room full of people, I can't decide if it's genius or cruelty.

Aminatou: Wow, let's see it. Will they make it through year 11? Stay tuned. [Laughter]

Ann: I don't know, do you want to listen to this interview?

Aminatou: I do want to listen to this interview.

Ann: Okay. Let's take a break then I'll be back with Eva Holland.

[Ads]

(21:35)

[Interview Starts]

Ann: Eva thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Eva: Thank you for having me.

Ann: I realize that I'm doing a very like chipper hello and intro for a conversation about fear but it also feels like maybe that's the . . . I don't know, maybe that's an appropriate attitude. I have like a whole range of emotions about fear after reading your book. Maybe start at the end and talk a little bit about how you are thinking about your book in this particular pandemic moment.

Eva: It's been a very interesting time to have just completed this project. Obviously various other words besides interesting might be appropriate there too. But yeah, I've been thinking a lot about having spent two years learning about fear systems in our bodies and now I'm like lying awake at night listening to my heart race. At the very least I understand what's happening. [Laughs]

Ann: Yeah, and maybe you can -- what is going on in all of those bodies?

Eva: You know, your chest tightens. Your heart races. Your pupils dilate. Your muscles contract. You might get goosebumps. It's your body getting ready to respond to this incoming threat and that is essentially what fear is. Fear is both that physical response and then secondarily what happens is we become aware of our body's preparation for the threat and that's when the emotion occurs when we say I'm scared.

Ann: You have this line in the very beginning of your book where you say in almost this confessional way "I can't say I'm perfectly in control of my fears." And I honestly had this fight where like it didn't even occur to me that one could be in control of their fears at all let alone perfectly. Like it didn't even feel possible. I'm wondering if you could speak to that, like this feeling of wanting to be in control of them or have a handle on them and talk a little bit about what you did to try to get there.

(23:40)

Eva: Yeah. I guess I never expected to be perfectly in control either but I think what I was shooting for was to no longer experience a total loss of control. So I had had these various sort of panic attacks and meltdowns around heights over the years and then I was experiencing these flashbacks and intrusive thoughts and sort of visions of doom when I was driving after a series of car accidents. And I just -- I didn't want to have almost out-of-body experiences for my fear anymore and I . . . it was, well, you know, it was very meta but it was frightening to have that level of -- to have fear have that level of power over me to the point of what felt like endangerment.

So what I did on sort of two tracks is I addressed the trauma from my car accidents with a therapy called EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, that was recommended to me by some feelings professionals that I know. And it was really, really effective for me. No trauma treatment is effective for everyone and they're most effective when the trauma is relatively uncomplex so my issue was clearly tied to cars, specifically driving cars on highways in icy or wet conditions. So that was relatively straightforward to untangle as opposed to maybe a more complex childhood trauma that relates to your household or something like that. It's harder to sort of target those memories.

And on the other track with the heights thing I tried various things and it was a bit trickier. I tried sort of a DIY exposure therapy program with rock climbing. I did try skydiving which was highly ineffective. Shock and awe is not an appropriate form of exposure therapy as it turns out generally. And I did an experimental drug treatment in Amsterdam that seems to have gotten more traction. So I came a lot further than I expected to to be honest.

Ann: Those two examples are obviously throughout the book but the other experience of fear that is really the through line in the book is about you losing your mother. It feels a little bit to me like . . . it feels fundamentally different than something like cars and heights. You know, in a way because it's true there's the threat that anyone can be injured at any time in a car accident but it is a guaranteed thing that we will all lose someone who matters to us so intensely. And I'm just wondering about your feelings about -- not to go back to this question about categories but thinking about this idea of being in control of a fear when it comes to something that is maybe a little bit more tied to the experience of being a human being like love and loss.

(26:40)

Eva: That's one where there's no plausibility of control right? There's no . . . there's no way that that's something you can have sway over the possibility of loss. It's not even a possibility; as you say it's a guarantee. And so in that case the progress that I guess I made was just understanding grief more fully than I had before not having -- you know, I had lost my grandparents and various other people but I hadn't lost somebody that close to me before my mom.

And so the lesson there wasn't really about control or learning some kind of calming technique or anything like that; it was just understanding how grief works and going through it and coming out the other side and saying okay, now you know what this is like and you know you can go through it. And yes you will lose more people in the future but you'll get through that too because you know what this ride looks like now.

Ann: I mentioned this on a previous episode of the podcast because I keep thinking about it but Mary Choi does a podcast called Hey Cool Life and she had a rumination on this moment of pandemic where she realized that she was kind of preemptively grieving. And this was like fairly early on in the kind of progress of this thing and it was very literal in the sense of, similar to the way you write about your preemptive fears of losing your mother, but it was also, you know, she sort of realized like a real-time grieving for things that were already very different. I'm wondering how you feel about that idea of fear as a preemptive grieving or the idea that maybe you can save yourself from future pain by trying to experience some of it in advance. That's one thing she talked about that really resonated with me as someone who likes to feel like I'm on top of things, you know? Like okay, if I consider this as a possibility then it can't hurt as much when it actually happens right? And I'm wondering about that aspect of fear and what your research on that had to say.

(29:00)

Eva: Right, yeah, we try to think our way through these things right? Like if we can game them out somehow. And I did that a lot when I found out my mom had had her stroke but before we turned the life support off. I spent -- well I had 36 hours to try to get to the hospital from the other side of the continent and I spent a lot of that time sort of convincing myself that the worst was going to happen. And where some people might, I suppose, have an instinct to convince themselves that it would be okay I was sort of trying to inoculate myself against what I assume was going to happen. And I think there's probably some value in that kind of visualization but you can also terrorize yourself with that stuff I suppose.

Ann: Speaking of visualizations I also wanted to ask you about dreams. You know, there's a part of the book where you talk about our dreaming brains and sort of the way we remember or interpret dreams as something that can kind of fuel our fears or confirm them. And I would love to hear you talk about that a little bit.

Eva: I read Alice Robb's book Why We Dream while I was working on this book and I have never had an experience of lucid dreaming but I really appreciated her point that even though science says that dreams are fairly random and the ones that seem meaningful it's because we remember them but we discard thousands of others that wouldn't seem applicable she still sort of validated that heft that they can have. You can wake up and just have a dream that really stays with you.

(30:45)

I had so many dreams connected to my mom after she died and it felt like a real part of my processing and I kept coming across ways in which sleep and dreams seemed to be connected to trauma and memory and how we resolve phobias. I don't feel like I figured it out as much as I would like to in the book but it felt like this kind of pulse under the surface.

Ann: I want to ask you about -- it kept occurring to me as I read your book there's this trope in a lot of movies that there is a . . . usually the protagonist who's "afraid of everything." You know, a person who's afraid of life, who's driven by their fears, and the arc of the movie is about them meeting and falling in love with someone or having a near-death experience or something that turns them into a person that takes risks and then that's kind of like the moral arc of the movie. I'm curious about you do mention in a few places of the book obviously not everyone experiences fear in the same way or in the same quantities and it has to do with a lot of other things in your background and your experiences. But I'm wondering about this idea of there being a cultural value in being a person who's not afraid of anything. I feel like that's a very self-helpy notion and I'm wondering what you think about that.

(32:15)

Eva: Yeah. I think that there's this phenomenon for sure where we praise courage and we praise fearlessness. You know, she's so fearless. That's a compliment right? And there's sort of shame and embarrassment or at least sort of minor public embarrassment wrapped up in being afraid of things or admitting you're afraid. We're supposed to be gutsy. We're supposed to go for it. You know, carpe diem. And I really -- I mean I think one thing that working on the book did for me as much as maybe I overcame some fears or whatever we want to describe that as is I sort of stopped feeling like it was embarrassing to be afraid. I'd spent so much time being just mortified by this part of me and I'm kind of over it. I'm kind of like no, yeah, I cry sometimes. What of it? [Laughs]

And I hope that that catches on a little bit, you know? And not just with stuff that like . . . stuff that can seem kind of superficial like a very specific phobia but with trauma and anxiety as well. We spend a lot of time trying to tough things out I feel like. I don't know, I don't know that there's a lot of value in that.

Ann: Right. And so in your mind and given everything you know based on your research on the brain and body what is a better way to approach some deep-seeded fear rather than a tough it out? Or like just try to get over it.

Eva: I mean I should say being in a constant state of heightened fear is not good for us. Like it's not good for your body to be in that kind of adrenaline mode. So when I say that it's sort of okay to be afraid I'm not saying we should all just walk around being anxious all the time. But I think that just . . . for me at least my panics and my responses were always heightened by the shame and the embarrassment. You know, people would come along and I would freak out more because I was like oh god, now I'm going to freak out in front of these people and it's just going to get worse and worse, sort of a spiral.

Ann: Right. Like having your fear witnessed as part of the fear itself?

(34:40)

Eva: Absolutely, yeah. And so I think to the extent that we can kind of accept these responses as something to maybe breathe through, you know, feel it, let it pass, whatever the case may be for you and your specific circumstance, I think if you can kind of not try to bury it so much that it bursts out of you every which way but just sort of allow it I guess to an extent, I think that helps. That certainly helps me. Trying to squelch it never did me any good. All it did was make things worse.

Ann: I'm hearing you say there's a difference between the squelching or trying to squelch it and the desire to move past it.

Eva: So I think it comes back to when we were talking about control earlier. Squelching it is like this sort of desperate attempt at control and it can feel like you're sort of, I don't know, like trying to run on a really shiny floor or something and you can't get any traction because you can't control these reactions perfectly. And so I think dealing with it is more about understanding the reaction, maybe trying to preempt the reaction. You know, the exposure therapy program I did was about trying to stop -- you start to do the thing that scares you and you stop before you freak out. Then the next time you try to go one step further.

(36:05)

So the classic is if you're afraid of elevators maybe one day you go and you look at an elevator. And the next day maybe you take one step closer to that elevator. And the next day maybe you stand on the threshold of the elevator. And the idea there is to do all that without freaking out so you're not squelching a panic. You're building a pattern of resilience and a way of avoiding the panic in the first place. Because once the panic starts in my experience it can't be squelched mid-panic. So a lot of these treatments are about learning to avoid sort of sending your brain down that path. It's about having tools I guess to manage our reactions, preempt them, or avoid inflaming them further.

Ann: I'm curious about how you have been experiencing fear as it relates to this pandemic moment.

Eva: I was really scared early on when things were at their most uncertain. I was sort of terrified. You know, when sort of Italy was getting hit and it felt like all of North America was like now what? And I was thinking, you know, what if my dad and my stepmom both die? What if my stepdad dies? What if everyone I know over 70 dies? I was never really afraid for myself but I had a lot of fear and I had a lot of fear about some of the remote communities around where I live in northern Canada and Alaska. Those communities are so vulnerable. Very limited medical infrastructure. You know, elders who are language keepers.

(37:55)

And I just had these, in addition to worrying about family and loved ones, I had these visions of just -- just catastrophe in these communities. And I've calmed down with time as each sort of possible uncertainty has resolved. Even though things are really bad in lots of ways, you know, I feel more calm with more information and less uncertainty. I know that my parents are at risk but I also know that they are being more careful than some boomers. Action to mitigate the threat can help us calm down. The worst moment is I think that moment of just fear and uncertainty where you're just waiting for the blow, you know?

Ann: Well and that's kind of why I ask about it too I think for myself. It's very difficult to separate. I mean fear is totally rational in this moment I think but also ask some questions about like who's really at risk here? And sort of a fear of a change or an impending change. But then also this fear that things will be forever as they are in this moment. You know, the fear that actually things won't ever change. And I think that for me I've undergone a bit of a shift from fearing change is coming to fearing that this is the status quo. You know, I've kind of made a shift. And maybe I'm kind of reading into that as a recurring theme of your book but I don't know if you have thoughts on that as well, like the fear of a shift versus fear of never, ever seeing a shift again.

Eva: No I think that makes sense. I think that is in there, you know? After my mom died people told me I wouldn't be as sad as I was forever and I was like I don't believe you, you know? This is how I am now. I'm a miserable person. And they were right and I was wrong but that's a hard thing to convince yourself of in the moment, right? In the moment of fear or dread or sadness or anger. It's like how is this ever going to go away?

(40:10)

And yeah, I think that's a real fear. And I think you're right that that was a theme because I was afraid that my reactions to -- I wasn't just afraid that I would be sad forever about my mom, I was also afraid my reaction to heights would never change and my reaction to driving would never change and that I was just going to be stuck this way.

And I was wrong on all three of those counts but it's harder to convince yourself of that when the feelings that we're experiencing right now are because of -- aren't just internal to yourself, they're because of what's happening in society all around you so it gets harder to say of course this is temporary when we don't know. Like man, I miss going to bars. And I say that not in a problematic relationship with alcohol way but just in like I miss going to the bar with my friends and we don't know how long it'll be until we get to do that again. It might be a really long time. And that comes back to the preemptive grief stuff is it's hard to separate how much we're feeling right now is fear and how much is grief. They're so tightly connected.

Ann: Right. I'm wondering if there is sort of a parting sentiment that you have that feels appropriate for this moment and the fears that it is, you know, rationally or irrationally stoking.

(41:40)

Eva: You know, when all this started people were like "Oh your book about fear is going to be so timely." And it felt too dark to say it out loud early on and maybe it's still a dark thing to say but I was kind of like ugh, I think the grief parts might be as relevant as the fear parts to what's coming. I do feel like I learned how to grieve over the course of working on the book and I guess what I learned is that grief is not something to be scared of the way I had been terrified of it because my mom's grief for her parents was so complicated by all kinds of other factors like being shipped off to boarding school and not being allowed to go to the funeral and all this sort of stuff.

And so I really had this vision of grief as catastrophic but grief can be kind of wonderful right? And it's hard but it's important and it's natural and so I've kind of let go of my fear of the grieving process and I guess I wish for other people to be able to let go of some of that fear too because we're certainly all headed for a grieving period here in one way or another.

Ann: Or we're already in it.

Eva: Yeah.

Ann: Eva thanks for being on the show. It was a real pleasure.

Eva: Oh thanks for having me Ann.

[Interview Ends]

Aminatou: I can't wait to read this book now.

Ann: Ugh, well I can't wait to see you on the Internet far, far from the crashing waves and snakes and existential dread about this moment.

Aminatou: Oh man. Oh, one more book that I'm going to plug to you before we leave though is remember how at the top of the hour we were mentioning our fear of not trusting people politically or whatever?

Ann: Mm-hmm.

Aminatou: I want to recommend a book that is not about that at all but is kind of related. [Laughs] That just made me think of it. It's called The Monarchy of Fear and it's by the philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum. It's a very, very, very small tome so I think everyone should read it but it really is about -- it's about what the right way to be angry is and what Americans are afraid of. And so there's a lot in it that I'm just like ugh, you know? Philosophical debates are hard for me because #college but I will always write for a woman philosopher. And also I do think it is very, very, very instructive to think about fear as Martha Nussbaum writes about the 2016 election basically making everyone feel like fear was suffusing society. And she just has this beautiful argument about how fear is ubiquitous in human life. It starts when we're really young because of the what she calls primal state of helplessness which I think I'm constantly in.

Ann: [Laughs] It's a lifestyle really.

(44:25)

Aminatou: Right. She's like then you grow older, you become able to get what you want, and then you're also on your way to dying so that gives your fear more boost. But she talks a lot about all of the threats that heighten the fear. And so thinking about the extreme polarization and people's conflicting views and conditions like, you know, globalization, capitalism, blah, blah, blah, and how all of that just makes for a really acute sense of powerlessness and fear in people was really instructive to read. So I highly recommend The Monarchy of Fear.

Ann: I'm excited to read that. Ugh, nothing but recs. My to read stack is heaving.

Aminatou: I mean my -- this is all the books I recommend now to people. I'm always like it's very short. It's very short. [Laughs] It's like I know . . .

Ann: Spoken like a woman who wrote a short book. [Laughs]

Aminatou: You know, it's true. We wrote a very -- like a slim meditation.

Ann: I have to say that the day I realized our book was actually kind of short was one of my best days in this process. [Laughter] Where I was like wow, people can recommend it and say it will not take up so much of your time. It's a pretty quick one.

Aminatou: I love that for us. I love that for us. Okay my love, I will see you on the Internet.

Ann: See you on the Internet.

Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favs. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back, leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf and you can buy our book Big Friendship anywhere you buy books. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We have editorial support from Laura Bertocci. Our producer is Jordan Bailey. This podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.
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