Using Imagination & Worst-Case Scenarios To Counter Fear
A Counterfear Tool
Tools To Counter Fear
I wrote a post the other day on countering fear. It was a sort of high level reference to some thinking and work I’ve done on the idea.
One of the things I’d assembled on a prior “counterfear” website was a bunch of tools for actually countering fear and for finding ways forward. It seems like an important part of navigating what’s in front of us now in this new time, so we will put out some tools on countering fear from time to time.
Today it’s on taking deep dives into the unimaginable… but then coming back out.
This is a multi-part thing. One part is on the emotions. The other parts are on the possibilities and how to navigate all that.
Fear: The Emotion
One of the things that many of us are doing since the 2024 election is considering and exploring analysis on the many godawful things that could happen in the second Trump administration. I’m not going to list those here. It’s too much, for one thing, but the specifics are not the point.
The point here is — sometimes it’s good to just explore all that. Walk through it. Let it marinate. Go with the worst that could happen. Imagine it. Be in it for a bit. Feel the fear. Feel the emotions. Feel the fierceness, or disempowerment, or rage, or whatever emotions might come with things that could happen.
Be honestly mad and sad and worried and all the things you can imagine being. Grieve, for a country and a future that might not look like what you were hoping for; in the near term, anyway. Grieve for a country that couldn’t and wouldn’t elect a woman and a person of color this year. Grieve for living among people who would vote for this result. For this person. For this path. Grieve about the people who didn’t vote; for whatever reason.
Do it for a while. Maybe for several hours, or for a few days.
You might already have been doing this since the election — or in chunks of time since the election. I certainly have.
We need to allow our emotions to flow, sometimes.
It is part of our humanity.
We have to be angry and sad and grieving and ragey and all the things. We have to let it be. We have to cry and be mad and maybe scream or do things to let the anger and the other emotions out.
Burying it and hiding it and suppressing it are not helpful. Heavy, intense emotions are part of what it is to be human. We don’t want to lose that.
We also don’t want to stay in a place of rage or grieving or sadness or whatever to the point where we are morose, despondent, disempowered, and despairing. One goal of an authoritarian movement is to push the opposition into overwhelm, shock, disengagement, and inaction.
We need to allow the emotions.
But we also need to pull ourselves back from that, somehow. Here are some ways that might work.
A Risk Landscape Option
One way to pull out of the heavy emotion is to walk through some worst-case scenario possibilities, to feel the emotions… and then to evaluate some of those things in terms of what’s likely given the known realities out there.
For example, for a while during the first Trump administration, Republicans had the White House, majorities in Congress, and a majority in the Supreme Court. Yet they did not get much done legislatively. To be fair, some key folks blocked things (i.e., Senator John McCain blocked legislation to kill the Affordable Care Act). But also, key folks might block things this round. So far since the election, Republicans have been pressuring the transition team about Republican nominees as way too radical and it has worked a bit. Some folks might well step forward who we haven’t seen step forward before.
There are other buffers and pressure points.
Big business is a pressure capability that has worked a bit so far post-election, and that worked some (for good and bad) during the first Trump administration.
Bureaucracy is incredibly powerful. Bureaucracy is built with many layers and rules in part to counter political extremism. Some of that will hold for a long time.
Federalism is the system of government in the United States in which power is distributed between states, territories, Tribes, and county/city governments. It can help with many things.
Courts can help with others — and lawsuits. Lots of groups and alliances are gearing up to challenge a whole array of issues.
The new incoming administration might also be slow to implement things even though they’re talking big.
They also might talk big to sound more powerful than they feel, to get more coverage, to drive narratives, or to keep support from certain groups. Sometimes the big talk does not translate into actual action; for various reasons.
Also, they might try some things that get incredible pushback… and that pushback might stop other things from happening.
While the threats out there are great, what actually transpires may take some time — or the effects might take a while to set in.
In the meantime, we are likely to have some time to take actions, to mitigate risk, to buffer impacts, to grow alliances, to build resilience, and so on.
This perspective might be very helpful as we navigate what is likely to be a breathtaking set of changes.
The Big Picture / Big Disaster Option
Another tool for navigating what’s coming is to think of it like a big disaster… and to approach it in ways that folks use to handle big disasters.
One thing is to not get lost in the details, but rather to focus on things that have actual impacts on people, places, infrastructure, or communities that we can do something about.
For example, there’s a tendency in big disasters to focus on stuff like how many people are out of power, how many people were given ice due to refrigerators being out, and so on. What if we asked instead when the power will be restored, and if there are challenges with getting it turned back on that could be better addressed?
There are lots of examples with big disasters. Often, specific details aren’t really the important things when whole neighborhoods are burning down or are underwater. I’ve had to push back on high-level leadership in government jobs when people were focused demanding bureaucratic details from 911 centers when those 911 centers were evacuated due to wildfires.
Prioritizing helps.
Right now, we can be focusing on things that are likely to happen, or things we can actively and reasonably mitigate right now. We can also focus on building connection, community, and resilience for what’s coming. We can work on identifying our own skillsets, strengths, abilities, and resources as well.
All of those things could be more important than a zillion hypothetical details.
The “Now” Option
One of the ways in which I think that imagining the worst can be helpful is because you can sort of do some emotional processing, grieving, raging, and whatnot.
Partly because that can help deal with fear that exists right now. It can help to explore things that are causing that fear. To explore why there is fear.
One of the powers that fear has is that it looms. It’s a spectre. It’s the unimagined.
It can help to actually work through possibilities and worst-case scenarios in order to deal with some of the emotions attached to those possibilities a bit now. To de-mystify it a bit. To just go ahead and process what some of the emotion is about.
It can also give us perspective — in a few ways.
We can deal with the possibilities versus where we are now.
Are we okay right now? Do we have enough? Are our people okay right now in this minute? Or okay-ish? Is there food? Shelter? Can we breathe? Are we warm? And so on.
The answers to that of course will vary depending on what we have access to, what resources we have, where we live, how our health is, and so on.
But it can help us get some perspective and perhaps some space and some breathing room. We can take deep breaths. We can grab another blanket. We can maybe get some food, or do something to help us be a bit more comfortable right now.
Possibilities versus the present can be helpful. It’s not the be-all-end-all, but it can help us come to some level of stable so we can live and breathe and deal with life stuff.
The Working-The-Contingencies Option
There are also the possibilities themselves; the worst-case scenarios. The godawful and the unimaginable.
What can we do with those?
We can work through what we might do in the case of various possibilities coming into being. Hundreds of thousands of people are working through specific possibilities right now, and starting in on hundreds of thousands of actions to counter the countless possibilities.
That might be good, but it might also be futile or counterproductive.
I talked in Friday’s counterfear post about how one of the things terrorists do is that they push countries and people to spend themselves into oblivion putting security and other measures in place that may or may not ever be effective for threats and threat actors that are wily and agile and ever-changing.
I think there’s some widespread absurdity happening with some of the reactions now to the election. It’s natural, and I do it too.
But buying everything now that might get expensive in the case of tariffs is not necessarily the most helpful thing in terms of the big picture — just as one example. There are lots of folks doing supply-chain related things, too. Which is lovely, if you’re independently wealthy and also have lots of storage space.
Most of us aren’t in a position anyway to spend ourselves into oblivion on perceived security measures… but there’s sure a lot of discussion in that zone.
If you are going this route, you can also work carefully to prioritize — either to focus on things that are the most likely to happen, or to find actions that you are in the best place to build resilience for and then to do that.
Another way to go with this stuff is to seriously explore possibilities of the worst things that could happen, to talk through them with your people (or even with organizations you’re involved with), and then to look at things you might be able to do in the case of various scenarios unfolding.
Realistically.
Those conversations are the tough stuff. They are something we often avoid, because it carries this emotion of fear and grieving and love and all the other complicated whatnot.
This option might be tricky and difficult and hard, but it might help you and yours to rearrange your lives most effectively for what’s coming. Talking through worst-case scenarios helps you explore options, to consider various aspects of risks, and to hear what your people are most worried about.
Exploring worst-case scenarios also gives you some thinking-ahead-of-time experience.
When high-risk-low-frequency event occur (big bad things which we often refer to as the unimaginable), we navigate those often-fast-unfolding crises better if we’ve thought through what we might do before hand.
The “5 Things” Options
The approach here at Shift the Country can help people and groups to navigate whatever intensity and instability is coming with this new administration — and also with other big huge possible challenges like climate change, like bird flu, and so on.
The 5 Thing approach is anchored in our values, in connection, in community, and in building resilience. It can help us find ways through the unimaginable and through disruption.
We’re planning to speak to groups about how this work can help. Give us a holler at team@shiftthecountry.com if you’d like to explore more.
This Is Navigable
Humans are super resilient. We’re kind of like cockroaches, like rabbits, or like foxes.
We find ways to survive in ever-changing environments. We’re resilient. We’re wily. We’re stubborn. We’re persistent. We’re often very, very hard to get rid of.
We love. We’re fierce. We fight — deeply — for what and for who we love.
It’s going to be tough, though. There’s a lot coming. We’re not all going to fare well. I get that. But we can set ourselves up to navigate this in ways that give us better chances to get through it more effectively and with better results.
We go forward together.
Vanessa Burnett is the Executive Director of Shift the Country, a unique nonprofit working to inspire civic action and increase public pressure to hold communities together, to navigate instability, and to move the country in a more equitable, just, sustainable, resilient, and caring direction. Vanessa is a former homeland security professional with 25+ years experience in resilience, big disasters, wildland fire, emergency management, land management, project management, continuity of operations, and disaster information sharing.