Connor Beaton (speaker) explains how heightened fear, panic, and anxiety impair individual and collective decision-making and make people susceptible to manipulation and loss of personal power. He connects responses to the COVID-19 pandemic with habitual patterns of giving away power during moments of threat, and advises using quarantine/isolation as an opportunity to pause, ground oneself, and "meet" the fearful part of oneself that seeks control or distraction.
Chapters
We do not operate from a place of collective unification. We don't operate from a place of grounded peace. We don't operate from a place of clear directionality or clear decision making when we are in a state of heightened fear and anxiety and panic.
And so the reality is, is that how you are dealing with the Coronavirus and COVID 19 right now in this moment is indicative of how you deal with fear and panic and anx in the rest of your life. And it's how the collective species of humanity actually deals with fear and panic and anxiety on a regular basis. And here's the thing that I wanted you to know. Here's the thing that I really want you to tune into. It's in these moments of heightened fear, heightened panic, chaos and pandemonium, where it's easier for other people outside of us to not only manipulate and coerce and, you know, take power away and take sort of civil rights, personal freedoms away, but it's also where we as individuals give our personal, individual power away all the time, right? It happens in our relationships when we get into an argument or, you know, someone's sort of aggressively coming at us, whether that's verbally or emotionally or whatever the case may be. And we give our power away in those moments because our nervous system and our body, our physiology is designed to simply do one thing in that moment, which is protect us, which is help us survive. And it's in those moments where we need to pause and be grounded more so than any other time in our lives. And so right now, as you are quarantined, as you're locked up, as you're, you know, locked up sounds pretty severe. But as you are quarantined and isolated, you might be by yourself, you might be with your family or with some friends, but during this time, really utilize it as a means to meet the part of yourself that is afraid, that is fearful, that normally hijacks your system and allows you to collapse in on your values or your beliefs or your boundaries. When you are in panic mode, start to really cultivate a sense of intimacy with the part of yourself right now that doesn't know what's happening. And it wants to try and control everything and is a little bit panicked, right? Or isn't. Isn't sure how to actually lean into feeling what's going on. And so it's trying to distract itself. All right? So find and meet this part of yourself.
