What U.S. Marines Taught Me About Beating Fear
“The way to deal with suffering is accepting that suffering, recognizing that it is suffering, and then letting it sort of have its say, and then moving on from that.” -Tucker Max
As a military survival teacher, I thought a lot about fear.
My funniest encounter with fear happened at the old wooden playground in my hometown, Brewer, Maine. I was with my little brother, a very skinny 4-year-old boy. He decided to show off how he could fit his bony little leg between the old wooden slats. After demonstrating his new skill a few times, he got stuck. He couldn’t pull his leg out from between the wooden slats. I tried to help him, but he was stuck. Next, my mother tried to coach him through it. Still stuck. So, my mom walked across the street to the city’s recreation department to get some help. A man walked out carrying a big sharp saw. Of course, the saw was to cut away the wooden slats, but that didn’t occur to my brother. Fear flooded his mind. He began to scream and cry, “Don’t cut my leg off! Don’t cut my leg off!” And wouldn’t ya know it? He managed to yank his leg out from between the wooden slats. That day I learned that something we might just write off as “bad,” like fear, can turn out to be an incredibly powerful force. Fear can drive people to excellence.
When is it useful for people in the military to see value in fear? Probably every day. It’s especially useful when people come to see me. In 6 years, I trained over 6,000 military members including Top Gun pilots and Navy SEALs to survive and perform at the their best in extreme environments. We trained for oxygen failures at altitudes of 25,000ft. or being lost at sea in a life raft. The training that my team and I were best known for providing is called, “The Dunker.” It has a thrill-ride aura about it, like the Tower of Terror. We even sold t-shirts that say “I survived the Dunker” and they’re very popular.
The Dunker is designed to be an effective and realistic way to practice the skills necessary to escape a sinking helicopter. When a helicopter crashes into the water, it’s very top-heavy due to the weight of the rotor blades. So it rolls upside down. This means that effective training requires that we strap people down, blindfold them, sink them, and flip them upside down. The end result goes like this-
You’re in the body of a helicopter, suspended by a crane, over a very deep pool of water. You’re wearing full flight gear, including a helmet, and you’re blindfolded because in a real crash, it’s dark underwater. Then the crane lets out and splash you hit the water. You feel your boots begin to fill with water, but you’re blindfolded, so it’s not clear how fast you’re sinking. Then, the helicopter begins to roll and you feel yourself rolling back in your seat as you push against your seatbelt to keep your head above water, just a little bit longer. Then, pfft you suck in your last breath and wait for the contraption to stop moving. The rolling stops and you are upside-down, underwater, and blindfolded. You release your seatbelt, pull yourself hand-over-hand to where you (hopefully) remember there’s a window, pull yourself through the window, and make your way to the surface. You pop up completely disoriented by all the spinning, but relieved because you made it out alive.
As confusing and challenging as that might sound, with appropriate preparation, the vast majority of my students get it right and move on without a hitch. The biggest hurdle for my students is usually their own fear.
But as we learned from my brother at the playground, even fear can be valuable. It’s all in how you see it.
It’s been years now, but I still remember the most fearful student I ever had. A very senior officer, several ranks higher than me and a combat veteran helicopter pilot. By all accounts this was a hardened warfighter. But this person had a problem during their last round of Dunker training four years prior and they were due for retraining. As the pilot and I discussed the past experience, they began to literally shake with terror. Four years prior, this person had been in the Dunker, upside-down, blindfolded underwater, when their boot got stuck. It was probably a shoelace wrapped around a structure. Our rescue divers went to release this person but there was confusion and movement making things especially difficult. As a last resort, the crane had to hoist the entire dunker upside-down out of the water. The pilot was gasping for breath, terrified and embarrassed. Now, for the four years since that moment, this officer had been reliving that memory and growing that fear. What started out as a small fire, had been fed with the wood and lighter fluid of four years of this thought pattern: dunker training equals terror and humiliation and maybe death. The mental circuits for survival training and terror had fired together so many times that they became connected, because neurons that fire together wire together. Would this person have benefited from a different narrative? Dunker equals death, really? What went wrong last time? My shoelace got caught. Can I do something to prevent that this time? Can I look at this a different way, like “I’m glad that happened in the dunker not when I’m flying. I’m actually lucky” Could I face this fear right now and go redo the training? Could I give this problem a new name? Instead of Dunker is scary, could I say Dunker is exciting!? Changing the narrative prevents a small flame of fear from growing into a raging inferno.
When we squash fear early, we extinguish the flame and typically perform better. So, how do you do this? The best way I know is a process used in the U.S. Marine Corps.
I call it mental fitness. The Marines call it Reaction Control. They have a handbook for how to work through it. At the top of page 1 of the handbook, there is a quote.
“War is for participants a test of character; it makes bad men worse and good men better.”
That quote is from Civil War hero Brigadier General Joshua Chamberlain. Like me, he grew up in Brewer, Maine.
Joshua Chamberlain’s observation about character has become the foundation of a new system for training to handle fear, like we train for physical fitness. Mentally challenging situations can drive us to adapt and become stronger, just like physical exercise can drive our bodies to adapt.
Military members know this because we deal in high pressure, high risk situations, every day, around the world. Reaction control is a systematic process of checking your thoughts rather than just accepting them. (e.g. I’m afraid, really? Why do I think that? Is that reason true? Does that have to be true? What can I think to change that?) It’s similar for chronic fear and worry. (e.g. I’m worried because this problem is ruining my life. Really? Is this actually ruining my life, or is it how I’m reacting to it? Is this thing really a problem or is that the label I’ve put on it? Could I change what I’m doing to stop ruining my life? Could I give the “problem” a new label, like “challenge”?)
So, how do you actually “do“ reaction control? I think of it like lifting weights. Muscles tear under the stress of lifting. The body is constantly assessing itself, identifying damage, and implementing changes to rebuild those torn muscles. The muscles function better next time the stress is placed on them. Assess, Identify, and Implement. Mental fitness is very similar.
Say you have a stressful thought, like, “I hate this event but I have to go.”
1. Assess your beliefs. Do I actually have to go? No. What am I afraid of here? Name it, get specific, this is key. If you know exactly what you’re dealing with, then you know what to work on. This example could boil down to — I am afraid that if I don’t go, people will think I’m not part of the team. So, really I’m afraid of what people might think of me, I’m afraid of rejection from my team
2. Identify the opportunity to change the assumptions, expectations and fallacies. I believe that I have to go out, but that can be changed. I’m actually free to go or just stay home. Ahhh, freedom. You’ve just identified an assumption. Now, I expect that if I don’t go, I’ll be rejected, become a social outcast at work, and suffer. Suffering’s not guaranteed either. This event might have no impact on my relationships at work. Ahhh nice. You’ve just identified an expectation.
3. Implementation. The metaphorical muscle is torn. The tear is identified. It’s time to build it up stronger than before. Put together a new thought to replace the distressing assumptions, expectations, and fallacies you’ve identified. For example, I don’t have to go to this event tonight, it’s up to me and I choose not to. Or, I was afraid that I would be rejected, but that is bigger than this one event. In fact, I will keep in touch through a lunch that I plan next week. And we can build on that at the company off-site in 2 weeks. Or, you could still go, but rather than grumbling about how you hate it, now you can own it. I choose to go to this event tonight. It is an opportunity to connect with my peers, which is deeply meaningful to me.
4. Practice. 5. Practice, 6. Practice. As one set of sit ups can’t develop six-pack abs, one set of reaction control can’t develop the toughness of a hardy Stoic philosopher. Like physical exercise, mental fitness exercises must become a daily habit. Fearful thoughts are likely to keep coming back. We tend to ruminate. We are biased toward the negative because we are descendants of survivors who stayed alive in great danger. I recommend journaling to overcome negative bias and build a regular reaction control habit. Set aside a few minutes every day to work through this process. Tonight, pick one moment where you felt distressing emotion. Then, (step 1) assess the beliefs that underlie that emotional upset. Next, (step 2) identify the opportunity to change the assumptions, expectations and fallacies. After that, (step 3) implement a new narrative to replace the thought that lead to emotional distress. Finally, (step 4) practice it. Write it again, say it again, put it on a sticky note, get some repetition in there.
This idea has many similarities to the work of history’s greatest survival teacher, Dr. Viktor Frankl, a survivor of 4 Nazi concentration camps and a psychiatrist. Dr. Frankl suggested that we look at things that seem distressing as though we were living through them a second time. The first time, we see it as something to fear. But the second time, we see it as an opportunity to live out our values, to give meaning to a hardship. We stop reacting with fear and instead we respond to a challenge as our highest selves. If this idea can lift a man’s spirit through the holocaust, it’s worth trying in our own lives.
If you want proof that the Reaction control process can work through the mundane fears of everyday life, let me be your test case. Two years ago, I faced a problem that was constant. It touched on fear of pain, fear of loss, fear of rejection, fear of suffering, fear of embarrassment. The alternatives were grim- I could make a choice, to run away from this problem, but that would have severe consequences that would stay with me for the rest of my life. So, I decided to face the problem every day. It was exhausting. I didn’t know how to handle the fear and frustration. I found myself awake through the entire night worrying and trying to think my way to a solution. The resulting fatigue left me with headaches. I grew depressed and anxious. Everything seemed like a problem and I began to avoid people. I even became afraid to drive and took the bus to work every day for 6 months. I would explode with anger. Eventually, I a Navy doctor told me I had been so constantly worked up about my daily life that I had developed adrenal fatigue. I tried lots of things and many of them helped a little to reduce the symptoms of my stress, but the problem wasn’t the sort of thing that goes away. It was the sort of thing I faced in everyday monotony. After a year of this, I surrendered. The problem would not go away. I decided that the only thing I could change was myself. I could change my approach to the problem. I decided that the problem would become a challenge, and an opportunity, that the problem would work to my benefit. No need to fear loss or pain, this would be the best thing that ever happened to me.
On February 19, 2016, I pulled out my yellow waterproof notebook where I record my favorite ideas. I wrote down all the “BAD” things. I put BAD in quotes because I knew that was questionable. I wrote all the things I had lost and would lose, all the pain I was going to suffer, everything. The next day, February 20, 2016 I wrote down all the ways that my problem was a “GOOD” thing. I wrote all the things I would gain and had gained, experiences I would enjoy, new opportunities to try. Eventually, it came true, the last few years of my life have been “GOOD.” Realizing this brings a smile to my face. I’m so glad I took the time to assess my fear, identify the assumptions and expectations that were so damaging, and then re-write my story to implement new beliefs that are the foundation of a greater experience of life.
“You’ll only ruin your life if you ruin your character.” -Marcus Aurelius
This is my story of a problem that became a challenge, that became an opportunity, that became a source of joy and meaning. We all deal with things that seem to be a problem. It is time to harness that problem and manipulate it to our advantage. Learn to control your thoughts. Learn to control your mind. Invest in your mental fitness. Take control of your reactions. Respond as your highest self. Take control of your life. When we say “He makes me feel this way,” “She made me do that,” “I have to do this,” we give away our control. Take control over your fears. Take control of your life.
The great emperor and Stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius once said, “You’ll only ruin your life if you ruin your character.” Never fear that something external can ruin your life, because nothing external can control your character. You can take control of your character. You can build mental fitness. You can take the time to assess your beliefs, identify assumptions, and implement a new and empowering belief system. You can invest in your character. You can take control of your life. You can take control of your reactions and your life will be better for it.
For more, check out the U.S. Marine Corps Reaction Control Handbook, written by LtCol Noah J. Komnick.