On the eve of Halloween, October 30, 1938, HG Wells’s novel The War of the Worlds was broadcast on the radio as a mock series of news bulletins. The normal ways of differentiating truth from fiction like commercial breaks were deliberately suspended to give this dramatized alien invasion a greater sense of reality.
Although most people never imagined a Martian invasion to be anything other than science fiction, it created confusion as to whether this was actually happening and was plausible enough to make many people react in terror. These were newsletters. No one had falsified the news before this. The newsletters may be wrong, but they’re not intentional fiction, are they? They were broadcasting a crowd that gathered around the meteorite, right?
Using the radio show as an analogy, anxiety can also seem like an invader. It can fall from the sky and seem like something unreal, something that seems so unlikely that you never thought about it. Usually we have the feeling that our thoughts and emotions operate according to known and expected rules. There is a fundamental, albeit imperfect, correspondence between what is within us and the outside world. We direct our own thoughts, we command our bodies. Then, out of nowhere, anxiety destroys any sense of mental cause and effect. It unites us, it captivates us, it dominates us. How did this happen to me? Our bodies no longer seem to be under our control, but now they are puppets of a new invader: fear.
Consider the following parallels between this event and the nature of anxiety.
- The radio show jumped from one event to another, making orientation difficult. Anxiety also seems to jump from one thing to another, multiplying your worries before you can take the time to analyze what is real and what is imagined. When you resolve one concern, you can create another. When the fight or flight response is activated, your brain will search for danger. That is really useful, except when everything is a false alarm.
- Events that were not actually related seemed to support the invasion. In Concrete, Washington, simultaneously with the broadcast, when the Martians were invading cities, there was Really a loud explosion and the city of 1,000 plunged into darkness, prompting some to flee into the hills. Actually, it was a short circuit in an electrical substation. People who have anxiety reactions mistakenly create a cause and effect when it doesn’t really exist. Unrelated things are taken as evidence! If you are afraid of being rejected, then someone distracted instead of being attentive may seem like sure proof of your fear, but it is actually irrelevant.
- The show aired at a time of widespread tension. World War II was building steam. The symptoms of anxiety disorders are not that different from the usual worry and anxiety, except that the volume increases. Anxiety disorders are based on stress, be it biological or psychological.
- It was completely different from anything that has been broadcast before. There was no precedent. Something extravagant can be persuasive if it is in the form of something trustworthy (i.e. news broadcast) and is a surprise. The initial intense reaction that generates the most anxiety depends on surprise. Paradoxically, the powerful urge to prevent this again makes it more likely. The fight or flight response is generally reliable. If it is not clear that it is a false alarm, then it may have psychological traction.
- The play was referring to real places, like Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, which made it seem more plausible. Anxiety will take some things that are real as evidence that anything is possible. This is a subtle distortion. Kind of like the guy who says he’s a skilled marksman. He shoots at the side of a barn and then draws a target around where the bullet hit, then says, “Look, I have evidence!” There are holes in the barn. You can see them. But the interpretation of the “skilled marksman” is a complete fiction.
- Perception / interpretation is often unreliable, but it is much worse in situations of stress, ambiguity, and uncertainty. My clients report that if for some reason the physical feeling of fear (stress) is absent, they are not swayed by fear-inducing thoughts, such as when they feel anxious.
- The nervous system is quite capable of creating experiences similar enough to add false but seemingly reliable support. One listener reported that he was emotionally distressed and felt a choking sensation from the imaginary gas. One of the symptoms of the fight or flight response is a tightness in the throat; fleeing danger is a bad time to eat … so the nervous system turns it off.
- I bet hardly anyone believed the Martian invasion for sure. But who wants to be the fool who hesitated and vaporized? Anxiety and worry don’t require 100% certainty, just possibility. It is based on “what if?”
Let’s go back to 1938. What if after accepting this unlikely situation, you knew that it was all really well done fiction? The announcer says: “We hope you enjoyed our fictional broadcast of War of the Worlds” followed by a commercial for Carter’s Little Liver Pills. It may take a little time for you to change your belief that it is not real. What if the announcer is being controlled by the Martians or is it a cover-up by the government? But when you really realize that everything is made up and not real, the fear will quickly dissipate. It’s just a group of actors on the 20th floor, 485 Madison Avenue, New York, NY. The cheek of those … whatever.
When you realize that your anxiety is a masterful fiction and your fear is a false alarm, you can free yourself from it. This, of course, is not so easy. However, if people really believed this, many types of anxiety could be cured in one sitting.
