Violence, Fear, Perception and Agency
Deepali Bhattacharya
In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist · An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references
PART VIII
When Fear Begins to Shrink Our Lives
“The purpose of fear is to protect life—not to replace it.”
Fear has a curious habit.
It begins by asking us to be careful.
Slowly, almost invisibly, it begins asking us to stop living.
A young woman avoids evening classes.
An elderly couple stops travelling.
Parents no longer allow children to play outside.
A commuter changes jobs to avoid public transport.
Each decision appears reasonable in isolation.
Together, they slowly reduce the size of life.
TD introduced another important idea here—maladaptive fear. 17
Healthy fear helps us adapt.
It makes us alert.
It encourages preparation.
Maladaptive fear does something different.
It convinces us that the safest life is the smallest life.
Ironically, this is often strengthened by relentless exposure to dramatic news.
Every notification.
Every breaking alert.
Every forwarded video.
Our minds begin to mistake repetition for increasing danger. 18
Yet the world is rarely as simple as our news feeds.
Acts of extraordinary violence deserve attention.
But they should not become the only stories we consume.
Because while violence deserves visibility, kindness deserves memory too.
Every day, people rescue strangers after accidents.
Neighbours donate blood.
Passengers intervene to protect women.
Teachers notice silent suffering.
Friends stay back after everyone else has left.
These stories rarely become breaking news.
Yet they are equally true.
If we only remember violence, we begin believing that violence is all there is.
It is not.
Humanity has always contained both cruelty and compassion.
Our emotional health depends partly on remembering both.
A QUESTION THAT STAYED WITH ME…
If fear becomes smaller when we act, what does action actually look like for ordinary people?
Notes:
16. The concept originates with Halbwachs (1950/1992): memory is not only individual but socially framed — communities preserve, transmit and reinterpret the past together.
17. On how avoidance sustains fear: Foa and Kozak (1986) show that fear structures persist precisely when avoidance prevents corrective emotional processing — the avoided train can never teach the mind that it is, in fact, usually safe.
18. Gerbner and Gross (1976) documented the “mean world syndrome” — heavy consumers of violent media overestimate real-world danger; Thompson et al. (2019) trace a modern cycle in which distress drives further media consumption, which deepens distress.
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