Nina Dafe: Sometimes, Fear Is What Saves You

Growing up in a Nigerian and evangelical environment, I was taught to view fear and the negative thoughts it can generate as something to be avoided. I avoided expressing my fears because I believed that simply voicing them could make them come true. I also felt ashamed of my fears, as they were seen as a sign of weak faith in certain Christian circles, which could be regarded as a character flaw. If you had a similar upbringing, you might have encountered cautions like:

“Don’t say that!”

“I cancel that in Jesus’ name!”

“God forbid!”

Or the classic–circular hand motion above the head, followed by a click, every time a concern that something bad might happen, or that things might not go to plan, was expressed. The issue with this, I discovered, is that such denial comes under the umbrella of “toxic positivity” which is, according to psychologist Jaime Zuckerman, “a societal assumption that a person, despite their emotional pain or gravity of their situation, should only strive to have a positive outlook [as] having negative emotions is wrong.”

Suppressing your fears causes you to focus on them

Have you ever tried to ignore a craving, only to discover that it’s all you can think about? This illustrates the idea that suppressing our thoughts or emotions often makes them stronger and more intense, leading us to focus on them even more. This phenomenon is known as Ironic Process Theory. With this in mind, if we truly become what we think about, then trying to suppress our fear will likely have the opposite effect of what we initially intended.

Fear can serve a purpose

Despite the aspersions of my cultural and religious roots, I recognised that fear can be useful. As Davido once sang, “E no mean say if you say make I put one leg for fire, I go put leg for fire-o”. Why? Because fear of the consequences of such behaviour would not permit him (or any other logical person) to do so. This shows that fear can help alert us to imminent danger and protect us from it, whereas toxic positivity causes us to either miss or overlook these signals completely. As such, overcoming fear lies less in ignoring or suppressing it with positive thoughts and more in allowing it to do its job by working with it.

Fear can be an asset

To continue with the Davido analogy, if you decided to ignore your fear and put your bare leg in a fire while thinking positive thoughts about your skin remaining intact, would that stop you from being burned? If you repeated positive affirmations about remaining pain-free, would that stop the agony that such actions cause? The answer, of course, is no because positive vibes cannot and will not save you. What would save you, however, would be to review your options until you could find a scenario that did not result in injury, like not sticking your leg in the fire, wearing protective gear while doing so or something in between (whatever that might be). This process of using fear as a tool for evaluation, preparation and, ultimately, protection is how fear can be worked with and turned into an asset.

For many Nigerians within the diaspora, toxic positivity has been embedded through societal beliefs that are exacerbated by cultural and religious factors. This is harmful because stifling our fears can cause us to manifest them, and denying our fears stops us from taking advantage of the many benefits fear has. We can avoid this by exploring our fears until we are clear about what they are; thinking through ways to prevent them from happening, and/or putting protective measures in place.

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