The rain was coming down in torrents.
A hurricane had come ashore in South Carolina. And now the entire state was getting drenched. Including the hilly Upstate region.
This development was inconvenient enough. But a big time college football matchup between was set to be played Upstate, featuring the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Clemson Tigers.
Both teams were undefeated going into the matchup. The game was slated for a primetime kickoff slot, with the promise of a national TV audience.
A hurricane was not going to disrupt proceedings.
And so, the pageantry of the weekend went on. Fans rolled into town, and so did ESPN’s College Gameday.
The premier college football preview show set up a stage in the middle of Clemson University’s campus. And despite the rain and wind, the show went on as planned, with hosts bantering from behind a desk.
I was watching at home, and things didn’t look so bad at first. The canopy over the stage and the protective gear over the cameras likely had something to do with that.
But then, I saw the crowd behind the stage. Throngs of college students appeared to be nearly blinded by the windswept rain. And the ground they were standing on had become a boggy mess.
Suddenly, the cameras zoomed in on one student with a particularly youthful face. His shoes were off, and his pants were cuffed below the knee, Tom Sawyer style.
With the eyes of America on him, the student took off his shirt. Then he took a step back and leaped, faceplanting into a pile of mud.
The crowd went wild. But as I watched from my couch, I had a different reaction.
Horror.
Many of us have acute fears. Stimuli that cause us to panic, shut down and lose function.
Mine is mud.
The slippery byproduct of water and dirt repulses me like nothing else. I fear slipping on it, getting it on my clothes, or tracking it into my home or my vehicle.
This aversion is quite on brand for me. I am a neat freak. And nothing is as stubbornly messy as mud.
But the lengths I go to when avoiding this substance are somewhat extreme.
I’ve turned down opportunities to cruise in ATVs before, for fear of getting mud on my clothes. I’ve avoided hiking or running on dirt trails for weeks after a rain event, just to keep my shoes clean. And back when I was playing baseball as a kid, I was too frightened to slide on a wet field.
I realize this behavior is totally irrational. Getting dirty is not the end of the world. And there are plenty of proven ways to clean the mess off.
Yet, I can’t help myself.
I’m not alone in this regard. While I haven’t met anyone who avoids mud the way I do, I know plenty of people who have gone to irrational lengths to avoid their own fears.
But that’s starting to change.
There is an abundance of services out there to reform the spooked. Services that dub themselves immersion therapy.
The premise is straightforward. Immersing someone in the stimuli they fear can reduce their anxiety. It can show the worst outcomes to be unlikely or nonexistent. And the process can break the spell of fear.
And so, many have covered themselves in insects, touched the scaly skin of snakes, or listened to the boom of fireworks. They’ve done all this to face their fears head on.
Perhaps this is what that college student at Clemson University was doing when he bellyflopped into a mud pit on national television.
But I wasn’t about to follow his lead.
I knew better.
What is a fear anyway?
Is it an aversion we’ve picked up through experience? Or something we’re born with?
Many point to the first explanation. They see our origins as blank slates, onto which societal stressors – such xenophobia or bullying – and individualized stressful experiences – such as dog bites or near-drownings – are projected.
This theory posits that fears are accumulated, rather than innate. Which makes it possible to unburden these fears through methods like immersion therapy.
It’s a neat theory. A tidy one. And one that might be too good to be true.
Indeed, I’ve come to believe that the second explanation for fear is more accurate. I assert that fear is part of our DNA from Day One.
There’s plenty of evidence behind this assertion. Infants can curl their bodies in a protective stance long before they can crawl, talk, or understand language. And many physical changes to human genetic code over millennia have helped shield against lethal dangers.
Fear is an element of our survival. One that keeps us from becoming an unwitting snack for a lion or from wandering aimlessly off a cliff’s edge. It’s an inextricable part of us.
Even the most societal-oriented fears can fall under this definition. It’s true that no one is born racist. But the fear of abandonment from the pack is most certainly innate.
Redirecting the source of that existential fear from the pack to the outsider is a predictable shift. Why let the fear become a self-fulfilling prophecy when it can be used to keep our pack’s competitors at bay?
We gain security and acceptance in this process, without experiencing any of the pain of our actions. It’s a no-brainer, on the most primal of levels.
Yes, fear is an inextricable part of us. It always has been. And it always will be.
So, what does this all mean for immersion therapy?
Is it a farce? A sham? A load of nonsense?
Yes and no.
It’s undeniable that immersion therapy has some positive outcomes. Those who are terrified of spiders, or heights, or whatever else can find equilibrium around the same stimuli. They can live life more freely and fully.
These are all good outcomes. Desired outcomes, really.
But these fears have not been cured in the process. Arachnophobes remain arachnophobes, even if they no longer turn ghostly pale in the presence of spiders. Acrophobes are still, at their core, apprehensive of heights.
No, what immersion therapy has actually done is reframed the fear. Instead of reacting to the previously distressing stimuli, the brain has been trained to ignore them. The reaction that the phobic experiences – the one visible to others – it’s gone.
Yet, the fear itself remains in some far corner of the phobic’s brain.
This is not a trivial distinction.
For our society has consistently misrepresented fear. We’ve determined that it’s something that can be rooted out. That must be rooted out.
And so, we’ve waged multifaceted campaigns to create a world where racist, homophobic, and anti-faith impulses cease to exist. We conduct wide-scale immersion therapy to promote a world that is more equal in terms of acceptance and opportunities.
We make progress. We inch closer to the finish line. And then the ugliness rushes right back in.
This whole process is demoralizing for those crusading against the darkness of fear. They can feel like Sisyphus – pushing a boulder up a hill, only to see it tumble back down in the end.
But perhaps a shift in perspective can get them off this hamster wheel of misery.
Perhaps those crusaders can abandon their pursuit of the root cause of fear. And perhaps they can focus on redirecting its manifestations instead.
This means eliminating racist, homophobic, or anti-faith actions – all while acknowledging that the underlying Fear of the Other will remain.
The crusaders can still turn to immersion as their preferred tactic. But they must recognize that their efforts simply constitute a rewiring, not a demolition. The ignition coil can be manipulated, but the engine remains in place.
Such a compromise might be a hard pill to swallow, particularly for those with the purest of ideals. But it’s a necessary one. Particularly if we want to attain the objectives we strive for.
The immersion fallacy is real. We must govern ourselves accordingly.