My true revelation about fear, something I have considered and dealt with for much of my life, is that in most cases, fear is a geography, a space to cross. Except for the obvious, fear is most often about what is inside of us, not what it outside.

Fear runs away with itself, distorts reality, erodes the spirit and squashes the joy out of life. It destroys perspective and reason. Every time I am  frightened, I remind myself that I am bigger than this, and so I have been able to grow.

More than anything else, fear  was the dominant theme of the presidential campaign, and people who grappled with fear and anxiety could hardly help but internalize it.

Half the country is angry, the other half terrified, or so it seems. Both candidates ran on fear, one exploited fears about globalization, terrorism and immigration, the other campaigned almost exclusively on the fear of the other.

They scared a lot of people nearly to death, mostly for power and gain, the worst possible reason. The campaign was devoid of joy, rationality, patriotism or hope.

They were each selling the same thing, but in different ways.

Vulnerable people – the very people true leaders should reassure – are feeling great fear and uncertainty, and are suffering. I hear stories every day of people suffering panic attacks, sometimes crippling anxiety, intense worries, even hysterias, about the future. They think of moving, they lose sleep, they think about Canada.

For nearly a year, we were under attack, our very idea of America trashed before our years. It is the first election in my life people will come to know as a trigger for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

But perhaps these extreme fluctuations of emotion and anxiety have less to do with the politics of the country than they do about our own self-awareness and vulnerability. Our lives are stressful, aspiritual, complicated. Religion has failed to comfort us. Politics has become a brutal blood sport. Technology has failed to make our lives simpler or easier. We are isolated and disconnected from one another. Our rural communities are devastated by economists and blind politicians.

Many are forced to turn to animals for comfort, connection,  and affection. A demagogue’s dream.

This, in its own way, is an opportunity for me, as fear always is. Whenever I am frightened, a window opens into my consciousness and subconscious.  I learn something about myself, I get stronger and more confident and less fearful. I grow. The more we understand about fear, the less of it we feel. We are bigger than it.

When the campaign began, I started, like everyone else,  to obsess on the news.

The more I watched and listened, the more anxious I became, the greater tendency there was to over-react. This is not a sign of mental illness, or of weakness, it is a perfectly human and reasonable response to disturbing stimulus, like shouting at a dog continuously or shocking them repeatedly with electric devices.

Best not to deny it, but to say it out loud. And then, to understand it. It is not about them, it is about us. Fear weakens in the light.

This was my problem, not Donald Trump’s.

I reacted quickly and early. My job was not to be frightened, but to be thoughtful. That is the only way to be of any use.

People with anxiety, or people with trauma in their past, or people close to the immigrant experience, or the genocides practiced in modern times,  are especially open to the fear expressed in this campaign,  and fear, as any psychologist will tell you, moves quickly from one place to another. The campaign was an obvious, admitted effort to destroy the public persona of an opponent. That in itself is frightening to people, especially perhaps, when the target is a woman. In our world, women have learned to feel vulnerable around hostile men.

Fear is a viral emotional disease, it can be transmitted quiet openly through words, messages, media, conversations, phone calls, text messages, from innuendo and inference. And in a democratic culture, when leaders – the people we elect to protect us – frighten us instead, that is one more thing that is frightening.

Fear is easily reinforced as well as passed along. Facebook, for all of it’s communications gifts, is a viral transmitter of fear and argument. And conflict is disturbing, often frightening. It is a particularly unhealthy place for people who are anxious.  Social media can be a public health hazard and a great challenge for many people. It is not a benign communications tool, it does not encourage listening or compromise, it requires discipline and self-awareness.

Like cable news, social media thrives and grows and prospers on fear and conflict, they draw audience and profit.

We are all porous now, none of us can completely control the range and depth and diversity of the messages we receive, so fear becomes even more difficult to control. Few of us really can decide what we want to see and what we want to trust. We are encouraged to put labels on ourselves and see the world in two ways, a left and right, there is no middle ground, compromise, or persuasion. The very environment becomes poisonous and unnerving.

And political campaigns and billionaires pour many millions of dollars into those messages and images. For their system to work, people have to be frightened or angry – not inspired – enough to vote and send money. How could any rational or sensitive person not feel fear?

I learned to construct new ways to reassure myself and manage my fear.

Some quick ones for me:

-I find rational and calm people to speak with. Fear is infectious.

-I chose information sources carefully. If they make you angry or confused, they are unhealthy. I seek balance, facts and reasoned opinion beyond the narrow ideologies of the left or right. I believe the cable new channels are unhealthy, they spread fear and support argument and controversy over facts and reason. Everyone I know who watches cable news is angry.

-I understand that managing modern media is a central element in managing our fears. In most respects, the world is a better and safer place than it has ever been. The fact that most Americans do not know that is a monstrous indictment of the way modern media – and modern politics – work.

-I understand that politicians need to make promises and lie in order to survive. I filter their comments accordingly.

-I find time every day to be alone, meditate, or walk in the woods. Being alone is essential to my conquering my fear, solitude is the only environment in which I can understand myself, respect myself, find my own sources of identity and truth, that is the biggest fear-killer for me. If I cannot be alone with myself, I can not live in peace.

-I make a safe place. Sometimes it is the barn, sometimes my study, sometimes out walking in the woods. It is a private place, my sanctuary and hermitage, a place I can go to ground myself.

-I reject apocalyptic thinking whenever I see it, it exists on both ends of the political spectrum. Our government is not corrupt, useless, out to destroy us. The world is not coming to an end, we are not on the brink of a Nazi nation. Both of those are examples of apocalyptic thinking, and if one wishes to be less frightened, it is critical to avoid looking at the world in that way. Extremists thrive on both ends of our narrow political spectrum, they are mobs under different names.

-Our system of government is no more perfect than we are. And we are far from perfect.

-Our political culture has become a conflict of two extremes. I am wary of extremes, I am allergic to mobs, I refuse to argue my beliefs, I do not seek to tell other people what to do. Those things have permitted me to stay calm and detached, and  hopefully thoughtful. I call my philosophy post- argument.  It means living beyond argument. When you explain yourself, use “me” talk, don’t pressure other people into agreeing with you. I’m not aware that sharing phobias and conspiracy theories on Facebook or Twitter has improved the understanding or health of a single human being, or made a single life better.

For me, empathy is a powerful tool against fear.

I think many so-called liberals failed to understand how angry and desperate rural and working-class Americans have become, and so many Trump supporters are slow to grasp or understand why his behavior was so frightening to many people, especially the vulnerable and the people who identify with vulnerability. That is a wide gap. I try to stand in the shoes of others, for me that is the key to honor, decency and understanding.

When we stand in the shoes of others, they become human to us, less frightening, more human. Empathy helps us to communicate, and to listen. It is safer than rage.

There is no evidence to suggest Donald Trump is seeking to dismantle the system, quite the opposite. He is not bringing unemployed steel workers to work in his cabinet or serve as advisers. Those establishment politicians are all over him.

There is no reason for liberals and progressives to rejoice, there is reason to flee or panic.

Bernie Sanders said last week that if Trump keeps even a few of his promises, he will be his ally.  Mitt Romney is flying East for lunch this weekend. Yesterdays enemies are on today’s Cabinet list. Trump and Bill Clinton, a rapist just yesterday, is whooping it up with the President-Elect on the phone, they will be golfing soon. The Senate Democratic Leader, Chuck Schumer, knows Trump well and talks often to him and is optimistic they can work together on a number of things that were not possible to accomplish before. Politics is strange and fluid, it is not predictable.

The only sin in politics is to lose. The only virtue is to win. Politics is the art of promises made early, broken soon, the science of excuses and blame. Trump triumphed in part because people believed he was telling the truth about what he promised. We’ll see. I admire the system, I am not blinded by it.

For better or worse, the logjam is broken, the balloon has burst. Many Americans have been waiting for this change for years, they are entitled to try it out, within reason. Blood is not being shed in the streets, there is no deportation force in sight, the Wall is going digital.

I tell my anxious friends the same thing Garrison Keilor wrote a few days ago, take some time off, you are off the clock. They don’t have you to kick around anymore, this time, they have no Hillary Clinton or Obama to hate, they have no excuses and will  will actually have to govern. A new kind of accountability, a civics lesson for both sides. Go walk the dog and ponder how to do good, make your own art.

I understood this summer that I had to look inward and draw from my considerable experience with fear. Fear is inside of me, I wish to keep it there. To some degree, it is a choice.

We do have a chance to build the world anew, on both sides of things, and this is not just frightening, it is also exhilarating. I am not living in panic and fear, I am looking for ways to affect change and support humanity as I see it, I will begin with volunteering to help the few Syrian refugees being permitted to enter the country.

And I am standing in my own truth, speaking my own mind, sharing my own search in what I hope is a positive and open way.