Psychological Fragility in a Fast-Changing World

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Kevin feels threatened. What menaces bedevil him? Well, one is electric vehicles. As a fossil fuel advocate, when he sees one on the road, he routinely curses and flips off the driver. Also, he rants and rages whenever someone brings up the movie Barbie, which he believes represents a nefarious plot to undermine traditional gender roles. What’s more, when hearing news about the health hazards posed by gas stoves and the advice to switch to electric, he considers this an assault on his individual liberty.

“Why is he so easily triggered about these things?” Kevin’s wife asked at our first counseling session. “He’s always erupting over stuff that doesn’t even affect him directly.” 

This man suffers from something called “psychological fragility,” and he’s not alone. With folks of this persuasion, their “don’t tread on me” mindset reflects someone so frightened by new or non-traditional ideas that, whenever so exposed, they morph into fight-flight mode, the classic stress response. All their puffed-up false bravado masks an underlying apprehension or outright fear. 

People like Kevin want the rest of the world to stay safely within a specific set of behavioral guardrails of their own. In other words, they fear change, which is a futile posture to assume in an entropic universe constantly in motion. Nonetheless, they desperately cling to this dug-in mindset, meaning they inhabit a chronic state of agitation, resentment and outrage. Trying to swim upstream against the relentless current of change is emotionally exhausting, both to them and, often, those in their midst.

“Just being around him wears me out,” his spouse explained. “My philosophy is live and let live, but he seems obsessed with wanting everyone to conform to his way of doing things.”

Lacking Mental Resilience

Psychological fragility is basically the opposite of mental resilience. The latter reflects the capacity to bend rather than break in the face of change and challenges. It requires open-mindedness, behavioral flexibility and tolerance for uncertainty. Most specifically, resilient people are not frightened by new ways of thinking and doing. They may not always agree with a divergent or out-there idea or behavior, but it doesn’t trigger a fight-flight reaction. They don’t jump in their mental foxholes and start lobbing ideological grenades.

In contrast, the psychologically fragile inhabit what we call a “fixed mindset.” They long ago closed the book on considering and learning new things, instead opting to cling to and defend their set-in-concrete opinions. They are, as we shrinks say, ego-invested in a rigid set of beliefs, so they experience any challenge to their viewpoints as a personal affront. For example, to Kevin, an electric car doesn’t just represent an emerging technology he opposes. It threatens his belief in his own infallibility and righteousness, posing the possibility he might be wrong. 

Granted, some of us demonstrate this type of fragility in a more narrow and specific sense, perhaps in reaction to one particular thing we find threatening or off-putting. However, those like Kevin make it a lifestyle. They inhabit this reactive mode much of the time, often ruminating about a wide range of perceived threats. As such, they embrace what psychologists call an “external locus of control.” Their inner state (mood, attitude, emotional reactivity) is driven by external influences, things they experience around them that are beyond their control, like electric cars and gas stoves. In contrast, resilient people exercise more control over their inner state, rather than forfeiting it to events and persons around them.

When someone perceives a bogeyman behind every new, off-kilter or non-traditional thing, the entire world becomes their stress cooker. Things always change, and life won’t stop moving ahead for any of us, including those who go kicking and screaming.

For more, visit philipchard.com.