The economic freefall has created a state of massive fear resonating throughout the United States and the world. You don’t have to be sensitive or intuitive to feel it. This is an in-your-face fear that continues from morning until night. It’s coming at us everywhere—the ongoing doom and gloom headlines, the fearful voices in our own heads, from our friends who are afraid they’re losing their homes and pensions.

As a psychiatrist, I know the damage fear can cause. Over twenty years of private practice in Los Angeles and at UCLA, I’ve seen how it can possess ordinarily sensible people and make them stupid. As a human being I struggle with fear but gratefullly my temperament is such that it galls me to let fear win. I will do everything in my power not to let fear make me small, voiceless, and impotent. I don’t want to be one of fear’s victims. Sure there are real problems and extremely “good reasons” to be afraid.

However, the real challenge is to see crisis as opportunity, to rise to our highest selves, even if we think we can’t, even if we’re scared. The truly extraordinary act is to seek courage, to see fear as impetus to grow smarter, stronger, more resilient. In a sense fear is a teacher of courage. After all, courage couldn’t exist if there wasn’t something to be afraid of. Point-counterpoint—let’s learn from this harmony of what life asks of us. What else is evolution except acting in extraordinary ways when everything is against us. Let’s not keep telling ourselves negative stories the moment we awaken—you know, like “How am I going to make it through the day…what if…what if?” We can’t afford to indulge the “what-ifs.