combating fear:
Former Special Boat Team 22 Captain Jim Morgan Gives Insight into Overcoming Fear in the Military
There is no place where danger is more of a threat than the United States Military. For soldiers, injury or death is an always-present risk on missions. For the average person, the most common response in the face of these challenging, heart-racing, perilous tasks is fear. Fear is "to expect or worry about (something bad or unpleasant)" (Merriam-Webster). When one enters the military, the concept of fear ceases to exist...
Introduction: Jim Morgan, former Navy Captain for Special Boat Team 22
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What were these missions like?
Importance of the fear of failure
The mental escape from danger that soldiers perform is a form of repression, or as Freud defines it, "a putting out of consciousness" (Hamlyn 210). They are faced with an incredible amount of danger and risk when on a mission, and in turn, gives them the opportunity to protect themselves from it. Or at the very least cope with it to the best of their abilities. In WWI, soldiers "had to learn to judge risk without being overwhelmed by it," become a fatalist, or used faith to distract them from the fear and stress from the war. Jim Morgan says he saw it a different way: it's a change in mindset, a repression to deflect the current risk of injury or fataliy.
Constantly present in the military is the fear of letting a fellow soldier down. The concept of failing someone who is so closely associated with you day in and day out is nearly impossible to accept, and those in the military have no option but to reject it. It controls everything that he or she thinks or does, and is the dominating factor for the extreme courage seen in the military. All decisions are made to avoid one thing: failing a fellow soldier.
The military's goal is to eliminate the individual. It's to move away from a selfish mindset towards a mindset focused solely around the community. What the military installs is the idea that one person is apart of something greater; he or she has one duty to focus and if it is not performed correctly everyone else will be affected.