It’s an interesting perspective. I sometimes wonder whether many fears are really different expressions of the same deeper fear; not always death itself, but the ending of something we feel we can’t live without. A relationship. An identity. A future we imagined. That’s what makes fear so personal.
I feel scared of everything so much more now, the fear of losing people, being lonely, being a bad person whereas when I was younger, I was free like a bird
“When I was younger, I was free like a bird.” That sentence carries a lot. I wonder if it’s not that fear suddenly appeared, but that over time you learned there was more to lose. The challenge then becomes finding a way back to freedom without pretending those losses can’t happen.
I think we can develop a fear against formerly neutral or nice things which went wrong on our way. Such as a thunderstorm. This later fear is easier to unlearn though than a forgotten trauma which quietly unfolds itself into more and more areas of life like a plant nobody watched growing.
Trauma is not the same as fear, but can induce it and originate from an unfinished experience in childhood. I had some, it was from what I’ve experienced at the age of 7-9, the time I got interested in making friends but chances vanished before I found the words…
I really like the distinction you make between fear and trauma. The image of a forgotten trauma quietly spreading into different areas of life stayed with me. Sometimes the hardest part is that by the time we notice the pattern, it no longer looks connected to where it began.
Yes, absolutely! For me, it was like a worsening deformity of a certain part of my body no imaging method could capture. The only way out was listening to myself, connecting to others and removing layer by layer of the whole mess my soul was in.
I wonder if that’s one of the hardest parts; that no one else can really see those layers coming off. From the outside, it can look like nothing is changing, while inside everything is. Thank you for putting that into words.
Yes. From outside it seems that she (me) is just impossibly weird, never to be acceptable… at least that’s been my fear and the feedback of some who didn’t know me well enough.
There’s a really interesting concept we learned in school: our brains weren’t designed to process the sheer amount of information we consume today. We’re constantly taking in updates from social media, the news, and the world around us—often without even realizing it. While we may not consciously feel overwhelmed, our nervous system is still absorbing it all, and our fear response can grow as a result!
I agree. More information = more imagination = more fear. Things that might be highly unlikely can also feel like a common occurrence if we consume that kind of content/information.
Exactly! And the brains 1st response is safety so it automatically assumes “what if this happens to me” and it flexes those fear muscles. I worked with a patient whose fear was so high she couldn’t drive, and I had to prescribed her to stop watching the news for 30 days. It worked!
At the base of all fears is the fear of death.
It’s an interesting perspective. I sometimes wonder whether many fears are really different expressions of the same deeper fear; not always death itself, but the ending of something we feel we can’t live without. A relationship. An identity. A future we imagined. That’s what makes fear so personal.
I feel scared of everything so much more now, the fear of losing people, being lonely, being a bad person whereas when I was younger, I was free like a bird
“When I was younger, I was free like a bird.” That sentence carries a lot. I wonder if it’s not that fear suddenly appeared, but that over time you learned there was more to lose. The challenge then becomes finding a way back to freedom without pretending those losses can’t happen.
I think we can develop a fear against formerly neutral or nice things which went wrong on our way. Such as a thunderstorm. This later fear is easier to unlearn though than a forgotten trauma which quietly unfolds itself into more and more areas of life like a plant nobody watched growing.
Trauma is not the same as fear, but can induce it and originate from an unfinished experience in childhood. I had some, it was from what I’ve experienced at the age of 7-9, the time I got interested in making friends but chances vanished before I found the words…
I really like the distinction you make between fear and trauma. The image of a forgotten trauma quietly spreading into different areas of life stayed with me. Sometimes the hardest part is that by the time we notice the pattern, it no longer looks connected to where it began.
Yes, absolutely! For me, it was like a worsening deformity of a certain part of my body no imaging method could capture. The only way out was listening to myself, connecting to others and removing layer by layer of the whole mess my soul was in.
I wonder if that’s one of the hardest parts; that no one else can really see those layers coming off. From the outside, it can look like nothing is changing, while inside everything is. Thank you for putting that into words.
Yes. From outside it seems that she (me) is just impossibly weird, never to be acceptable… at least that’s been my fear and the feedback of some who didn’t know me well enough.
There’s a really interesting concept we learned in school: our brains weren’t designed to process the sheer amount of information we consume today. We’re constantly taking in updates from social media, the news, and the world around us—often without even realizing it. While we may not consciously feel overwhelmed, our nervous system is still absorbing it all, and our fear response can grow as a result!
I agree. More information = more imagination = more fear. Things that might be highly unlikely can also feel like a common occurrence if we consume that kind of content/information.
Exactly! And the brains 1st response is safety so it automatically assumes “what if this happens to me” and it flexes those fear muscles. I worked with a patient whose fear was so high she couldn’t drive, and I had to prescribed her to stop watching the news for 30 days. It worked!
I think that prescription would help a lot of people. Amazing work!