It’s Not You; It’s Your Trauma
EP 0065 – Moving Through Fear (Subscription)
It’s Not You – It’s Your Crippling Avoidance
You wake up already braced for impact, heart racing before your eyes even focus, convinced that facing the day will shatter you. The brutal truth is this: fear doesn’t dissolve while you wait for courage to magically appear. You have to drag your terrified body straight through the center of it—every single time—or stay forever frozen in the same shrinking cage.
The Real Difference Between Pain and Fear
Pain and fear feel like one giant emotional storm inside, but they demand completely different responses. Hurt, the old wounds and aches from neglect or abuse, asks you to turn toward it, sit in the memory of that small, abandoned child, and let the grief move through without running. Fear is not the same. You don’t sit with fear hoping it softens. You move through fear by doing the exact thing your nervous system screams will kill you. That distinction changed everything. One is about grieving what was stolen; the other is about proving to your terrified inner child that you can survive the sensations and come out the other side.
Why Avoidance Feels Safer—Until It Isn’t
Avoidance started as brilliant survival. As a kid, freezing, hiding, numbing, or shrinking the world kept the terror at a manageable level. The nervous system memorized: don’t move, don’t speak, don’t risk. Now that same strategy constricts everything. You procrastinate, isolate, over-plan, people-please, or chase external wins because any step into uncertainty triggers the old gun-to-the-head panic. Leaning into fear means dismantling the only protection you ever had. No wonder the body rebels so violently.
The Crushing Price of Staying Small
Every time you sidestep the fear, the world gets smaller. Relationships stay shallow, opportunities vanish, confidence erodes. You end up masterful at managing a tiny, controlled life while the real one—messy, alive, expansive—passes you by. Addictions, codependency, perfectionism, rage—all flourish in the space fear carves out. The longer you avoid, the more convincing the lie becomes that you’re too broken to handle what everyone else seems to manage effortlessly.
The Other Side Is Freedom You Can Feel
Each time you act while terrified—walk out the door, speak the truth, stay in the uncomfortable conversation—you chip away at the fear’s power. The panic still arrives, but it doesn’t own you anymore. Space opens inside. Self-trust grows. The constant background hum of dread quiets. You start choosing instead of reacting. The child inside begins to believe the adult can keep them safe. Life stops feeling like a minefield and starts feeling like something you can actually live.
Three Important Takeaways
- Fear is not meant to be sat with or waited out; it is meant to be moved through by taking action while the terror is still screaming.
- Avoidance shrinks your world and feeds every self-destructive pattern, while repeated exposure slowly dismantles the fear’s grip.
- You don’t need to eliminate fear forever—you need to build the muscle of acting in spite of it so your inner child finally learns it can survive being seen and being alive.
Conclusion
The war inside isn’t against the fear itself; it’s against the decades-old habit of believing you’ll die if you don’t obey it. Cold, unsparing clarity arrives when you finally stop negotiating with panic and simply step forward anyway—again and again—until the reflex to shrink feels more foreign than the willingness to shake, breathe, and keep going. That shift leaves behind the metallic taste of agency: you are no longer the prisoner. You are the one turning the key in the lock.
