Swallowed by Fear
Hindered by the Known and Unknown
There was a time when fear was not something I felt occasionally. It was the organising principle of my life.
Fear of the dark. Fear of losing the people I loved. Fear of illness, failure, pain, and change. Fear of making the wrong decision and fear of making any decision at all. I lived beneath it for decades not dramatically, not in ways that were always visible, but constantly. Quietly. Like a hum beneath everything.
I am a naturopath of more than thirty years. I have sat opposite patients in the hardest moments of their lives and held the steadiest presence I could offer. And still, underneath, I was managing my own fear — sometimes with skill, sometimes by sheer will, and sometimes barely at all.
This is an excerpt from the book I am currently writing, This Is How We Heal. I will be sharing it here, in pieces, week by week because I believe these ideas belong in community, not just on a shelf.
Swallowed by Fear: Hindered by the Known and Unknown
Fear is not the enemy. It never was. Before it became overwhelming or chronic, before it shaped identity or decision-making, fear was a guardian: an ancient biological signal designed to alert the body to danger, mobilise resources, and move us out of harm’s way.
The difficulty arises when fear no longer comes and goes as needed but beds in as a constant backdrop. When the body does not return to safety. When vigilance replaces rest and survival becomes the dominant setting.
Scottish philosopher John Macmurray observed that it is not possible to develop the capacity to see beauty without developing also the capacity to see ugliness, for they are the same capacity. The capacity for joy is also the capacity for pain. This is the paradox at the heart of fear. The same sensitivity that makes us capable of love, of aliveness, of full presence in the world, also makes us vulnerable to what that world can do to us. To blunt the fear is to blunt the feeling. To numb the pain is to numb the joy.
Fear, understood this way, is not a flaw in our design. It is evidence of a nervous system that has not yet found enough safety to remain open.
One of the things I have come to understand, through my own healing and through sitting with patients, is that fear rarely announces itself as fear. It arrives as caution. As realism. As I’m just being careful. It calls avoidance - waiting until I’m ready. It calls withdrawal - protecting myself.
And when fear becomes chronic, it doesn't just narrow a life — it can narrow the body's very capacity to heal.
This is something I will come back to again and again throughout this book and here in this space.
I spent years working through this — not just intellectually, but in the body, in relationship, in long and sometimes uncomfortable therapeutic work. What I found on the other side was not the absence of fear. It was something steadier: the capacity to remain present with fear without handing it the steering wheel.
That, I think, is what healing actually asks of us.
If you recognise yourself in any of this, here are three small places to begin.
Notice the language fear uses. This week, when you catch yourself saying I’m not ready, I’m being careful, I’ll wait a little longer — pause. Ask gently: is this wisdom, or is this fear wearing wisdom’s clothes?
Find it in the body first. Fear lives in sensation before it lives in thought. A tightening in the chest. A shallowing of breath. A heaviness in the limbs. You don’t need to fix it. Just notice where it lives in you.
Offer it curiosity instead of combat. Fear is almost always protecting something tender. Rather than pushing it away, try asking: what are you guarding? You don’t need an answer immediately. The question alone begins to shift the relationship.
If you want to understand more about why the body responds the way it does — the fight & flight, freeze, and fawn responses, and what they are actually doing in your nervous system, please click on the links. It changed how I understood myself completely, and I think it will for you too.
Or listen to my podcast on this topic here
I would love to know
Where does fear show up most quietly in your life — the kind that doesn’t feel like fear at all, but like caution, or common sense, or self-protection?
Reply here, or simply sit with the question. Both are welcome.
With warmth,
Anthia
This Is How We Heal is coming. If someone you love needs to read this, please share it with them.
One of the hardest things about chronic fear is that after a while it stops feeling like fear and just starts feeling like your personality.