Why Do We Have Fear?

The Fear Under Our Joy

Most of us experience a life full of wonderful moments and difficult moments, but what I have been noticing lately is that even in our happiest moments, fear often sits quietly underneath, like a shadow we do not name. We fear that the moment will end. We fear that we will lose what we love. We fear that we will not get what we need. We fear that we are not safe. And even when nothing is wrong in the present, the body still holds an old sense of danger, as if happiness itself is something temporary that cannot be trusted.

For a long time, I thought fear was something obvious, the kind of fear you can point to and explain, but now I see it is more subtle than that. Fear is not only what we feel when something bad happens. Fear is also what keeps us attached to what hurts us. Fear is what keeps us in old identities and old relationships. Fear is what keeps us stuck in a chapter we have already outgrown, even when we know deep down we want a new life.

The Power of a Safe Room

This week, I felt that truth clearly through my class. It is not a normal class in the way people imagine a class. It is a space where people come to learn, yes, but what we are really learning is how to meet ourselves honestly. People share their deepest stories about childhood, trauma, grief, and questions they have never shared with anyone, sometimes not even with the people they live with, because they are afraid of being judged. But in this space, something different happens. The community becomes a kind of quiet container. We listen. We hold space. We treat each other with gentleness. And because of that safety, people begin to speak the truth out loud, and when the truth is spoken in a room without judgment, it stops feeling like a secret that has to control you from the inside.

Because of the way I grew up isolated, I have always been curious about other people’s lives. Not in a gossip way but in a human way. I grew up in an environment where love was not explained to me, where family culture, emotional behavior, and healthy ways of relating were not taught. So learning how other people carry their stories has always felt fascinating to me, because it shows me how many different inner worlds exist behind the faces we pass every day. Everyone comes to this class with different reasons, but beneath those reasons, I sense a shared longing, a longing to be free from childhood pain, to release the grip of the past, and to begin again as the truest version of themselves.

What Fear Really Does

And as I listened to the stories of people in my class, I realized something that felt both heavy and clarifying. The reason many people stay stuck is not because they do not know what to do. Often, they do know. They know the relationship is not right. They know the pattern is destructive. They know the pain is repeating. But fear makes the known pain feel safer than the unknown future.

One woman in class shared that she knows her partner does not love her, and that parting ways is what she should do, but she is too afraid to live alone. As she spoke, I could feel how real that fear is in the body because fear does not only exist in thoughts, it exists in the nervous system. It can make loneliness feel like danger, even when solitude might be the doorway to peace. It can make staying feel like survival, even when staying is slowly breaking your spirit.

Another woman spoke about her mother’s depression and how her mother died alone, and she has been blaming herself for it. She carries a guilt that seems endless, because as a child she could not handle the strong emotions her mother transferred to her during her mental illness. She did not know then what she knows now. She was only a child, a child who needed love and protection too, but instead she learned to carry what was never meant for her to carry. Listening to her, I kept thinking about how many adults are still living with the emotional logic of a child, still judging themselves by standards that no child could ever meet.

These stories stayed with me because they reveal what fear does. Fear keeps us in a loop. Fear makes us believe we are powerless. Fear makes us cling to what we already know, even if what we already know is hurting us. Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future, and it steals the present moment without even announcing itself.

How Fear Hides In Modern Life

Many people think that to be happier, we have to push away fear or ignore it, because looking at fear feels uncomfortable, and we do not like discomfort. So we deny it. We distract ourselves. We stay busy. We scroll. We shop. We attach ourselves to noise, to entertainment, to other people, to anything that keeps us from being alone with the feelings we do not want to meet.

But fear does not disappear because we refuse to look at it. It simply moves into the deeper layers of us and from there, it continues to shape our choices, our relationships, and our sense of who we are.

Turning Toward Fear Instead Of Running

What I am learning is that the only way to ease fear is not to escape it, but to acknowledge it and look deeply into its source. I used to think that looking at fear would make it stronger, but it is the opposite. When fear is brought into awareness, it often softens, because the part of us that is afraid finally feels seen. And once fear is calmer, we can begin to ask the question that changes everything.

Is this fear coming from what is happening right now, or is it an old fear, a fear from when I was small, a fear that has been living inside me for years, still waiting for safety.

Next week, I want to go deeper into what I call original fear, the fear that began before we had language, before we could explain anything, when the body first learned what it means to depend, to separate, and to survive.