Why Am I So Afraid of What I Feel?

Most of us know the moment. Someone walks into the room and you can tell they're not happy. A text comes back a little short. A family member says something with that tone. And before you've decided anything, something in you has already shifted. You get quieter, more agreeable and you start scanning. Are they upset? Is it me? What do I need to do? Or you go the other way. You get sharp, defensive, ready to push back. Either way, something has taken over. And later, when everything has calmed down, you think back on it and go, Yeah. That wasn't so good.

In trauma therapy, I've come to believe that what happens in that moment isn't simply about the other person. Triggering involves the activation of emotion—and often our system's learned fear of that emotion. In truth, we may fear what we're going to feel.

Learning to Stay With What We Feel

So where does this fear of emotion come from?

Little children seem very present and unafraid of getting tangled up in their emotions. They feel something, and they express it. The tears, the tantrum, the whole thing—right there on the kitchen floor.

But for many of us adults, something has changed. We generally suppress our feelings, then express them as unwanted thoughts and behaviors.

It seems we learned that emotions weren't welcome. Perhaps the adults around us couldn't handle them and expressed sharp disapproval. Maybe happy emotions were acceptable and negative emotions weren't. Or maybe the feelings themselves simply became too big for a young nervous system to manage. Over time, our systems can become very good at suppressing emotion—and, in some cases, almost afraid of feeling it at all.

Trauma can disconnect us. It can disrupt our connection to the present moment, to our bodies, and to our emotions. We may become dissociated, disembodied, or numb to what we feel.

Some learn to keep everybody else happy. Some learn to manage others and control. Our system gets very good at keeping feelings away. Our unique way of surviving is connected to real experiences—painful ones—that our body still remembers even when our mind has moved on.

The answer isn't simply to express everything we feel. And it isn't to get better at suppressing it. There's another option.

We can learn to stay with what we feel.

We can allow a feeling to be present without immediately discharging it, fixing it, explaining it, or making it disappear. Consider this “ball of emotion” (frustration, craving, fear, sadness, helplessness, guilt, shame.) Can I relate to any of these feelings? Become aware of my impulse to suppress them. Notice how they feel in my body. Can I become curious about the emotions—even welcome them—and see if I can stay present without immediately needing to escape? That is very different from being overwhelmed by emotion. The goal isn't to drown in the feeling.

The goal is to discover that I can feel this and still be here.

What the Work Actually Looks Like

One way of describing the “work of therapy” is fairly simple. We move back and forth between three tasks.

First, we practice being present, and we learn to stay with what we feel. We return to the feeling, a little at a time, and begin to discover that we can experience it without suppressing or dissociating. That's part of what widening your window of tolerance means. Over time, we can experience stronger emotions without becoming overwhelmed, shutting down, or losing ourselves. The goal isn't to stop having difficult feelings. The goal is to become grounded enough that I don't lose myself when those feelings come.

We also resource. I think of resourcing as learning a new language. The old language may be fear, pleasing, submission, and compliance. Or it may be anger, defensiveness, and control. The new language sounds more like calm, clarity, curiosity, compassion, confidence, and courage. For me, it's also the language of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and gentleness. And like any language, we learn it by practicing it—not simply by understanding it.

Finally, there is reprocessing. We may explore the experiences that taught our system to be afraid in the first place. Where did I learn that this feeling was dangerous? When did my system learn that I needed to please, shut down, perform, control, or disappear in order to be safe? This is where approaches like EMDR are very helpful. We aren't simply learning to manage today's trigger. We're beginning to heal some of what continues to give the trigger its power.

Perfect Love Drives Out Fear

For me, faith sits right at the center of all of this. Scripture says that perfect love drives out fear. I don't read that as a command to try harder not to be afraid. I read it as a description of what begins to happen as love becomes increasingly real to us—not simply as something we understand in our heads, but something we begin to experience more deeply.

I am safe. I am loved. I am secure. I am united with Christ. And from that place, I can feel this. I don't have to make the feeling disappear. And I don't have to disappear.

Where to Start

If any of this sounds familiar, here's a simple place to begin. At the end of each day, take a few minutes and ask yourself: Did I get triggered today? If you did, don't immediately analyze it or try to fix it. Just get curious. What happened? What did you notice in your body? What did you want to do—please, defend, withdraw, control, shut down?

And then ask one more question: What was I afraid I was going to feel? You don't have to do anything with the answer yet. Just notice. Because perhaps the goal isn't to stop feeling anxious, sad, angry, powerless, or ashamed. Perhaps the deeper work is discovering that you can feel those things without leaving yourself. I can notice what is happening. I can stay with what I feel. I can remember who I am.

And over time, I can begin to heal what taught me to be so afraid.