Transforming Fear: A Guide To Understanding Your Emotions
When Fear Becomes a Barrier
Recently, I met with a client who felt disempowered, depressed, and stuck in her situation. After months of building trust, we began to identify her feelings and explore the possibility of acknowledging them, learning from them, and contemplating taking action.
“I’m afraid.”
“I’m scared.”
“I don’t know if I can do that.”
She was mad—and I was mad with her. She should have been angry: her family mistreated, ostracized, and shamed her. But she was stuck, not fully letting herself feel her feelings, using drugs to cope.
Blocked off from parts of herself, she was also blocked from the messages that could have motivated her to act and stand up for herself.
“Well, can you feel the fear and do it anyway?” I asked.
Trauma and the Confusion of Feelings
Trauma imprints a combination of fear and anger that people often experience as anxiety and depression. Fear (a.k.a. anxiety) is a powerful force that shapes our lives and relationships.
Sometimes, fear is a signal of real danger—like a house fire. Other times, it appears when we’re about to do something new or uncomfortable. That kind of fear can mark the edge of our growth.
For my client, she realized that every time she was angry at her family, she used drugs. Stuffing her emotions down—suppressing them—led to depression.
Her habitual use had convinced her that feeling her anger would destroy her, but I saw it differently.
“I don’t think that’s true. I think you’re terrified of your power,” I said.
“If feelings are information, and your anger motivates you to act, being in touch with your anger is a source of power. You’re not afraid of your anger; you’re afraid of your power.”
How Trauma Shapes Our Emotional World
Working with trauma survivors who are often depressed, anxious, or using substances to cope, I help clients re-examine their relationships with their inner worlds. Together, we examine language, attention, and emotion—how they influence understanding and response to one's feelings.
Trauma is not just a past event; it has a lasting impact. It’s a force that continues to shape our present.
It can leave us confused about our feelings. In an abusive household, we might learn that love means pain, and later find ourselves drawn to harmful relationships.
We might learn that closeness leads to abandonment and develop a chronic fear of intimacy.
Most of us have some version of trauma—whether significant (abuse, neglect) or subtle (emotional invalidation, disconnection, chronic stress).
Why We Avoid Our Emotions
Feeling is a natural part of being alive. When we stuff feelings down, we cut off from ourselves.
Without guidance, many of us become frightened or overwhelmed by our emotional experiences. We might:
Avoid our feelings through busyness, substances, or perfectionism
Use humor or caretaking to deflect discomfort
Confuse growth with danger and turn away from opportunities to expand
When we misunderstand our emotions, we can label anxiety as “bad,” when in fact, it might be signaling growth or readiness for change.
The Role of Emotional Awareness in Healing
Emotional awareness is a powerful tool for navigating life’s challenges. It involves understanding the inner map that makes you who you are—what you feel, how you relate to those feelings, and what you might do with them.
There can be no wholeness without openness to your emotional world.
Trauma therapy helps restore trust in your inner knowledge, equipping you with emotional intelligence to live more freely and fully.
There is always a message inside our emotions:
Longing and grief reveal what we truly care about.
Anger reveals where our boundaries are and where they’ve been crossed.
Guilt and shame reveal what we want to change about ourselves.
Meeting Fear with Curiosity and Grace
Our power often lies on the other side of fear.
If we can learn to tolerate the new and unfamiliar—to meet our edge with curiosity and grace—we can begin to expand. That’s how we grow, heal, and create new ways of being.
The modern world doesn’t always create space for deep self-knowing.
Systems like capitalism and patriarchy often encourage us to stay numb or disconnected.
To dive deeply into ourselves is radical work—it takes courage to see what lives beyond the familiar.
Feel the fear. Acknowledge it.
Then ask yourself: What do I make this mean?
You always have the power to choose what comes next.
If you find yourself caught between fear and longing, between knowing what you want and being afraid to reach for it, therapy can provide a space to explore what lies underneath. In my practice, I offer trauma-informed, psychodynamic psychotherapy to help you deepen self-awareness, reconnect with your emotions, and rediscover your sense of power and possibility—both within and beyond fear.
