Overcoming Fear: Fear Isn’t the Problem
- John Winston
- Jan 5
- 5 min read
Fear is a protective signal, not a defect, and it does exactly what it evolved to do. Most days though, fear doesn’t arrive as panic or terror. It shows up quietly as hesitation before sending an email, tension before competition, or restlessness while we’re trying to fall asleep. The experience is familiar enough that we may rarely question it. We simply live with it at the cost of myriad, invisible sacrifices.
Many of us are taught that fear is disruptive even when it’s functional. It narrows attention, tightens the body, and accelerates thought. That narrowing can feel like something to overcome or try to ignore, but biologically, it’s actually a form of care. Fear exists to preserve continuity, that is to keep the system intact long enough to adapt (i.e. survive the threat).
Understanding fear through this lens changes the relationship. Instead of asking how to overcome fear, the more useful question becomes, “What is this system preparing me for right now?” That shift doesn’t soften fear. It triggers a role reversal, allowing us to begin using fear as fuel rather than be controlled by it.
What Fear Is Actually Responding To
This is why fear can surface in objectively safe situations. A new role, an unfamiliar training stimulus, or a difficult conversation can all be the culprit. None are inherently dangerous, yet all disrupt expectations. Our system responds by increasing vigilance, bracing muscles, and sharpening attention.
From the inside, this feels like a threat. From the system’s perspective, it’s preparation. Fear doesn’t mean something is wrong. It means the environment or demand has shifted faster than prediction can keep up, so our body is prepared to act accordingly.
The Body’s Experience of Fear
Fear is a full-body state, not a thought. Long before we notice it consciously, it has already altered our physiology. Breathing becomes shallower, heart rate increases, and muscle tension rises, especially in our jaw, shoulders, and hips. Energy is redirected toward systems that support rapid action.
This redistribution explains why fear often feels exhausting even when nothing happens. Resources are mobilized and held in reserve. If resolution doesn’t arrive or if the feared moment never quite comes, our body stays in a low-grade state of activation. Over time, that holding pattern becomes familiar, and the tension becomes our new normal.
Athletes recognize this as pre-competition tightness. Professionals feel it as background tension during high-stakes periods. The system is not malfunctioning. It’s waiting for confirmation that our environment is stable again.
Why Fear Lingers After the Moment Passes
Fear resolves through completion, not reassurance. When a perceived threat is met, whether it’s acted on, avoided, or fully experienced, the nervous system updates its model of the world. Prediction improves and activation resets.
Problems arise when fear has no clear endpoint. Anticipatory fear, social fear, performance fear, etc. don’t offer clean resolution. The system prepares, but nothing definitively happens compared to being chased by a lion or weathering a thunderstorm outside with our tribe. Without completion, fear doesn’t discharge. It just loops.
This is why telling ourselves to “calm down” rarely works and usually does the opposite if someone else tells us to “calm down.” Our system is asking for information because it wants evidence that prediction has improved; put another way, we want to know if the risk has passed. Until then, vigilance remains the most rational option.
Fear and Performance Aren’t Opposites
Fear and high performance often coexist because they share the same biology. The same goes for excitement and anxiety. The systems we have that sharpen focus under pressure are the same ones that generate fear, leading to increased arousal, reaction time, sensory acuity, and short-term strength output.
The difference is how we perceive the situation. When arousal exceeds how much we think we can handle, precision degrades, movements become rigid, decisions narrow, and creativity drops. When we believe we’re prepared to take on the challenge, the opposite occurs. The “fear factor” of the situation itself hasn’t changed, but how we approach the situation determines our interpretation of it…and our ability to perform or crumble.
This is why experienced performers don’t aim to eliminate fear. They aim to widen the container that holds it. Training, repetition, and familiarity don’t remove fear. They increase tolerance for the state it creates and help convert it into fuel.
When Fear Becomes Costly
Fear turns expensive when it becomes the default rather than the response. Chronic fear isn’t constant panic. It’s persistent vigilance. The sense that something might go wrong at any moment, even when evidence is thin.
In this state, recovery becomes difficult. Sleep lightens. Muscles stay partially contracted. Cognitive bandwidth shrinks. We spend excessive amounts of energy scanning instead of restoring. Over time, this shows up as irritability, fatigue, or a sense of being “on” all the time.
Again, this isn't a failure. It’s just a signal that our system thinks constant vigilance is useful but never received a strong enough signal to stand down and turn it back off.
Safety Is a Physiological Signal
For the nervous system, safety is communicated through predictable rhythms, familiar environments, and consistent outcomes. Slow breathing, repetitive movement, and trusted social contact aren’t coping strategies; they’re inputs that tell the nervous system to downshift.
When safety signals increase, fear doesn’t need to be suppressed. It naturally fades as prediction confidence returns. This is why fear often softens during routine. Not because the stakes are lower, but because the system has learned the pattern well enough to relax within it.
Fear as Information, Not Instruction
Fear provides data, not directives. It tells us where prediction is weak, where stakes feel high, or where past experiences still influence present perception. What it does not tell us is what to do next.
Interpreting fear as instruction–stop, avoid, retreat–can shrink our potential over time. Interpreting it as information allows choice. Sometimes caution is appropriate. Sometimes exposure is. The key distinction is that fear alone doesn’t decide. This reframing respects the signal without handing it control. Fear becomes something to listen to, not something to obey.
Overcoming Fear Without Eliminating It
The goal isn’t fearlessness. It’s fluency. Fluency means recognizing fear early, understanding what it’s responding to, and responding in ways that improve our ability to handle it rather than reinforce uncertainty.
Over time, this changes our system’s baseline. Fear still appears, but it resolves faster. Our body trusts that activation will be followed by completion, and vigilance no longer needs to linger.
Fear doesn’t disappear because it’s no longer needed as often. It just shows up as a performance multiplier rather than a set of chains weighing us down.
Being afraid of something is not evidence of weakness, lack of readiness, or poor mindset. It’s evidence that our nervous system is doing its job in a world that constantly changes demands. The work to overcome it isn’t meant to silence it. The work is to build enough capacity, familiarity, and safety that fear doesn’t have to immobilize us in order to get it’s message across.
When fear is understood as a signal of adaptation in progress, it stops being something to fight and becomes something to integrate. Integrated systems don’t just survive pressure; they improve because of it.
References
LeDoux, J. E. (2012). Rethinking the emotional brain. Neuron.
Mobbs, D., et al. (2007). Neural activity associated with monitoring the oscillating threat value of a tarantula. PNAS.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. Norton.
McEwen, B. S. (2007). Physiology and neurobiology of stress and adaptation. Physiological Reviews.
Hermans, E. J., et al. (2014). Dynamic adaptation of large-scale brain networks in response to acute stressors. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
