Robin Ferrier - One Small Step

30/12/2025

Your Nervous System Is Not Broken. It’s Trying to Protect You

Fear of flying is often misunderstood as a lack of logic or courage.
Clinically speaking, it is neither.

What you are experiencing is a protective response from the nervous system, one that has become overly vigilant. At some point, your brain learned to associate flying with threat, uncertainty, or loss of control. Once that association is made, the body does exactly what it is designed to do: it prepares you for danger.

This response is automatic, not deliberate.
It happens beneath conscious thought.
And crucially, it says nothing about your intelligence, strength, or rationality.

In fact, people who experience fear of flying are often highly perceptive, imaginative, and sensitive to risk. The problem is not that the nervous system is malfunctioning, it is that it has not yet been shown that flying is consistently safe for you at a felt, embodied level.

No amount of “telling yourself you’re fine” corrects this, because the nervous system does not respond to logic alone. It responds to experience, repetition, and emotional learning.

Here is the hopeful part.

Nervous systems are plastic.
They learn. They update. They can be retrained.

As we move out of 2025 and into 2026, this matters. Because fear does not need to be fought, suppressed, or endured forever. When the nervous system is guided properly, it can learn that flying is not an emergency, and when that happens, calm begins to appear naturally, without force.

This is not about becoming fearless.
It is about teaching your system that it no longer needs to work so hard to protect you.

And that is not only possible, it is something the human nervous system is exceptionally good at, when given the right conditions.

If fear of flying has been shaping your choices, 2026 can be the year that changes.
If you’re ready to understand your nervous system, rather than battle it, you’re welcome to reach out and start that conversation.

29/12/2025

Bart, a Wing Mirror, and the Mind’s Love of Absolute Nonsense

THIS IS FICTION, GEDDIT. NOTHING TO DO WITH ME.

Bart clipped a wing mirror.

Not destroyed it.
Not murdered it.
He merely brushed it , the automotive equivalent of stepping on someone’s shoe and pretending nothing happened.

The cover popped off.
Bart’s stomach followed.

Bart drove on.

Not because Bart is immoral , but because Bart has a brain, and his brain immediately opened a Netflix writers’ room. FEAR kicked in.

Within seconds, the car became:
• A Mercedes
• Owned by a man called Günther or Sebastian
• Who communicates exclusively through solicitors
• And replaces wing mirrors by replacing the entire car

In Bart’s imagination, this man would demand:
• A full wing mirror assembly
• A courtesy car
• Emotional damages
• Possibly Bart’s firstborn

Bart’s brain concluded:
“Best option: flee the country.”

But then , annoyingly , Bart’s conscience got involved.

“You know this isn’t you,” it said. "Face your fears".

So Bart went back.

Plot twist: it wasn’t a Mercedes.
It was a Ford.

The owner wasn’t Günther.
He was a warm, friendly Somalian man who was genuinely surprised Bart had even returned.

Together, they clipped the cover back on.

No drama.
No invoice.
No Stuttgart engineers.

I ...errr ...Bart walked away relieved, humbled, and quietly embarrassed by the entire imaginary saga his mind had produced.

The lesson Bart couldn’t ignore:
Fear isn’t a warning system , it’s a storyteller.
Avoidance doesn’t keep you safe; it keeps the story alive.
Reality is usually far more reasonable than your inner screenwriter.

Bart didn’t fix a wing mirror.
He caught his mind lying , and chose reality anyway.

And just in case the point of this post eludes you. its not about morality, its about the BS that goes through your mind when you are stressed or fearful. Just like when we are anxious about pretty much anything.

21/12/2025

What happens on the other side of therapy?

Folks I really love this picture. You can see that this old cowboy has lived a life. Every inch of his face says life has challenged him but yet here he still stands. Tall and proud. His mental scars written into every crevice of his face. Pain suffered. Tears shed in the silence of indifference. Loves won and lost. Friends made and friends lost. Therapy can help us move on past our scars.

When we undertake therapy, it isn’t just about “fixing” things. It’s about digging down to who you really are. Chipping away the layers of fear, self-doubt, trauma, and bu****it that have been running your life while you thought you were protecting yourself.

And here’s the kicker: when you change, the world around you notices. People who relied on the old version of you might be uncomfortable. Some might even push back. That’s okay. That’s on them.

Because this is about your life, your soul, your happiness. Not theirs. Not the version of you they were used to. Therapy gives you permission to be fully, unapologetically yourself, and anyone who can’t handle that? You can kick rocks.

Some of you may know I am moved by music and poetry so I have taken terrible liberties with a powerful song by Breaking Rust - Walk my walk, and created lyrics to let you know that it is OK to grow to expand and to become the beautiful powerful individual you were always meant to be ... and anyone who says different can come talk to me, you hear?

Dig deep. Tear off the layers.
Fear. Doubt. Old patterns. Gone.
You are not who they’re used to.
You are who you’re meant to be.
Some will push back. Some will hate it.
They can kick rocks.
Walk your own walk.
Own your truth.
Shine. Heal. Grow.
Let the world adjust.

And to assault another fine song:

Shine on you crazy diamond.

https://youtu.be/OU71XDWYeIk?si=LDXynta5txYS_KZC

20/12/2025

People come to therapy because they want to feel different, lighter, safer, freer. And yet many struggle to look inward, to reflect between sessions, to answer the questions that matter. Not because they are lazy, but because it hurts. Because the past feels dangerous. Because “I don’t know” feels safer than risking the truth. "Its your job to tell me what I'm thinking isn't it?" No my friend.

And I understand that view.
Please understand that trauma teaches the body to protect at all costs.

But here is a truth spoken with love, not force:
Healing cannot happen to you. It can only happen with you.

When you avoid your own inner work, you are not protecting yourself, you are freezing yourself in the very place that hurt you. And though the avoidance may feel like relief today, it quietly guarantees more pain tomorrow. Short-term safety becomes long-term suffering.

I am here to walk beside you, not as a saviour, not as someone who knows you better than you know yourself, but as a guide and witness as you slowly, bravely turn toward what happened, and toward who you are becoming.

You do not have to run head-first into the past. You do not have to drown in memory. You just need to show up with honesty, curiosity, and willingness. Small steps. Gentle truth. Real engagement.

Because when you commit to the work, when you answer the questions, when you stay present between sessions, you are telling your nervous system:
I am worth the effort.

Those who do this find something extraordinary: long-term change. Grounded confidence. A calm that doesn’t vanish with the next storm. A life no longer ruled by the past.

And those who don’t?
They often leave therapy believing healing isn’t possible, when the truth is, they never really gave themselves the chance to find it.

Your healing is not a test of strength.
It is a relationship with yourself.
And like every relationship, it grows only when you participate.

I will stay right here beside you.
But the steps, lovingly, must be yours.

16/12/2025

Why reassurance-seeking secretly strengthens flight anxiety

When fear of flying shows up, the instinct is understandable:
Check the weather again.
Read another safety statistic.
Ask the crew if everything is okay.
Text someone who will say “you’ll be fine.”

And for a moment… it helps.

Your body softens slightly. Your mind exhales. The fear steps back.

But here’s the quiet trap reassurance creates.

Each time you seek reassurance, your nervous system learns something powerful:
“I can’t cope with this on my own. I need something outside me to feel safe.”

So the next flight, the fear returns sooner, and louder.
And the reassurance has to work harder.

This is why fear of flying doesn’t disappear with facts, logic, or endless checking. Because the fear isn’t asking “Is this safe?”
It’s asking “Am I safe without control?”

True relief doesn’t come from eliminating uncertainty.
It comes from helping your body learn that uncertainty itself is survivable.

In fear-of-flying work, we don’t take reassurance away, we replace it with something far more stable:
a felt sense of internal safety, steadiness, and trust that stays with you at 35,000 feet.

When your system no longer needs constant proof, the fear loosens its grip.

You don’t need more reassurance.
You need a new relationship with uncertainty.

✈️🤍

Takeaway:
The goal isn’t to feel certain before you fly ... it’s to feel safe without certainty.

15/12/2025

The Cost of Growing Beyond Your Symptom Or Fear

Fear and anxiety are rarely just personal experiences. They quietly organise relationships. They make you careful, predictable, accommodating. Your vigilance keeps things smooth. Your worry reassures others that nothing will change too much.

So when you begin to heal, the first thing that shifts is not your life, but your nervous system.
The scanning eases.
The constant bracing softens.
You stop apologising for existing.

There is relief in this. Real relief.
And it can be deeply unsettling to those who learned to rely on your fear.

Because your anxiety once did work for them.

It kept you compliant.
It kept you managing emotions that weren’t yours.
It kept you saying yes when your body meant no.

When fear loosens its grip, you speak less, explain less, tolerate less. And instead of celebrating your peace, some will say, “You’ve changed.”

What they often mean is: you no longer regulate the system with your fear.

This is the unspoken cost of healing anxiety. Not the loss of fear, but the loss of a familiar role.

You may feel guilt where there is no wrongdoing. You may wonder if you’ve become colder or less kind. But anxiety was never kindness. Fear was never love. It was survival mistaken for connection.

You are not required to stay anxious so others can feel safe.

Growth asks something quietly brave of you: to resist returning to fear just to restore comfort. To allow relationships to adjust, or fall away, without making that mean you were wrong to change.

If you feel the pull toward healing, let this be your permission. Growth may disrupt, but it also tells the truth. And the truth, once allowed, has a way of building a life that finally feels like home.

09/12/2025

You Get What You Tolerate

There comes a moment when we must stop lying to ourselves. Not the lies we tell the world, but the quiet ones we whisper in the dark, the ones we hope will stay buried.

We love to praise tolerance. But the most dangerous tolerance is what we allow in ourselves. The slow, silent permission we give to our own suffering.

We tolerate our anger, the anger we refuse to name, even as it burns the people we love.
We tolerate our loneliness, woven into our days until it feels like a personality.
We tolerate our sorrow, old, familiar, heavy.

And then we wonder why life feels tight, airless, unkind.

Here’s the truth: what we tolerate becomes our life.
Many of us have shaped our entire existence around old wounds we’ve never dared to face.

Not seeking therapy when we know something in us is breaking isn’t strength. It isn’t humility. It isn’t grace.

It’s delusion.

Because our pain doesn’t stay contained. It spills into our tone, our choices, our relationships. The people closest to us feel the weight of the things we refuse to confront.

But we were not born to tolerate our own undoing.

Healing begins the moment we tell the truth about what hurts — and allow someone to walk with us toward something better.

So ask yourself:
What am I tolerating that is quietly unraveling me?
And who might I become if I finally stopped?

You get what you tolerate.
And you deserve far more than a life built from pain.

08/12/2025

https://www.robinferrier.co.uk/post/positive-approaches-to-coping-with-adversity

Life is full of unexpected challenges. Whether it’s personal loss, career setbacks, or health issues, adversity can strike anyone at any time. How we respond to these difficulties shapes our mental and emotional well-being. Developing positive adversity coping strategies is essential to navigate t...

06/12/2025

The noise isn’t danger ... it’s your nervous system asking for reassurance.

If you live with a fear of flying, you don’t just hear a noise, you feel it.
A small thump becomes: “Is something wrong?”
A gentle vibration becomes: “Is this the moment everything changes?”
The sound isn’t the problem. It’s the story your brain tells in the half-second that follows.

And that story often comes from a place of exhaustion, past scares, perfectionism, or simply being someone who feels everything deeply.

So let me offer you another way to meet those moments:

• The “clunk” beneath your feet
Your mind may hear danger.
But your body is reacting to uncertainty, the feeling of being out of control.
In reality? It’s just the aircraft shifting systems as it gets ready. A routine, predictable part of every flight.

• The sudden whirr or hum during takeoff
Your chest tightens because your brain leaps to the worst explanation.
Not because you’re weak, but because you’re wired for survival.
Mechanically, this is often the air system adjusting, a normal pressurisation change. But psychologically, it’s your nervous system saying, “Please tell me I’m safe.”

• The vibration or rattle mid-air
Your stomach drops, not because the plane is in danger, but because you feel powerless.
This is turbulence speaking its usual language… but your brain may be replaying old fears or imagining future ones.

Here’s the truth:
Most people with flight anxiety aren’t afraid of the plane.
They’re afraid of the moment they think they’ll lose control.

So the next time a noise stirs panic, try saying this softly to yourself:

“My mind is reacting to uncertainty.
This noise is routine.
The story is fear, not danger.”

Every time you do this, you’re strengthening a new pathway in the brain, one where you can notice fear without becoming it. One where noises lose their power. One where you start to feel like you again, even at 35,000 feet.

You’re not broken. You’re human.
And this is entirely workable.

The Fear of Flying Guy

05/12/2025

So many of us are walking around blind.
Blind to the thoughts that stir us,
blind to the emotions that rise,
blind to the actions we unleash before we even know why.

Awareness is the pause, the moment we see the spark before it becomes a fire.
It is noticing the thought before it fuels the feeling,
the feeling before it drives the action,
the action before it spills into the world.
It is meeting ourselves in motion,
instead of being swept along like leaves in a storm.

Walk blind, and the cost is brutal:
friendships fray, love is lost, opportunities vanish, and we wound others, and ourselves, without ever seeing the hand we played.

Awareness is not soft.
It is power.
It is freedom.
It is the chance to respond, not react;
to connect, not collide;
to choose, not repeat.

Walk blind, and the world will punish you.
See, and you may change everything.

03/12/2025

The Story of an Average Man

There’s a man I know.
You probably know him too.

He’s the sort of man who says he isn’t afraid of anything.
He’s just busy.
Just stressed.
Just tired.
Just trying to keep it together.

If you asked him directly about fear, he’d laugh.
Fear is for other people.

But his life tells a different story.

He wakes with his jaw clenched.
His patience is thin.
He snaps at his partner without meaning to.
He works late because the thought of slowing down makes him restless.
He checks his phone a hundred times a day, searching for something he can’t name.
And when the world pushes in too close, he gets angry, because anger feels safer than admitting he’s overwhelmed.

He doesn’t see any of this as fear.
But science does.

Chronic stress activates the amygdala, the threat detector of the brain.
It keeps the body braced, the mind narrowed, the heart defended.
Fear doesn’t always announce itself.
More often, it hides behind irritation, control, distraction, and silence.

This man isn’t weak.
He’s human.
He’s living with a nervous system taught to stay alert, even when there is no danger.

But here’s the quiet truth:
when he finally allows himself to pause, breathe, and soften… something changes.

His shoulders drop.
His thoughts loosen.
The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that restores perspective and empathy, switches back on.
He becomes calmer.
Kinder.
More connected.
More like the man he always thought he was.

And the world around him feels less sharp, less hostile, less heavy.

The story of this man is the story of millions.
Not fearless, just unaware of how fear has been shaping their behaviour.
But when we recognise the fear we didn’t know we carried, we gain the power to choose differently.

Perhaps this is where healing begins:
one person noticing the tension in their own life…
and realising that on the other side of that fear is the life, and the humanity that they’ve been missing.