09/01/2025
Fear’s Death Rattle: The Sound of Breakthrough
You take a step forward. Just one. You click “submit” on the application. You walk into the gym lobby. You pick up the phone to call your sponsor. You sit down across from the therapist. You agree to coffee with someone new.
And instantly, fear goes into a full-blown panic attack.
Your chest tightens. Your stomach flips. Your mind screams: STOP! GO BACK! THIS WILL KILL YOU. All you did was move one step toward growth, and suddenly every alarm in your body is blaring.
Why? Because fear knows what’s at stake.
Fear survives by keeping you still. Its power depends on your paralysis. The moment you move—any movement at all—it senses its grip slipping. And like a parasite threatened with starvation, it fights for its life.
Fear doesn’t always show up as raw terror. Often it disguises itself as anxiety. The restless thoughts, the tight chest, the sense of dread you call “stress” or “just my personality.” It masquerades as caution or realism. But underneath, it’s still fear, feeding on your attention and draining your energy.
Neuroscientists call this moment an extinction burst—the last frantic firing of old circuits before they’re overwritten. The amygdala throws alarms. Cortisol and adrenaline spike. The body braces for impact as if it’s about to face combat. And yet the “threat” is ordinary: walking into a room, asking for help, starting something new.
Fear doesn’t measure danger. Fear measures unfamiliarity. That pounding chest is not evidence of risk. It is evidence of rewiring. The extinction burst is fear’s death rattle—not yours.
Every symptom you dread—nausea, muscle tension, racing thoughts—is chemistry, not catastrophe. Cortisol peaks, then it breaks. Adrenaline spikes, then it clears. And once you’ve walked through it, your body learns: this wasn’t death, it was growth. What once felt like annihilation now feels like expansion.
The sacred often hides in the terrifying. Moses met God in fire. Transformation waits in the thing that feels most like dying. Fear’s volume is proportional to the miracle waiting on the other side. The loudest scream always comes right before the silence. Right before the freedom. Right before the edge you feared reveals itself as a door.
A Practice for Today
Say aloud: “I feel afraid, and I’m moving anyway.” Take one step toward the thing fear is screaming about. As you move, remind yourself: “This is fear dying, not me.” Notice: you are still alive. Fear lied.
🌿 Excerpt from my upcoming book, A Year of No Fear: A Daily Practice for Living with Courage
And here’s the invitation: this isn’t just a book, it’s a movement. We are walking this out together every day inside Everwell. Because being brave is way more fun than running scared.
📬 DrLynn@myeverwell.net
🔗 myeverwell.org
Come join us in The Year of No Fear.
