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What once protected you might now be the cage.
Hypervigilance.
People-pleasing.
Emotional shutdown.
Control.
Perfectionism.
These weren’t flaws.
They were protection.
At some point, your nervous system decided:
“This is how we survive.”
And it worked.
But survival strategies that never turn off can slowly become prisons.
When you’re always scanning.
Always bracing.
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0:00
Most of us have probably seen the movie
0:02
Inside Out. If not, put it on your list
0:04
of things to do in short order because
0:06
it is unparalleled as far as this topic
0:08
goes. So, in the movie Inside Out, fear,
0:11
the character, is portrayed as anxious,
0:14
jittery, constantly scanning for danger.
0:17
He overthinks. He catastrophizes. He
0:19
anticipates worstcase scenarios. I call
0:22
this waiting for the other shoe to drop.
0:24
And yet, fear isn't the villain of the
0:26
movie. There's a line in the movie where
0:28
fear essentially says, "My job is to
0:30
keep Riley safe." And that's the truth.
0:33
Fear is not a weakness. Fear is
0:35
protection. So in a healthy emotional
0:38
system, fear works alongside joy,
0:41
sadness, anger, and disgust. And he
0:43
speaks up when there's danger and then
0:45
he steps back. But what happens in the
0:48
movie when joy and sadness disappear?
0:50
Fear takes over the control panel. And
0:53
that's where things really begin to
0:54
unravel. because when I'm waiting for
0:57
the other shoe to drop everywhere that I
0:58
turn, I'm going to overassess threat
1:01
when it doesn't exist. And so now we're
1:03
going to talk a little bit about what
1:05
fear is in the brain and the body. So
1:08
neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman
1:10
describes fear as coordinated brain body
1:13
response to perceived threat. Now we use
1:15
the word perceive because there can be a
1:18
perception of threat when it isn't
1:20
actually there and this is a trigger. So
1:23
when fear activates our amygdala, which
1:25
is the alarm of the brain in our nervous
1:29
system, it detects danger and it sends
1:32
threat. So the sympathetic nervous
1:34
system mobilizes, the heart rate begins
1:36
to increase, our muscles tense up, our
1:39
attention narrows in, and the body now
1:42
prepares for action. And so this
1:44
response is automatic. It is so fast and
1:47
it's not verbal. In fact, it's one
1:50
million times faster than anything that
1:51
we can think through when our fear
1:53
system is triggered. And it doesn't ask,
1:56
is it logical? Is this reasonable? Is
1:59
this safe? So, in inside out, fear pulls
2:02
levers, rings alarms, slams buttons. And
2:04
in real life, fear kind of does the same
2:06
thing through hormones, through muscle,
2:09
through breath, through attention. Fear
2:12
is designed to be temporary. But when we
2:15
have trauma, it changes that. So now
2:17
we're going to talk about how fear can
2:19
stay on and that's from trauma. So
2:22
trauma is defined by what happened. It's
2:25
defined by what overwhelmed the nervous
2:27
system and couldn't be resolved. Bessel
2:30
Vanderolk, one of the game changers in
2:32
our profession, wrote the body keeps the
2:34
score. And in this book, it explains
2:37
that trauma is stored not as a story but
2:40
as a sensation, a reaction, and an
2:42
expectation. So when fear stays on, that
2:45
amygdala, that alarm system becomes
2:48
hyperreactive. It sees threat where
2:50
threat isn't. And when that happens, the
2:52
preffrontal cortex struggles to regulate
2:55
because it's not active. And the body
2:57
remains in that state of readiness. It's
2:59
like scanning all the time. And so this
3:02
is why people often say, I know that I'm
3:04
safe, but I don't feel safe. That's not
3:06
resistance. That's not denial. That is
3:09
just biology. So like Fear in the Inside
3:12
Out movie, never leaving the chair even
3:14
when the room is quiet. And so it's
3:17
maladaptive memory encoding. It's stored
3:20
in trauma time. So when the past lives
3:23
in the present, this is a time
3:25
orientation issue in trauma. And so one
3:27
of the most important trauma concepts is
3:30
maladaptive memory encoding. When danger
3:33
happens without resolution, without
3:36
protection, without choice, so there's
3:38
powerlessness, or without support, the
3:41
memory is stored without a time stamp.
3:43
It's live. It's like ongoing. And so the
3:46
nervous system doesn't encode that it
3:49
happened then, that it's over,
3:52
that we don't need to be afraid anymore.
3:54
It encodes this could happen again. In
3:57
fact, it likely will happen again, so we
3:59
better be ready for it. So, what we end
4:02
up having is a tone of voice or facial
4:04
expression or a slammed door or a
4:08
deadline or a raised eyebrow or any of
4:10
those things can activate that same fear
4:13
response as the original threat when it
4:16
happened in the first place. So, in
4:18
Inside Out, when Riley's core memories
4:21
shift, her entire emotional world
4:23
reorganizes. And in humans, trauma
4:26
reshapes our emotional islands, for lack
4:29
of a better word. also to trust
4:31
connection, safety, and identity. Fear
4:34
isn't reacting to now. It's responding
4:37
to unresolved then when it's stuck in
4:40
the on position. Now, it doesn't mean
4:42
we're not going to be afraid for a
4:43
moment. In fact, I've got a funny story.
4:45
The other day, u my youngest son and I,
4:47
we were walking down the dock where we
4:49
keep our boat, and he joked and he acted
4:51
like he was going to push me in the
4:52
water, and he didn't. But my response to
4:56
him was, "All systems are working." and
4:59
he just laughed at me. And what that was
5:01
was that was me saying I felt the
5:03
adrenaline of the fear in that moment
5:05
like I was going to end up in the ocean,
5:07
but then it calmed down. And that's how
5:09
I knew that I was anxious about almost
5:11
getting pushed in the water or being
5:12
afraid that I might get pushed in the
5:14
water. And he said to me, "Oh my gosh,
5:16
it's such a funny way that you said that
5:18
because I just went, "All my systems are
5:20
working." Because I felt that rush. So
5:22
anyways, trauma is what happened and
5:24
what didn't happen. So, it's not just
5:26
the things that we went through, it's
5:28
also what support we didn't get when the
5:32
thing happened. One of my favorite
5:34
people that I follow about this topic is
5:36
Dr. Gabbor Mate. And he reminds us that
5:39
trauma is not the bad thing that
5:41
happened most of the time. It's the
5:43
disconnection with the people that were
5:45
supposed to keep us safe and supported
5:47
that happened inside of us. And so fear
5:50
often develops not from one dramatic or
5:53
drastic event, but from chronic
5:56
emotional neglect, inconsistent
5:58
caregivers, um living with
6:00
unpredictability,
6:02
having to suppress emotions to stay
6:04
connected because our emotions were too
6:06
overwhelming to the people around us. Or
6:08
when no one helps a child regulate, fear
6:11
becomes the regulator. So in the movie
6:13
Inside Out, when joy and sadness are
6:15
gone, fear and anger run the system. And
6:18
that's not dysfunction, that's survival.
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