Moving From Fear to Freedom

This episode is the heart of everything I talk about on the show: the path from fear to freedom. I share some of my own story and then walk you through the four shifts that made all the difference for me: learning that we can actually change, that we are more capable than we've been told, what real bravery actually looks like, and how confidence and feeling empowered get built. If you've been peering around every corner and prioritizing comfort and you want a change, this one's for you.  

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Transcript

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Welcome back to the 18 Minutes Podcast. I'm Amanda, and this is the show where we take everything that is scary, isolating, and confusing about fear and anxiety, and we turn it into something that you can actually work with. I want to start this episode by talking to a very specific type of person, because I have a feeling that if you've been listening to the show for a while, you and I have pretty similar life experiences. If you tend to look at the world through a lens of fear, if you're always peering around the corner, scanning for what could go wrong, if you prioritize your own comfort and safety to an extent that if you're really being honest with yourself, you're not totally okay with. And if fear has been making the decisions about your travel, your relationships, your career, your everyday decisions, and it's been making your life much smaller than you want it to be, this episode is for you. Today we're going all the way to the root of everything that I talk about on the show. Fear itself. I'm going to share some of my story moving from fear to freedom, and then walk you through four of the shifts that made the biggest difference in my life. Before we dive in, as a reminder, I am not a therapist or a medical professional. Everything I share on this show is based on my own personal experience with fear and anxiety, my journey through recovery, and the research that I do for the show. This is not a replacement for therapy or medical care. So please take only what's helpful to you, leave what isn't, and talk to your medical and mental health professionals first. If you're new here, thank you for joining us. I'm glad you're here. Please hit follow or subscribe wherever you're listening because a new episode comes out every Friday morning, and I would hate for you to miss the next one. If you're a regular listener, thank you so much for being here and welcome back. Just a few quick reminders before we get into today's topic. I have several resources available to you, most of them free. I have a free guide on my website that talks about my story through disordered anxiety and recovering and what life looks like after. That's available on my website. You just put your name and email in, sends it right to you. That also automatically signs you up for my newsletter. I send out a letter every week and it has encouragement, sometimes a preview of the upcoming podcast. You can start thinking about it ahead of time. I also go live on TikTok every Thursday at 3 p.m. Central Time. So if you have a burning question that you want to get answered in real time, that's definitely the place to do it. Lastly, the reclaim group coaching session still has a couple spots left at the time of this recording. So if you are wanting to specifically move from living through a lens of fear into a lens of freedom, that is essentially what that group is for. It's a four-week small group coaching program that addresses fear in our lives. If that's something that you've been wanting and want support in figuring that out, then that is the place for you, and you can grab your seat at the18minutes.com. Okay, let's talk about moving from fear into freedom. I'm gonna start with a little bit of my story, and hopefully you can find yourself in parts of this too. I had my first panic attack when I was 12 years old. I didn't know what it was at the time. I just thought that something was wrong with me. And for the next 15 years or so, I lived within this fear cycle. Panic attacks, thinking I was going crazy, feeling like I was dying, the fear of the next time I would feel that way, and the guilt and shame that comes along with all of that. What that did to my life is hard to overstate. I spent most of my growing up years learning that I couldn't handle certain feelings or situations. Fear was making most of my decisions. I didn't travel because I was afraid. I didn't go to college right away because I was afraid. I didn't try new things or meet new people because my fear told me that I couldn't. Fear ended up taking away a lot of my independence and authenticity. And I told myself a story about all of that. I told myself, this is just who I am. I'm an anxious, fearful person. I have something inherently wrong with me. And there are certain things that I would love to be able to do, but they're just not in the cards for someone like me. That story was one of the most painful parts of the whole experience because if this is who you are, then what could possibly be done about it? I'll spare you the long version for now, but eventually there was a shift. Not because I found some magic pill or the perfect technique. Things started to shift because I learned what fear was. I learned what it was doing in my brain and in my body, and I learned that I had way more agency over it than I ever realized. The shifts that I'm going to talk through next are the ones that made the biggest difference for me. And my hope in sharing this is that you can see yourself in my story and be empowered to make some of these changes yourself. And just so you know where I'm telling you this from, I'm on the other side now. I've traveled in the last year alone to places I never thought I would be able to travel to. I love going to concerts, staying up late, meeting new people, drinking coffee, going on road trips, and a hundred other things my younger self literally would not believe. And now I get to do work that helps other people walk the same path. This version of me, who's talking to you now, is not a fearless person. There's no such thing. But I am a person who is not afraid of fear anymore. And that has changed everything. Let me walk you through four of the changes that got me here. The first shift is somewhat of a foundational one that a lot of the other changes are built on. And that is the realization that we can actually change even if we don't believe it yet. This might sound obvious, but if you're living inside of a fear loop, then it's not. Most of us have spent years telling ourselves this is just who I am. Or you've told yourself that you've already tried everything and you've proven to yourself that this is a permanent situation. When you have felt this way for as long as you can remember, that story feels true. Here's what I learned about the brain that started to change my perspective. The same brain that built the fear loop by repetition, by years of a certain kind of practice, can build a new pattern the exact same way. There is solid science behind the idea that if you face your fear and let yourself find out you are actually okay, your brain builds a new safety connection or pattern over top of the old fear-based one. The old wiring doesn't disappear, which we talked about in a recent episode, but the new pathway gets stronger every time you practice. Over time, it becomes a pattern that wins out more and more of the time. The first time I really understood this was when I was practicing acceptance for the first time. I started going out to my car every morning, starting the engine, and sitting there for about 20 minutes. Because of where I was at with my agoraphobia, that would make me very anxious. I would have heart palpitations, my palms would get sweaty, um, I would start shaking, I was wondering if I was gonna have a medical emergency. But I practiced allowing myself to experience fear. I didn't fight back against it or tried not to. And on the fifth day, expecting to feel the way I always had, I got in the car, sat in the driver's seat, turned the engine on, and nothing happened. I felt nothing. It was weird actually. That was a pivotal day for me because I started to wonder if I had a normal brain that was doing what normal brains do. I had just trained mine without meaning to to be very, very extra good at protecting me from possible danger. And if I could train it one way, maybe I could train it another. That was my experience, and I would love that for you two. If you've been living under the assumption that this is just your personality, I want you to know that neuroscience does not back that up. You are not stuck this way. You can change. And if I, who lived inside this thing for 15 years, was able to do it, I think you can too. The second shift was the realization that we are way more capable than the fear has been telling us we are. Fear tells us that we cannot handle the situation. We cannot handle negative feelings or whatever it is that we're afraid of. So for years, or however long it's been for you, we let the fear make the call. We don't even attempt to do the scary thing because fear has already told us we can't handle it and it's not worth the risk. But something interesting started to happen when I started to challenge it. Even just a little bit. I would do the thing that I was sure I couldn't do and I wouldn't fall apart. I would stay at the dinner without trying to leave early. I would stay on the highway without turning around and going home. I would stay in the moment when my chest was tightening and I started to feel really scared. And I started to find out that I could handle more than I thought I could. Every time that happens, we build a little piece of evidence. And evidence is what the fear center of our brains run on. Fear tells you a story, sure, but it can be overridden by enough lived experience that says otherwise. So every time you do a hard thing and you stay in it, you show your brain what the truth is. And that is that you are way more capable than you previously thought. This took me a long time to really feel and really believe. For a while, I would do something hard and I would immediately diminish it. I would say, oh, that was lucky, or well, I was just having a really good day. That's an anomaly. I don't know if I could actually do that again. But somewhere along the line, after practicing and practicing and practicing, the evidence started to add up for my brain. I got to a place where I could say to myself before doing something really difficult, you've done harder things before, and you can do this one too. Eventually, the symptoms of anxiety and the feelings of fear I had also went away, which is a whole other podcast episode entirely. But I can't explain to you how big of a deal this was for me. To go from being someone who said no to everything that was even a little bit scary to choosing to move into something that was incredibly difficult for me was a massive pivot for me. But it happened through small, consistent behaviors. Some version of this is available to you too. And you probably have way more evidence than you realize. Think about the hardest things you've done in your life. Think about the times where you stayed when you wanted to leave. Those count. Those things are evidence of who you actually are and what you're actually capable of. The third biggest shift for me was learning what brave actually is. You might think that bravery is the absence of fear. Like a brave person is the one who isn't afraid. So as long as you're afraid, you must not be brave and you must not be the type of person who's going to walk into scary situations. That is not true. Anybody who has actually done anything really hard in their lives can tell you brave is not what happens when fear leaves. Brave is what happens when you do that thing while the fear is sitting heavy in your chest. And this matters for us specifically, because if you're waiting to feel brave before you do something, you're going to be waiting forever. Fear is not going to just politely and quietly step aside. It's going to come with you every time for a while. The work is to bring it along and move into that scary situation anyway. To get on the plane while your hands are shaking, to stay at the table while your chest is tight, to walk into the meeting when your stomach is in knots. That is bravery, and that's what this practice of fear to freedom actually looks like. It also means that bravery is more available to you than you might realize. You don't have to wait until you feel ready or until you feel calm first or until you fix yourself. You just have to be willing to be scared and do it anyway. And that you can literally choose right now. For me, this shift looked a lot like just a bunch of small things every day. Getting out of bed when I would wake up with a racing heart and wanting to take a mental health day. Going to a social event without knowing how I was getting home. And saying yes to opportunities when I wasn't sure how they were going to make me feel. Every time I did the thing that I was afraid of, I added a little bit more evidence to the pile. And bravery is one of those things that gets stronger the more you use it. The fourth shift is what came to me after practicing the first three for long enough. Confidence and empowerment. To me, confidence was not something that just descended upon me from somewhere out there. It's not a magical state where you suddenly feel sure of yourself. Confidence is something that we can build piece by piece by showing up and proving to ourselves that we can handle things. Every brave thing you do is a piece of that. And I use the word empowerment just to mean that you are making your decisions, not your fear. The version of you that put on this podcast and is still listening at minute 20 because you have goals that you want to achieve. You are the one making the decisions in your life, even if the fear has to tackle on for a little while longer. And here's what that looked like for me. I started saying yes to things that I normally would have said no to. Not because I felt no fear. Sometimes I still feel a lot of fear. Growth isn't something that I wanted to do for a little while and then be done with. But because I knew that I could be in the situation, feel the feelings, and still come out on the other side able to move forward. The fear over time stopped being the primary voice in my head. That is freedom. That's what fear to freedom actually means. It's not the absence of fear, it's the absence of fear running your life. It's your decisions, your relationships, your travel, your career, your everyday choices finally being made by you. If that's what you want, you can have it. It will take work and it will take time and it will take you doing things you are sure you can't do, but you can absolutely get there. And I'm proof that you can. So if you're stepping away from this episode with anything, take these four shifts with you. One, you can actually change. The same brain that built the fear loop can build a new pattern. You are not stuck. Two, you are way more capable than your fear has been telling you you are. Every hard thing you've ever done is proof of that. Three, bravery is not the absence of fear. Bravery is being afraid and doing hard things anyway. You don't have to feel ready, you just have to be willing. And four, confidence and empowerment can be built over time. The work is worth it. Freedom on the other side of this is real, and it's yours if you want it. That's all for today's episode on moving from fear to freedom. If you have questions about today's episode or you have a topic you want me to dive into on the podcast, please send me an email at Amanda at the18minutes.com or send me a DM on Instagram or TikTok at the 18 Minutes. As a reminder, I go live on TikTok every Thursday at 3 p.m. Central Time. You can ask me questions there. Also, the replay group coaching sessions are live. You can find them today. If you want to work under computer freedom and you want real-time support from me and other people who get with it. If today's episode is helpful to you, please follow or subscribe wherever you're listening so you don't miss the next one. And if you have a second, please consider leaving a rating or a review. Those are really helpful in other anxious people finding this show. Thank you so much for being here today, and we'll see you next time.