Emotional Fertilizer (Exploring Fear and Courage)

I’ve been thinking about fear lately. Actual fear; not the kind of stress that sharpens our focus and helps us make better decisions. Fear—the deep-seeded, primitive emotion borne out of our survival instinct. 

Fear is one of the most universal human motivators. It can also destroy us in so many different ways. 

For example, fear drives some of us to avoid hard conversations to sidestep accountability, while it can make others chase those conversations seeking reassurance and connection. 

We all learned about the fight or flight response in high school. Fear can also cause us freeze or “fawn.” Freezing is obvious; the threat paralyzes us. Fawning happens when the dog rolls over and goes “paws up” or where we appease the threat by people-pleasing, being overly agreeable, or apologizing excessively.  

Fear can convince us to hoard resources— it may be understandable to do so in the face of a true existential threat, but rather absurd when it’s toilet paper in 2020. 

But here’s the thing I didn’t understand until after my heart attack: Stress and fear are two different but closely related things.  

Stress is not an emotion. We often say we “feel” stressed, but we’re really describing our body’s physical response to a difficult stimulus. Our muscles tighten, for example, or our eyelids twitch. 

Some stress can be helpful. Psychologists sometimes call this “productive worry,” the slight edge of discomfort that nudges us to prepare, plan, and show up. 

Fear is something different altogether. 

Fear bypasses rational thought. 

Fear tunnels our vision and collapses our options until all we see is the threat. Then comes the instinctive response: Fight. Flee. Freeze. Fawn. 

Looking back, fear was an active and largely invisible motivator for far too many choices in my life. 

I lived closeted until age 50 because fear convinced me I wasn’t safe. I feared rejection by family and friends. I was scared I would no longer belong anywhere—that people would see me as a sort of social liar and kick me out of their groups. Fear told me that my belonging was only safe if I preserved my curated image even if that meant I would have to continue living an inauthentic life. It took decades to finally name that fear and step into the light. 

Earlier in my career, fear of conflict made me avoid giving a struggling employee the guidance and structure they needed to succeed. I told myself I was being kind. In reality, I just didn’t want to feel bad. That still stings.
We don’t leave our personal fears at home. They come into our teams, organizations, and even entire systems. In the credit union movement, where trust and cooperation are our core operating principles, understanding fear’s role is essential to leading well. 

And fear played its part in my heart attack too — the chronic worry, the performance anxiety, the imposter syndrome. They never let me slow down enough to reflect and recharge—I missed all the signs. 

Then came the ICU. 

During the delirium, I found myself reliving moments I had buried for years — like the time I walked into my grandparents’ house at 19 years old to find them paralyzed by an old friend’s alcoholism. She had overstayed her welcome for a week and refused to get out of bed. They kept bringing her drinks because they were too afraid to intervene. Their fear of conflict convinced them that enabling her was their only option. That adolescent memory contributed to my adult script for responding to fear. Without examination, those fear scripts will worm their way into our leadership scripts and shape how we coach, confront, or intervene. I have no doubt that memory prevented me from putting that old employee on a performance improvement plan.  

In the ICU, many similar buried memories surfaced again like old ghosts. 

Here’s what I learned: 

You can’t conquer fear. Not totally. 

Fear is wired into us by design. It is one of the most powerful emotions and, therefore, the easiest and quickest to trigger and manipulate us. Could it be that what Christians call the Devil is an incarnation of our deepest fears?  

Watch the news for five minutes and you’ll see it in action — fear across the political aisle, fear on our streets, fear in advertising. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was institutionalized fear. Fear is so baked into our collective identity that we often joke about FOMO – fear of missing out! In a nutshell, FOMO is basically code for fear of inadequacy and exclusion. 

But fear does have two weaknesses: exposure and witness. 

Silence lets fear breathe. 

Name what scares you—out loud—and you can feel the fear start to melt. 

And when you tell someone else what you are afraid, fear loses all its power. 

That’s why DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) teaches us to accept reality by bringing our fear into the open, holding it in one hand and courageously making the wise choice with the other. Courage does not exist without fear. Courage arrives when you realize you have the strength to do the scary thing despite the fear.

“I want to run… and I’m going to hold my ground because I know I’m safe.” 

“I am scared to do it… and yet I will, because I know I will survive this discomfort.”  

That small word — and — is where the power lives. 

“And” is emotional fertilizer for growth. 

Using “and” simultaneously helps us to recognize when we are catastrophizing, overgeneralizing, and avoiding, while empowering us to make the wise choice that balances emotion and intellect.    

My heart attack didn’t eliminate fear, but it sure did change my relationship with it. 

Now, when fear shows up, I name it out loud. 

I sit with it. 

And then I try my best to choose the next right step anyway. 

At least that’s what I’m learning — slowly, imperfectly, gratefully. 

And maybe that’s what it means to come back from the brink not just alive, but awake. 

As Always,

Bruce