How to Lean Into Your Fear in a Healthy Way

Sometimes, hidden right behind our fears is our way forward.

Bella Martin
5 min readSep 18, 2023

We tend to write off fear as a bad thing.

We try to silence it, ignore it, or make it go away without realizing that often hidden right behind our fears is our way forward. Hidden right behind our fears are our deepest desires.

For example, maybe you fear rejection. The desire behind this fear is acceptance; the drive to be seen for all you are and loved anyway.

Or perhaps you fear failure which tells you what you are after is validation. You want your talents and efforts to be recognized, appreciated, and admired; to get assurance that you are capable and worthy of success.

Maybe your greatest fear is loneliness and so you do everything in your power to avoid being alone. This fear masks a desire for self-acceptance being substituted by the drive for external approval.

What we most desire often lives on the opposite side of what we most fear. When we fear being abandoned it’s because we desire love.

When we fear change it’s because we crave consistency.

When we worry about running out of time it’s because we want to do something now that we are holding ourselves back from.

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Bella Martin
Bella Martin

Written by Bella Martin

Words of healing, hope & happiness. | Find me on instagram @bellamwrites

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