Unlearning Fear: Reclaiming Voice in a Time of Noise

We often think of fear as something personal — a primal instinct meant to keep us safe. It alerts us to danger, heightens our senses, and, in its truest form, protects us. As Gavin de Becker writes in The Gift of Fear, intuition and fear are allies, the body’s way of whispering “pay attention.”

But in a culture that profits from our attention, fear has been repurposed. It’s no longer just an instinct; fear is a commodity. Every headline, every outrage cycle, every polarized debate is designed to keep us hooked, vigilant, and on edge. Fear once kept us alive; now, it keeps us online.

Over time, this constant hum of alarm stops being protective. It becomes paralyzing.

The Hijacked Gift

When the body’s alarm system never turns off, it begins to confuse stimulation for safety. The same physiological signals that once guided us toward self-protection can, under constant pressure, lead us toward self-doubt.

Since the pandemic, we’ve lived in a near-constant state of alert — not just about health, but about who to trust, what to believe, and even what we’re allowed to say. It’s as if fear, once external, began to seep inward.

Fear as a Psychological Weapon

The human nervous system isn’t designed to sustain chronic fear. When exposed for too long, the body shifts into a defensive stance; tightening, narrowing, conserving energy. Our world becomes smaller.

That narrowing doesn’t just happen physically. It happens cognitively, too. Constant exposure to fear-based messaging — whether from news cycles, algorithms, or social media echo chambers — trains the brain to seek confirmation rather than truth, to prioritize belonging over curiosity, to stay “safe” by staying silent.

This is how propaganda works, not only through lies, but through repetition. Through emotional saturation. Through keeping people in a state of reactive vigilance rather than reflective awareness.

When fear becomes the baseline, it’s easy to mistake exhaustion for conviction.

Self-Erasure: When Fear Turns Inward

Marginalization is often thought of as something done to us; by institutions, governments, or dominant cultures. While true, what’s harder to see is how we sometimes finish the job ourselves.

We dim our light, downplay our ideas, and sit quietly in rooms when we have something important to say. We do this not because we lack value, but because we’ve been taught to question it. The stories we inherit — from schools, media, and even family — don’t just live outside us. They live within us, shaping how we shrink, apologize, or disappear entirely.

Audre Lorde called this self-erasure; the way we preemptively silence ourselves to avoid rejection or risk. In times of collective tension, this tendency grows stronger. We convince ourselves that safety lies in invisibility, that silence equals peace. Many learn to code-switch; subtly shifting our language, tone, or expression to fit in or stay safe without realizing how deeply it trains the nervous system to associate authenticity with danger.

But silence, as Lorde warned, will not protect us.

The New Politics of Fear

Today, fear wears many masks; moral outrage, certainty, and even virtue. It tells us who to trust and who to reject. It rewards quick reaction over deep reflection.

Across the political spectrum, people are afraid; afraid of being canceled, mislabeled, misunderstood, or cast out of their communities. Fear no longer simply divides one ideology from another; it divides us from our own voice.

This kind of division serves power. When people are afraid to speak, to ask, to listen, conversation dies — and all that remains is noise.

Reclaiming Voice as an Act of Healing

The antidote to manufactured fear isn’t more outrage, it’s presence.

Reclaiming your voice doesn’t mean shouting louder; it means speaking from a place of grounded truth rather than reaction. It begins in the body, in noticing when fear tightens your chest, when your breath shortens, when your thoughts race to keep up with the world’s demands.

Try this:

• Take one deep, slow breath.

• Feel your feet.

• Ask yourself: Is this fear mine, or was it given to me?

Writing, walking, therapy, and body-based practices help unwind the internalized patterns that keep us silent. So does curiosity. So does courage.

The work of unlearning fear is both personal and collective. It begins when we speak; even if our voice trembles; and when we listen, even if what we hear challenges our sense of certainty.

The Invitation

The stories we’ve inherited about our worth may have shaped us, but they do not have to define us. We can rewrite them.

So ask yourself: What story have you inherited about your place in the world? Who told you to shrink and how might you begin to expand instead?

Because when we stop silencing ourselves, we don’t just reclaim our voice. We change the story for everyone.