The Shape of Fear

Let’s say you’re sitting in a meeting. You’ve done your prep, reviewed the agenda, even put on your “confident-but-approachable” face. And then someone makes a comment—a little too sharp, a little too loud, with that slight touch of condescension. You feel something shift inside. Your chest tightens. Your thoughts blur. You shrink a little, pulling back without even realizing it.

What just happened?

Fear. Not the kind that makes headlines. Not fear with a gun in its hand or sirens on its heels. But fear all the same—disguised in professionalism, pressed under layers of social performance. Fear in a tie .

Psychologist Ross Buck offered a way to think about emotion in layers, each one building on the next: the nervous system at the bottom, expression in the middle, and conscious feeling at the top. It’s a helpful lens—especially when the emotion is fear, which rarely travels alone and never wears just one face.

As a life coach and a human being who watched fear do its many dances—in myself, in others—I’ve come to see fear not as a single experience, but as a constellation. A multi-level phenomenon. And if we’re going to work with it, we need to name it at each of its levels.

Let’s trace the shape of fear.

Instinctive Fear — The Body Takes Over

This is the base layer. A jolt of adrenaline, a spike of cortisol. Your heart pounds, your breath shortens, your pupils widen. You flinch before your mind knows why. This is not the story of fear—it’s the raw signal. The body remembers something, real or imagined, and responds as if life is on the line.

Often, it’s not.

But the body doesn’t care.

In coaching, this shows up as fight, flight, freeze, fidget, disassociation, the client going blank in the middle of a thought. In life, it’s a child hiding under a table—or a grown adult forgetting why they walked into the room. The body goes first. Meaning catches up later.

Expressed Fear — The Body Speaks

Then there’s fear as seen by others. It might be the way a voice goes tight in a meeting. The forced laugh at a bad joke. The absence of eye contact. The perfectionist who triple-checks their email or the people-pleaser who says yes but means no.

At this level, fear is performing—not to manipulate, but to survive.

Children "act out" this way. Adults do too. We call it anxiety, defensiveness, conflict avoidance, overachieving. It’s not always conscious. But it’s often obvious.

In the workplace, this is the most misunderstood fear. A colleague snaps and is labeled "difficult." A junior employee overexplains and is deemed “insecure.” But what if they’re just afraid—and they don’t know it?

Conscious Fear — The Story We Tell

Now we enter the narrative layer. This is fear you can name. "I’m afraid of failing." "I’m scared of being alone." "I don’t want to disappoint anyone." This is the fear that comes with language, insight, and—if you’re lucky—compassion.

This fear can be spoken aloud. It lives in therapy offices, journal entries, prayer circles. It’s self-aware. But don’t mistake awareness for resolution. We can know we’re afraid and still be caught in it. Insight is the beginning—not the cure.

Still, Conscious is where things start to loosen. When fear becomes language, it can also become choice.

Fear Has Many Faces

What about fear that comes from someone else—raised voices, veiled threats, power plays masked as “feedback”? What about the kind of fear that doesn’t rise from within, but is used against you?

We might call this weaponized fear. It’s not just emotion—it’s strategy. It hijacks the nervous system, silences the voice, keeps people compliant. This fear moves into your body like a trespasser. And for many people—especially women, people of color, queer folks, neurodivergent folks—this kind of fear isn’t rare. It’s structural. It’s cultural. It’s everyday.

Then there’s internalized fear. Not something said out loud, but something inherited. The critic in your head. The part of you that says: Don’t mess this up. Don’t take up space. Don’t get too loud, too smart, too visible. This isn’t your fear, exactly. It’s someone else’s fear that set up shop in your nervous system.

So What Do We Do With It?

If you’re a coach, a leader, a human who wants to be in right relationship with others—you need to know your fear. Not just the big, loud ones. But the soft ones. The smart ones. The socially acceptable ones.

You need to know when fear is protecting you, and when it’s blocking you. When it’s asking for care, and when it’s echoing a threat that no longer exists.

And you need to know which level you’re working on.

Because the way we talk to someone with Conscious Fear—where they have words and awareness—is not the way we support someone in Instinctive Fear, where their nervous system has taken over and their thinking brain has gone offline. And trying to respond only to what’s visible in expressed fear—without understanding the deeper layers underneath—is like chasing symptoms while missing the source.

Fear Is Not the Enemy

Here’s the truth that keeps surprising me: fear isn’t bad.

It’s protective. Intelligent. Sometimes prophetic. But it’s often outdated.

The work is not to eliminate fear. The work is to translate it. To trace it back to its root. To sit with it long enough that it tells you what it’s guarding—and what it’s hiding.

Because behind every fear is something fiercely precious: love, safety, freedom, dignity, connection.

And that’s where the real work begins.

Much love & respect,

Magdalena