Viterbo, December 7th 2025
Hello Friend,
I taught a class on ‘Fear and Fears’ the other day, which is one of my favourite topics ever. It’s also one of the biggest topics ever, because it has a million influences on a million aspects of our lives.
Fear originates as that primeval instinct that will strive to keep us humans and other animals alive in the presence of physical dangers, such as predators, heights, fire, water…
Thank Nature for fear! Fear is an absolutely perfect mechanism, whereby in the face of a threat, our bodies and brains get this instant, powerful boost, a huge surge of strength, concentration, and speed, both in our movements and our decision making.
The perception of the first sign of danger activates the sympathetic nervous system, which triggers the fight-or-flight response. Heart rate and blood pressure go up, breathing speeds up, and the adrenal glands send out adrenaline and cortisol.
When supercharged like that, we’re way more likely to have the sharpness, the speed, and the strength to make it out of danger alive, and to return to safety. And then, a relatively short while after the scare has gone, our parasympathetic nervous system starts taking over again, slowing down the heart and the breathing, and bringing us back to our natural state of ‘rest-and-digest’.
So far, so perfect!
Trouble starts when, even in the absence of tigers and lightning, our defence mechanism wants to do its whole thing with all of the many challenges we face every day in our modern lives, which it perceives as big threats.
From the alarm that rips you out of bed in the morning, to the first grumpy remark from your family; from the hurry to get out of the house, to the traffic jam; from confrontations at the workplace to the increases in price at the grocery store; from the news on TV to your social obligations… all of these situations, and a thousand more, have you remain in a constant loop of fear, also known as chronic stress.
Chronic stress means that the show is constantly run by the sympathetic nervous system, that you’re constantly on edge, constantly ready to fight or run for your life. What happens in this state is, that
🔺 the adrenaline and cortisol, also known as the main ‘stress hormones’, never get a chance to go back to rest, and this causes high levels of inflammation in the body;
🔺 you have low to no immune defence long-term. The immune system shuts down, because fighting off bacteria isn’t your first concern, when you’re surrounded by a forest fire. Again, when you’re out of the danger zone, the immune defence becomes relevant again. But what if you never make it out of the danger zone? Guess what happens?
The real and perceived threats to our safety in our day-to-day lives are mostly down to
🔺 lack of time, lack of freedom, lack of money, lack of energy…
🔺 fear of judgement in all its forms, which ultimately means: fear of being abandoned, which to our subconscious mind means: fear of dying.
To our system, these scenarios are as scary as any poisonous snake and any armed bandit.
The other big problem with this, is that fear makes you stupid.
Literally. Fear impairs your cognitive capabilities, your discernment, your creativity, your open-mindedness. All too often, situations like supposed lack of skills, lack of resources, perfectionism, procrastination etc, only boil down to fear.
My group the other day asked me if and how we can handle and overcome fear.
I’ll answer this question over the next two or three letters to you. For now, let me just give you two practical, but very powerful tips:
🔸 Do this breathing exercise for a couple of minutes every day, and anytime you’re experiencing anxiety or stress: inhale through your nose, and send the air as far down as you can, as if you wanted to fill your belly with it.
If you try it in front of a mirror, you can observe what your shoulders do. If they go up, it means you’re breathing too high, you’re filling the upper part of your chest.
But if you manage to expand your stomach forward when breathing in, and your shoulders don’t move, then you’re filling the lower part of your lungs, and that’s exactly what you want.
Breathe ‘into your belly’, through your nose, not too fast, then breathe out though your mouth. Try do breathe in while counting to four, and breathe out while counting to five. Do this for a couple of minutes.
When you breathe low, you’re signalling to the nervous system that you are safe. You’re helping the parasympathetic system take over from the sympathetic system.
🔸 Eat as many vegetables as possible. This might sound like ridiculous advice, but there again, you’re supporting the physical side of your system with alkaline foods, which will help bring down the overall inflammation that’s always there when stress lasts longer that the occasional episode. Oh, and while you’re at it, if you could cut back on sugar at the same time, you’d be doing your inflammation levels a big disservice, and yourself a big favour 😊
Start by strengthening your immune system and nourishing your resilience this week, and I’ll be taking this whole topic a lot deeper next week. And please don’t underestimate what these apparently small changes can do for you 💗
PS: If you know someone who might like to get my news, feel free to forward them this email! And in case someone forwarded it to you, and you would like to sign up for it too, you can do it here ⬇️
