Fear Is Afraid of You Too

Why I stopped negotiating with fear and started building the life I actually wanted

So often what I write here comes from random thoughts that pop into my head on a long walk, a quote I hear on a podcast, or a sentence someone says in passing during a deep conversation with girlfriends. This week is no different.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about fear.

The quote that stopped me in my tracks was, “Fear is afraid of you too.”
What a reframe.

Fear is just as afraid of you as you are of it.

Fear wants you to believe it’s the thing standing between you and the life you want. That if you could just get rid of it, everything would open up. But fear isn’t actually that powerful. What fear really relies on is your silence.

Fear lives in constant panic that one day you’ll whip your head around, look it straight in the eye, and say plainly, “I’m not fucking afraid of you.”

And that day terrifies it.

So let’s get real for a minute.

When I began building Coacha Vida, very few people understood what I was doing. I wasn’t launching a trendy wellness brand with aesthetically pleasing packaging and tidy explanations. I was building something deeper, slower, and harder to categorize.

I talked about nervous systems, internal stability, and health as a strategy. I layered in human design and astrology, which, let’s be honest, is a pretty efficient way to scare off people who were perfectly comfortable with you staying exactly as you were.

And you know who happily jumped into the passenger seat for that journey?

Fear.

It asked all the “reasonable” questions.
Who are you trying to be, an influencer?
Are you sure you want to be that raw on the internet?
What if no one ever wants to work with you?
What will people say?

Fear thrives in moments like that. When you’re visible but unvalidated. When you’re early. When the results haven’t yet caught up to what you already know is true.

Here’s the part fear doesn’t want you to notice.

The real risk isn’t what will other people think of me.
The real risk is what will I think of myself if I don’t do this.

If I don’t write the blog I’ve been wanting to write.
If I don’t start the business I know is meant to exist.
If I keep editing myself down until I’m palatable.

Clarity is dangerous to fear.

Once you name what you stand for, fear can no longer masquerade as logic. It becomes what it actually is: resistance to change.

And then there was the bigger shift.

Choosing a different life when the old one still “worked.”

Completely overhauling my lifestyle was radical, necessary, and yes, fear still had a front-row seat. But when you’re on your proverbial knees, you don’t debate much. You move.

Quietly stepping back from life for four to six months to cut out the noise and rework how I lived, how I worked, how I ate, how I moved my body felt less like a glow-up and more like a full recalibration.

A moth-to-butterfly moment, minus the Instagram captions.

I didn’t come out the same person. I’d like to think I came out better, but what’s more accurate is that I came out different. And once again, fear lost its disguise.

Because when you name what you want, what you need, and who you are becoming, fear can no longer pretend it’s being helpful. It reveals itself as resistance.

I went against the grain in quiet, unglamorous ways that probably looked unnecessary from the outside. Internally, there were no other options.

Fear hates that kind of decision-making.

You want to know why?

It removes the drama.

No spiraling. No endless weighing of pros and cons. No negotiating yourself out of your own truth. There’s just what is.

Fear rarely tries to stop you outright. It prefers to keep you comfortably stuck. Comfort feels safer than uncertainty in its mind, even when that uncertainty is clearly pointing you toward something better.

Fear stays alive as long as you keep moving away from what you know you want and need.

Fear finally dies when you stop negotiating with it.

When you accept that being misunderstood isn’t a failure, it’s a byproduct of living honestly. Fear is afraid of you because it knows this small but inconvenient truth.

The moment you trust yourself more than the noise, its authority evaporates.

And unfortunately for most of us, that moment doesn’t arrive with certainty. It arrives with a decision.

One small decision to look fear in the eye, say “fuck you,” turn back around, and do what you said you were going to do.

Fear will always have an opinion.
But it doesn’t get a vote.

Fear is afraid of you because the day you stop running, stop explaining, and stop waiting to be understood is the day it realizes its job is over.