It’s a Trap #5 fear of change or loss
- Ed Green
- Apr 4, 2022
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 29
Trap #5
Whatever we are afraid of has the ability to back us into a corner—and that corner tends to get smaller the longer we live there.
For many of us, the older we get, the fewer risks we’re willing to take. We don’t want to lose what we’ve worked hard to build, so we protect it. That sounds sensible. But over time, protection can quietly turn into limitation. What begins as caution can slide into complacency, stagnation, and eventually emotional distress—sometimes showing up as depression, anxiety, or other mental health challenges.
We don’t always recognize this dependency because of the many promises life seems to offer: the perfect relationship, financial security, success, approval, or harmony. The list goes on. But when we finally get the thing and discover it doesn’t work the way we imagined—or doesn’t deliver what we hoped—we may cling to it anyway, not because it’s fulfilling, but because we fear letting it go.
After years in a relationship, we stay because we fear the alternative. We remain in a job we dislike because we fear uncertainty. We tolerate an unhappy lifestyle because change feels riskier than staying stuck. Life becomes a constant attempt to fit a square peg into a round hole—without realizing that this effort is the prison.
The challenge is learning to recognize which peg is real and which one is fear.
In most cases, fear operates under a familiar formula: FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real. But how do you recognize it when it feels so convincing?
The first step is understanding the nature and purpose of fear itself.
As Randy Shingler explains, fear originates in a primitive part of the brain called the amygdala. Over millions of years, nature stored memories of danger and trauma there to help us survive. When the amygdala detects familiar “footprints” of perceived threat, it triggers a fear response automatically. This response is conditioned—but not uncontrollable. Without awareness, fear becomes a mental construct that governs choice and behavior. With awareness, it becomes information rather than instruction.
We fear leaving what hurts because we fear what we might lose—even when staying costs us more. It is a conditioned response over which we can have control if we have the will to exercise it. Otherwise, it becomes a construct of fear in our minds (17). (Escape from Insanity, Illusions and Lies pg15).
When we understand fear as false evidence appearing real—and recognize its two primary expressions, anger and guilt—we begin to see what we’re actually dependent on, what we’re afraid of losing, or what we’re resisting that may be necessary for freedom.
Freedom often requires doing something different: trying new things, seeing from a new perspective, and responding in ways we haven’t before. The real risk isn’t change—it’s remaining trapped by fear long enough for it to quietly become another cell.
Fear was necessary to our survival at one time; its meaning has expanded and has become part of our everyday life when we think our survival is at stake. Fear of getting our feelings hurt, fear of losing or leaving a job that makes us unhappy, fear of not being good enough so we don’t give the needed effort, fear of not being accepted because of the risk of rejection, and fear of leaving a painful relationship because we fear the loss.
The risk not to is greater, and can become the bait to another trap.
Where in my life am I choosing familiarity over fulfillment? What is one belief I’m protecting—not because it’s true, but because letting it go feels risky?
Follow me to learn about the next trap. Trap 4
Comments