I used to think the goal was to stop feeling irrational fears.
Rejection.
Abandonment.
Not being enough.
I thought if I did enough work, I’d just… stop feeling them.
If I looked closely enough—really traced every link in the chain, applied logic to every thought—I wouldn’t have to deal with them anymore.
And to be fair… it does help.
But they still show up.
The shift came when I realized something that had been right in front of me the whole time:
These feelings are
irrational.
They don’t come from logic.
So why did I expect logic to make them disappear?
There’s a part of me that still thinks:
“You’re not good enough.”
“You’re going to be left behind.”
“You’re alone.”
And logically? I know that’s not true.
But that part of me isn’t trying to be correct.
It’s responding to something deeper—biology, past experience, learned patterns. It’s reacting, not reasoning.
So arguing with it doesn’t work.
Fixing it doesn’t work.
Overriding it with something positive doesn’t work.
It’s, duh, irrational.
So I stopped trying. Instead, I started doing something different.
I let it be there.
I don’t debate it.
I don’t try to fix it.
I don’t try to replace it with a better thought.
I just say:
“Yeah… I see you.”
“That does feel like that, doesn’t it?”
“Let’s get some air.”
And then I saw it play out in real time.
I’m in the kitchen—making dinner, cleaning up, texting someone about something “important.” My phone rings. I’m already overloaded.
My daughter asks for a glass of water.
In a tone that, for whatever reason, doesn’t land.
And something in me snaps.
“Get yourself up and get your own damn water.”
She recoils.
And the second it leaves my mouth, I know.
Because it was never about the water.
It was this, underneath it all:
“It’s too much.”
“I can’t keep up.”
“I’ll never be able to do enough.”
“I’m not good enough.”
That feeling rises so fast I barely catch it.
And I only feel it for a split second…
because anger steps in.
Fast. Protective. Loud.
Before, this is where the spiral would start.
I’d realize what happened and think:
How am I still doing this?
After everything I’ve worked on?
I’d apologize.
She’d shrug it off.
And I’d go sit somewhere and cry—not about what happened, but about the fact that it happened at all.
Like it erased all the work I’ve done.
But now I see it differently.
That fear?
It’s still irrational.
Of course it is.
It doesn’t live in the part of me that responds to truth. It lives in the part of me that responds to threat.
So why would it disappear just because I understand it?
The shift was this:
It needs to be felt… without being believed.
Because the feeling is real.
But what it’s telling me?
Isn’t.
So anger doesn’t need to protect me anymore.
Now, when that flare of anger rises, I look for what it’s trying to protect.
I can feel it, notice it, and recognize it for what it is without letting it take over.
I’m new at this so I miss it sometimes, but it’s getting easier.
If this resonated, I’m so glad I put this out there.
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