Is it Fear or Wisdom? Learning to Trust the Body

How to discern between avoidance and alignment

Sep 18, 2025

One of the hardest parts of being visible is learning to tell the difference between fear and wisdom. In the first part of this series, I explored how visibility without alignment can feel like self-abandonment. What I want to explore now is the gray zone: the space between fear and wisdom, where hesitation asks us to listen more closely.

About five years ago, I was invited to teach Craniosacral therapy at a highly respected massage school. It was exactly the kind of opportunity I’d been slowly preparing for. But when I sat with the invitation, something in my body said “not yet.”

For most of my life, stepping into visibility has felt like standing on the edge of a cliff, waiting for the fall…or the fail. Speaking in groups often caused me to shut down, losing access to my thoughts and my voice. The idea of writing in public was terrifying. And as a highly sensitive person, visibility often felt overwhelming on different levels—emotionally, energetically, physically. Being in the spotlight could feel like too much, too fast, resulting in an over-activated nervous system that would sometimes take days to recover from.

I spent weeks questioning myself. Was this fear holding me back? Was I playing small again? The voice in my head kept circling around: Maybe I should say yes. This is how you grow. What if I miss out on an amazing opportunity?

But underneath all that mental chatter, there was a deeper kind of knowing. A knowing that felt less like avoidance and more like...patience. I felt deep down that I needed more time before I could offer my work, my Self, in that particular way. It wasn’t that I doubted my ability to teach the material. What I wasn’t sure about was whether I had the capacity to stay present while being seen in that way. So I decided to trust my intuition.

I declined the offer. And instead of the familiar self-judgment or criticism that often follows when I think I'm saying no out of avoidance or fear, I felt...spacious. Grounded. I knew I’d honored something true.

Our culture doesn't make this easy. The dominant narrative tells us that hesitation is just fear, and fear means you’re holding yourself back from your full potential. Push through the discomfort. Feel the fear and do it anyway. If you're not growing, you're letting yourself down.

But lived experience tells a different story. Sometimes hesitation is a form of protection. “Not yet" can be the wisest thing your nervous system knows how to say. What looks like avoidance could actually be deep attunement to better timing, more capacity, and work that feels ripe enough to offer.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Over the next year, I was building capacity in ways I couldn’t see until later. I began learning how much my system could hold without shutting down. I practiced speaking more freely in teacher trainings and leadership roles, testing my voice in spaces that once triggered my insecurities. I discovered I could stay present in those moments and actually be heard. I learned to regulate my nervous system in the moment with simple somatic and mindfulness tools and practices, and attune to my energetic boundaries in ways that helped me stay grounded while being seen. And slowly, I developed more agency.

Eventually, I could finally slow down enough to sense what was really happening inside. That’s when I began to recognize that fear and wisdom each felt different in my body. The more I practiced sensing the difference, the clearer it became.

So when the invitation to teach came again a year later, I was certain. Saying yes didn’t feel like bracing myself on the edge of a cliff. It felt like stepping onto solid ground. It wasn’t about pushing through fear. Instead, it was about readiness and alignment.

It reminds me of Anaïs Nin’s words: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” That’s what alignment felt like: the natural unfolding that happens when staying small is no longer viable.

Here's what I've noticed about how fear and wisdom live in the body, and how different they actually feel when I slow down enough to sense the difference.

Fear in the body feels tense, urgent. It comes with a racing mind full of "shoulds" and comparisons, mixed with shame and inadequacy. My breathing gets shallow. My nervous system feels resourceless, like it's operating from empty. Fear wants to resolve the tension quickly, either by avoiding completely or forcing through despite every signal from my body.

Wisdom has a different quality entirely, even when it includes nervousness or uncertainty. There's spaciousness around it. A groundedness. Even if the edge feels big, my nervous system has capacity to hold the experience. My breathing stays deeper. Instead of draining my energy, there's a sense that energy is building naturally, like the tide slowly rising to the shore.

And then there's the gray zone: Sometimes fear disguises itself as alignment. This one took me the longest to recognize. Fear says "not yet, maybe later" but leaves me feeling stagnant, like I'm spinning my wheels in mud. Alignment says "not yet" and I still feel movement and an inner trust that something is developing even when I can't see it yet. Other times, what feels like hesitation may not be wisdom at all—it can be an old survival pattern trying to keep us safe. Wisdom can be slower, more organic, or less visible than the culture might want.

The more I practiced sensing the difference, the clearer it became. And yet, even with practice, the line between fear and wisdom isn’t always obvious. They blur together, especially for those of us who are sensitive, empathic, or deeply attuned. The real work is to deepen our ability to notice what’s happening in our bodies, and to discern whether we’re abandoning ourselves or stretching in a way we can hold.

Our bodies often know truths that move at a different rhythm than the culture’s pace.

It's kind of like entering a swimming pool. Some people dive in headfirst. Others wade in gradually. I realized I'm the kind of person who needs to take it slow, letting my body adjust step by step until I'm fully in. For a long time, I judged myself for this. People around me often urged me to move faster, to dive in. I wondered if I was just too cautious. But over time, I've come to see that honoring my pace isn't weakness. It’s wisdom. For me, teaching required that same kind of gradual unfolding. Each step gave me a chance to stay connected with myself and build nervous system capacity, so when I finally said yes, I could enter with presence.

Taking your time, pausing, listening, waiting for readiness—this is also courage.

The key is learning to listen closely to what our body is telling us. Does the “no” feel like collapse and avoidance? Or does it feel like wisdom and self-trust? Does the “yes” feel like frantic urgency, or like a grounded readiness?

This is subtle work. It doesn’t always come with clarity right away. But the more I’ve listened, the more I’ve come to trust that my body knows. The gradual unfolding, the subtle “not yet,” the timing that doesn’t match the cultural pressure—all of it has its own intelligence.

In the end, discernment isn’t about making perfect choices. It doesn't mean we never stretch ourselves or take risks. It’s about staying in relationship with ourselves, moment by moment. Sometimes fear needs to be met and moved through. Sometimes wisdom needs to be honored with a pause. Both are part of the path.

Next time you feel hesitation, notice: is it contraction or spaciousness? What is your body telling you?

In the next essay, I’ll explore how we can support our nervous systems when fear arises, so that when the timing is right, we have the capacity to meet visibility without abandoning ourselves.