You know the feeling. It does not arrive with a bang, but in a whisper. A cold, smooth idea that slips into the space between your heartbeats. Suddenly, the world doesn’t just look different, it feels different. The air gets heavier. The wall leaned slightly closer. Your own breath feels like a borrowed one.
Maybe it’s the phone you’re afraid of. Diagnosis hanging in the air. The enormous weight of tomorrow feels like it’s being made on the sand. Bank account numbers don’t sum up at all. For those who need you to be everything, the quiet, painful fear that you are not enough.
Your mind will become a projector and flash all the worst-case scenarios behind your eyelids. It’s a bone storm. A yoke that feels like it’s made to fit your shoulders.
And a voice of good intentions? They tell you, “Just not be afraid.” Fear is as if it’s a switch you can flip over. But you can’t. And their advice will become another layer of failure, and another reason to feel fearful of your own fear.
What happens if you say you never feel afraid of your goals as a believer? The goal is to know what to do when it comes, not to be ruled, and to find the point in the spinning world.
It’s not about fighting the storm, it’s about finding an anchor.
When fear overwhelms you, this is what to do.
1. Name the giant in the room
We do this funny thing, right? We treat fear like ambiguous and formless monsters. They say, “I’m worried” or “I’m stressed.” But it’s like saying, “There’s something somewhere.” It gives fear all its power: the unknown, the unknown power.
The ancient poets and psalmists of the Bible did not do that. They were cruel, painful and concrete. They didn’t say, “I feel sad.” They gave it a name, texture and flavor.
The Psalmist says in Psalm sal 22:14, “I am poured like water, and all my bones are out of the joints. My heart is like wax, and it melts in the middle of my intestines.”
I poured it like water. Bones from the joints. Have you ever felt that? So unraveled, do you feel the liquid? So do you feel that your structure is broken in your life?
It’s naming it.
So it’s your turn. Get the pen. Get the Notes app. it doesn’t matter. But tell me that. Please write it. Name the giant.
Is that a “fear at the results of next Wednesday’s medical tests?” Is that the “fear of empty houses after divorce”? Is it the “fear of public failure at the board of directors”?
Give it a name. Tell that name in the light. In the light, things are always more minor than they appear in the shadows of our minds. It whispers, takes generalized fear and turns it into a specific, manageable problem. There may be problems to face. Monsters are things to escape.
Naming is the first act of courage. “I’ll see you. Let’s talk now.”
2. Exchange your story for something older, true
Once you name your fears, your mind will begin writing stories around it. And, oh, it would be a tragic masterpiece. It spins the story of inevitable loss, a particular doom. It projects the future that this fear has won and you have nothing left.
Your heart is a powerful author. But that’s a terrible editor. It believes in its own first draft.
Your job is to pass the pen to another author.
This is where the highest person’s words come in. It’s not as a magical spell. But as a counter narrative. A more real story about who you are and where you stand.
The fear of lack of whispers that will leave you without us introduces a new story found in Philippians 4:19.
When the fear of being alone screams you are abandoned, you remember the old story of Hebrews 13:5.
When the fear of the future paralyzes you, you read the true draft of Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know that I will say to you that I am the Lord, and that I will give you the idea of peace, and that I will give you the end that is expected of you, not evil.”
Don’t mistake this for positive thinking. This is an alternative to the story. It is an act of rebellion. Rather than letting them drown in a deep sea of horrifying thoughts, they deliberately choose to listen to stories surrounding stories of poverty. A story of existence to a story of abandonment. A story of purpose for the story of chaos.
You trade your small, terrifying stories for epic and eternal stories. And it changes the very air you breathe.
3. Plant your feet now
I love to think of fear as a time traveler almost always. It lives in the future, imaginary, or past. You can’t forget it. They rarely live in the present moment. Because the present moment is often… okay when you really see it.
Are you safe at this exact moment now? Are you breathing? Is your heart beating?
The future is a phantom. It does not exist. The only place you can live now is now.
There is a deep reason the Bible says in Matthew 6:11, “Give us the bread every day for this day.”
Christ did not pray, “Give me the bread of this year.” Or bread for the next 10 years. Daily bread. Nutrition 24 hours in front of you.
Christ, on the other hand, always asks, “What will I do in ten years?” But the soul needs to ask, “What do I need at the next time?” The burden of life is crushed, but the burden of daily burden is often manageable.
So, fellow believers, pin themselves now. Feel the chair under you. Listen to the ham on your computer. Pay attention to the rhythm of your own breath. This is the real thing. That’s not the case with horror films where your heart projects onto the screen of tomorrow.
Your calling is not to understand it all. Be faithful to the next correct step. It’s just the following: that’s it. And you can do that anytime.
4. Let your body guide your soul
We are not unequivocal spirits. Fear doesn’t just live in our hearts. It lives in our bodies. A chin clenched. Tight shoulders. Shallow breathing. Intestinal coiled spring.
You can’t think of a way out of your physical state. Sometimes you have to physically guide your soul from it.
Sounds too easy. But it’s deep, ancient magic.
If the waves of panic begin to rise, don’t try to reason with them. Breathe. deeply. intentionally. It goes through your nose and out of your mouth. slow. Breathing is the current anchor. That’s proof you’re still here.
I’m going for a walk. Instead of going anywhere, move, feel the ground under your feet, remind yourself that your body is strong, capable, and is made for movement, not for movement.
This also has a poem sal. Of course there is. Psalm 121:1 “I lift my eyes up into the hills, and from where shall I ask for help?”
Sometimes you need to literally raise your eyes and change your physical posture. From the screen, look through the four closed walls and see the sky. Look at the tree. Remember, there is a world beyond your horror.
Your body preached your soul, and your heart could never be clear. Let me do that.
5. Build an altar of memory
We are unforgettable creatures. We have forgotten our history. We forget when we felt this was the last time we felt feared and how we did it. We forget the prayers answered, the needs met, and the doors that opened in the last moment.
Fear becomes amnesia for all of us.
The antidote is to remember. Be proactive, powerful, and remember the evidence of goodness in your past.
It builds an altar of memory, not stones. Keep a diary. Note on your phone. Mental list. Catalog the moments provided. The time you were comforted. If what you were most afraid of was not the latest, or that’s what you did. And you were given the power to endure it.
Visit the altar when a new fear rises. Please read the entry. Touch the stones of past rescue.
This is the oldest practice of faith. The whole poem sal is essentially this. It’s about reminiscing the cycle of fear, the cry, the faithfulness of God’s past and finding hope. The writer was in despair and in Psalm sal 77:11, “I remember the works of the Lord.
He doesn’t feel good anytime soon, but he chooses to remember. The act of remembering is connected from isolation and becomes a bridge from terrorism to trust.
Your history of grace is your most powerful weapon against the prophecy of fear.
So, how do you feel in the end?
We must realize that this is not a one-off fix. It’s a practiced turn. Habitual change of direction. That doesn’t mean you will never feel the cold of fear again. But that means you know where to find warmth.
This is like awakening the familiar knot…and then reach for the journal. It sounds like a whisper of an ancient poem that screams loudly in modern unrest. Even if your mind is trying to drag you into tomorrow’s quicksand, it feels like the firm ground of the present moment under your feet.
It’s not the absence of the storm. It’s deep and calming to know that there’s an anchor that you’re embraced by a story of love that is older and robust than your latest horror.
All of these goals were never life without fear. The goal was to live a life where fear is not your soul governor. Where in the passenger seat is, maybe a nervous rear seat driver, but you’re never allowed to hold the wheels.
You can acknowledge the existence of fear. You can even be grateful for trying to protect you. But then you have to speak to it with the quiet authority of someone who knows the more actual story.
They would say “peace.” Not the sea around you, but the soul within you. “Please stop.”
And it will sooner or later follow in all of it.
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Maya Karkalicheva
Emmanuel Abimbora is a creative freelance writer, blogger and web designer. He is a respectable Christian with uncompromising faith from Ondo, Nigeria, West Africa. As a child’s lover, Emmanuel runs a small primary school in Arigidi, Nigeria.
