Understanding Different Types of Fear

There are two major driving forces in our world: love and fear. In my own life I had many states of fear coming up throughout the years. Sometimes the fear was helpful and protecting me, sometimes the fear was not mine, and sometimes the fear was really old – even from beyond this lifetime.

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Fear is a part of our human experience, and it seems our human collective experience is currently very much fear driven. Let's explore the different states of fear that may come up so we can understand them, distinguish them, regulate them, navigate, accept and release them. Fear will always be part of our lives in bigger or smaller doses, but it should be our helper, not our master. Once we identify the fear, the appropriate response becomes obvious and our personal power returns naturally. We aim to stay rooted in love and trust, so we can expand, relax and enjoy life to its fullest.

"Once we identify the fear, the appropriate response becomes obvious and our personal power returns naturally."

Archetypal Fears

At the deepest level, humanity expresses a small set of core fear patterns that repeat across cultures, eras, religions, and individual psychologies. These are:

1. Fear of Death / Non-Existence

2. Fear of Pain and Suffering

3. Fear of Separation / Abandonment

4. Fear of Power / Responsibility

5. Fear of Loss of Control / Uncertainty

6. Fear of Truth (

7. Fear of Love / Intimacy

8. Fear of Meaninglessness

When we look deeper, we can distinguish even more types of fear that may or may not have come into our lives, often as a (painful) lesson.

Core Types of Fear

1. Trauma-Based Fear (Somatic Memory)

– Type: Body-based, pre-verbal nervous system memory

– Core feature: Immediate threat response to non-existing, old threat

– Origin: Overwhelm without escape (big T trauma, abuse, neglect)

– Signal: Nothing bad is happening, but my body is reacting as if it is

– Place of storage: Autonomic nervous system, fascia, breath patterns, reflexes

– Function: Prevent re-experiencing past pain. The system learned to freeze instead of flee, collapse instead of resist, be hypervigilant instead of rest. Your body is still trying to keep you safe and alive.Trauma fear is not maladaptive, it is a successful survival adaptation that never received an update. The body does not know the threatening experience is now over and tries to protect you

– Personal Agency: Low but regulation can be built up

– Solution / Skill: Somatic regulation (breathing, orienting to environment, reality-checking, and developing body awareness will help). Slow nervous system completion, through for instance osteopathy, Rolfing, the Grinberg Method and somatic therapies. Re-establishing agency and choice

– What doesn't work: Reframing, Affirmations, “choosing courage”, spiritual bypassing, exposure without regulation

– Key distinction: The threat feels present, but belongs to the past. Trauma fear is an old fear that is still stuck in the body. It is implicit survival memory that lives outside time, logic, and language, and resolves only through safety, sensation, and choice, not insight alone

"Trauma fear is an old fear that is still stuck in the body. It is implicit survival memory that lives outside time, logic and language."

2. Biological / Survival Fear (Reflexive)

– Type: Amygdala fear

– Core feature: Immediate threat response

– Origin: Brainstem–amygdala circuitry

– Signal: Rapid heartbeat, shallow breath, muscle tension, narrowed focus

– Function: Protection and survival

– Personal Agency: Low in the moment; regulation comes after activation

– Solution / Skill: Somatic regulation (breathing, grounding, orienting)

– Key distinction: The danger is present now

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3. Conditioned Emotional Fear (Memory-Based)

– Type: Fear of intimacy, fear of abandonment, fear of rejection

– Origin: Emotional memory and attachment wounds (related to caregivers / parents)

– Signal: Disproportionate and/or inappropriate reaction to present circumstances

– Function: Prevent re-experiencing past pain

– Personal Agency: Moderate with awareness

– Solution / Skill: Emotional processing, relational repair, inner-child work

– Key distinction: The threat feels present, but belongs to the past

4. Identity / Ego Fear (Psychological)

– Type: Fear of standing in your power. "This will change who I am or how I’m seen”

– Manifestation: Self-sabotage, procrastination, minimisation, perfectionism

– Origin: Identity structures formed around safety, belonging, or approval

– Signal: Rationalisations, confusion, avoidance (rather than panic)

– Function: Protect a familiar self-concept

– Personal Agency: High once seen clearly

– Solution / Skill: Values clarification, conscious choice, nervous system capacity-building

– Key distinction: The fear is about who you would become, not what would happen

Survival fear resolves once safety is restored; trauma fear persists until the body updates.

5. Astral Fear (Energetic / Spiritual)

– Type: Energetic fear

– Origin: Nervous system picking up the energetic field of an astral being / earthbound spirit / evil entity

– Signal: Sudden cold sensations, sense of dread, sensing a “presence,” vigilance in the body

– Personal Agency: High with discernment, otherwise low or moderate

– Solution / Skill: Stand in love. Immediately call upon divine protection + send the being to the Light (or alternatively to the Darkness if it's not leaving)

– Key distinction: The fear exists primarily outside of the body, it comes from the lower vibrational astral being and is a warning signal that an evil presence is around that can energetically attack (mess with our energetic body, our mood, dreams, thoughts etc. resulting in accidents, feeling depressed, anxious etc.).

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6. Cognitive / Existential Fear (Mental / Unhealthy Ego)

– Type: Fear of meaninglessness, loss of control, uncertainty, death

– Origin: Abstract thinking and future projection

– Signal: Rumination, looping thoughts, philosophical anxiety

– Function: Create predictability and coherence

– Personal Agency: High with discernment

– Solution / Skill: Sense-making, presence practices (catch yourself doing it), reframing relationship to uncertainty. Practicing Japa (repeating a divine name in thought or outloud)

– Key distinction: The fear exists primarily in thought, not sensation

7. Moral / Integrity fear (This fear is often missed)

– Examples: Fear of betraying oneself, fear of harming others, fear of misalignment

– Origin: Values and ethical identity

– Signal: Quiet unease rather than panic

– Function: Maintain integrity

– Personal Agency: High

– Solution /Skill: Honest self-inquiry and alignment

– Key distinction: This fear often points toward truth rather than away from it

Special Mention: Fears of the Ego

The ego is a part of us that is a constructed identity. It is an important aspect that helps us function in the world. However, if we only live from the ego aspect of ourselves (the finite, partial), we tend to lose touch with our soul (infinite, whole aspect) and the ego grows unhealthy. The ego can grow out of control and become too important/inflated, and we become solely identified with the physical world, separateness and temporary states.

So the ego needs to be somebody, ideally somebody special. The ego says, "if I'm not this story, I am nothing". So it clings, identifies and acts from fear as deep down it knows it is an illusion. Spiritual truth threatens this because it says: “We are universal, not exceptional. We are all one, not separate. I'm inherently worthy of love, I don't need to earn this. I'm everybody and nobody." When we go through the spiritual awakening process, our consciousness/awareness expands and the unhealthy ego cannot survive this. It will need to surrender. The ego fears awakening, as from the ego’s perspective:

• Awakening = loss of control

• Love = loss of boundaries

• Truth = loss of narrative

• Unity = loss of relevance

This is why spiritual practice often increases fear before it resolves it. Awakening feels like annihilation, surrender feels like extinction and silence feels threatening. In a way this fear is based in truth, as the unhealthy ego does dissolves / surrenders /"dies". As Ramana Maharshi put it: “The ego dies only to be found never to have existed.”

Overview of Fear States

Fear Type	Has present danger?	Responds to logic?	Intervention
Survival fear	Yes	No	Immediate somatic regulation, safety, action
Emotional fear	No	Sometimes	Emotional processing, relational repair
Identity fear	No	Often	Values-based choice, conscious exposure
Trauma-based fear	No, danger is an old memory	No	Slow nervous-system completion, establishing safety
Cognitive / Existential fear	No	Yes	Sense-making, reframing, presence
Energetic fear	Yes	No	Call in protection, grounding, shielding
Moral / Integrity fear	No	Yes	Alignment, honest action
Fears of he Ego	No, danger is an illusion	Sometimes	Embracing the fear, acceptance, give it to the Light

How do I know which fear is which?

To distinguish states quickly, ask yourself:

• Is there a real threat right now? → Survival fear

• Does this feel older than the moment? → Emotional/attachment fear

• Does this arise when expansion is possible? → Identity fear

• Is my mind projecting future outcomes? → Cognitive fear

• Did my body react before my mind did? → Astral–energetic fear

• Does this feel like a call to integrity? → Moral fear

Do You Hear The Call?

If you’re ready to free yourself from old fears, deepen your soul connection, heal your ancestral lineage and step into your power, check out my guided meditations, upcoming workshops, or join me for a private healing session. 

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