Fear: The Oldest Roommate You’ll Ever Have

Friday, August 15, 2025.

In the spring of 1961, a Buick the size of a small tugboat clipped me in a crosswalk. I was 7 years old at the time.

No screech of brakes, no horn — just an impossible collision of my knee and chrome. The impact felt like being kicked by something that didn’t care whether I lived. The sound was worse than the pain: a deep, wet crack that made bystanders look away.

They set the knee twice before they could cut. The plaster cast ran from ankle to hip, itchy and heavy enough to serve as a boat anchor. The hospital air smelled of antiseptic and cigarette smoke — nurses lit up at their desks, then came to check your vitals.

For a month I watched the hallway parade: head bandages, traction rigs, kids staring at ceiling tiles like they’d memorized every crack.

The Buick was gone in seconds, but the fear stayed.

It took up residence in the muscles, in the scanning of intersections, in the twitch before stepping off a curb. Fear didn’t leave when the cast comes off. It left a large moon-shaped scar on my right knee.

Gentle reader, I’m here to tell you that fear is the first emotion to evolve and the last one to leave.

Before there was love, before there was guilt, before there was the very human urge to buy throw pillows you don’t need, there was fear.

It’s not a glitch in the system — it is the system.

The Biology of “Oh, No!”

Your amygdala — two almond-shaped clusters in the brain — is built for moments like these.

Before you can think, it floods your body with adrenaline, sends blood to your limbs, and hijacks your heart rate. LeDoux and Pine (2016) call it the “low road” — an express lane from perception to reaction that completely bypasses reason.

This was perfect when the threats had claws and you had a spear. Now the “predators” are more abstract: a past-due bill, a partner’s “We need to talk,” the silent ring of your doctor’s phone call. The amygdala doesn’t care. A threat is a threat.

Fear’s Second Job: Stirring the Pot

Fear is contagious.

Emotional contagion research (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994) shows we unconsciously copy the tone, expressions, and tension of those around us.

One look at your partner’s face can send your nervous system into high alert before you even know what’s wrong.

This is how couples end up fighting about the dishwasher when they’re really fighting about job security, health scares, or the terror of being left alone. Fear doesn’t knock politely; it rewires the whole conversation.

Fear in Marriage: The Silent Third Partner

In relationships, fear often wears disguises. Fear of financial collapse calls itself “budget-conscious.” Fear of abandonment calls itself “deeply committed.”

Attachment research (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2016) shows these patterns start early.

Anxiously attached partners may treat every pause as a threat. Avoidantly attached partners may treat closeness as a trap. Both are just fear in different costumes.

If fear isn’t named, couples end up waging bitterly small wars over the wrong territory.

Fear in Parenting: The Exhausting Supervisor

Parenting fear clocks in at birth and never clocks out.

Some vigilance is healthy — parents consistently rank safety as their top concern (Pew Research Center, 2023) — but McEwen’s research on allostatic load (1998) shows constant hyper-alertness reshapes the brain, shortening tempers and dulling empathy.

Unmanaged, it mutates into overprotection.

Schiffrin et al. (2014) found that “helicopter parenting” can produce kids who are more anxious and less resilient.

In other words, if you protect them from every bump, they might assume that the road itself is lethal.

Fear of Death: The Shadow Under Every Shadow

Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death (1973) argued that most of human culture is one long distraction from mortality.

Terror Management Theory (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986) shows that when reminded of death, we cling harder to our beliefs, tribes, and relationships.

In couples, fear of death usually hides — surfacing as urgency (marry now, have kids now) or avoidance (skip the hard talk, put off the test).

Ironically, confronting death together can make relationships gentler. Routledge and Juhl (2010) found that people who face mortality openly tend to be kinder and more committed to their closest bonds.

The Fear Inventory Worksheet

If fear is permanent, you might as well map it. Take ten minutes with these prompts — alone, with your partner, or with the family member who seems allergic to talking about feelings.

• In Your Marriage or Partnership

  • The last argument we had was “about” __________.

  • What fear might have been underneath it?

• In Your Parenting

  • One rule I enforce mostly to calm myself is __________.

  • Is this about real risk or my own alarm system?

• In Your Relationship with Death

  • I avoid talking about __________ because it makes me think about dying.

  • If I faced it openly, one thing I’d do differently is __________.

You don’t have to fix everything you write down. But naming fear, instead of letting it run the controls in secret, is the first and most subversive form of courage.

The Takeaway: Fear Is Permanent, But Not the Boss

You can’t evict fear. You can’t exorcise it with positive affirmations or drown it in essential oils. But you can manage to demote it.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 2011) suggests making space for fear without handing it the wheel. In marriage, that means naming it before it reshapes the fight.

In parenting, it means separating genuine risk from your nervous system’s noise. And in facing death, it means choosing what matters before time chooses for you.

Fear is a terrible landlord, but it knows the property better than you do.

Learn the floorplan — then decide which rooms it’s allowed to enter.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. Free Press.

Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A Terror Management Theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public self and private self (pp. 189–212). Springer-Verlag.

Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Rapson, R. L. (1994). Emotional contagion. Cambridge University Press.

Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (2011). Acceptance and commitment therapy: The process and practice of mindful change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

LeDoux, J. E., & Pine, D. S. (2016). Using neuroscience to help understand fear and anxiety: A two-system framework. American Journal of Psychiatry, 173(11), 1083–1093. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2016.16030353

McEwen, B. S. (1998). Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. New England Journal of Medicine, 338(3), 171–179. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM199801153380307

Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2016). Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Pew Research Center. (2023). Parenting in America today. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org

Routledge, C., & Juhl, J. (2010). When death thoughts lead to death fears: Mortality salience increases death anxiety for individuals who lack meaning in life. Cognition and Emotion, 24(5), 848–854. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930902847144

Schiffrin, H. H., Liss, M., Miles-McLean, H., Geary, K. A., Erchull, M. J., & Tashner, T. (2014). Helping or hovering? The effects of helicopter parenting on college students’ well-being. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 23, 548–557. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-013-9716-3