I Felt Afraid All the Time … Until I Did This  

Here's how to understand your fears-and push through them.

By
Published October 09, 2024
illustration of woman sitting on couch reading her book and saying no to spooky hands reaching out to her
Melanie Lambrick

A few years ago, around the time I turned 65, I started feeling nervous.

On the outside, I looked the same as I did when I was a senior editor at the local newspaper: confident and in control, quick with a snappy comeback. Yet, I felt unsteady.

My mother had recently died, and I had retired from daily journalism. I didn’t feel invisible or that I was fading away. I felt almost the opposite, like I’d jammed down the gas pedal of my life, and my hands were shaky on the wheel.

This was not like me. I’m a professional grasper: I like to hold on tight and steer my life with boldness.

And, yet, here I was, scared to drive from North Carolina to Florida by myself. Not full-blown terrified, just nagging nerves. What if the car breaks down? 

I started to get low-level jitters about other things, too, like walking on cobblestone streets. One of my friends recently broke his neck during a fall to get a glass of water — inside his own apartment! What if that happens to me when I’m alone in a hotel room?

I’ve had enough therapy to realize what’s going on. My “control” was a joke. I tried to drive too fast through a major loss, and my emotions started piling up on me. I needed to stop moving and start feeling.

The three factors behind our fears: Loss, avoidance and uncertainty

As author Brené Brown says in her 2021 book Atlas of the Heart: “An intolerance for uncertainty is an important contributing factor to all types of anxiety.”

Indeed. We’ll do almost anything to make life certain … but life is never certain. Especially when we hit 60. Most of us have those giant fears, like getting a terminal illness or something terrible happening to our kids or friends.

But what about the nagging fears that are harder to identify, things like our shifting bodies and our shifting identities … so many shifts hitting the fan.

“It’s a time in life when you’re entering a new realm,” says Kristin Kirk, a therapist in Davidson, North Carolina, whose clientele is mostly women at midlife and beyond.

“This continued need to adapt to change and the uncertainty in life — it is tricky, more of a subtle, nagging tug than a phobia. It’s not always identified, but it is felt.”

It’s not as extreme as a diagnosable anxiety disorder — which 14 to 17 percent of seniors have, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. It’s just there, a disconcerting buzz.

“The language of fear is the language of resistance,” says my therapist, Connie Ingram of Royal Palm Beach, Florida. We do get nervous when we resist what is.

I didn’t cry when my mother died three years ago. I still have not really cried about her — crying seems too small a way to face the hugeness of her loss.

What I did do was spend too much money on clothes and shoes and vacations and fancy meals that would make me feel better for a moment. I misdirected my emotions, resisted my pain, kept busy, busy, busy — and then felt scared about draining my 401(k) too fast.

Psychologist and author Harriet Lerner would call my behavior "classic avoidance."

“It is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance,” Lerner writes in The Dance of Fear. “You want to feel comfortable, so you avoid doing or saying the thing that will evoke fear and other difficult emotions. Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run, but it will never make you less afraid.”

In her 25 years of practice, therapist Kristin Kirk has seen a change in how older women approach their fears. They used to ask her to “fix” them — as if their emotions were problems to be solved. Today, she says, women are more likely to ask: “What is this feeling saying to me, rather than how can I get rid of it?"

Daniel H. Pink addresses this in his fascinating 2022 book, The Power of Regret. He identifies four types of regret: Foundation, Moral, Boldness and Connection. A classic Foundation regret is that I should have saved more and spent less. A Moral regret would be cheating. Regrets of Boldness include not pursuing a job or love interest or not leaving an unsatisfying relationship. Connection regrets are just that: I wish I had reached out.

We all have regrets. Mine tend to be in that spending category. But boldness? No, not me. I stared down my fear of solo, long-distance driving.

The last time I pulled out of my boyfriend’s driveway in North Carolina to head to my house in Florida, I told him: “I’m scared to go. But I’m more scared to not go.”

Three ways to help move through our fears: Say it, release it, reach out

To conquer my fears, I’ve returned to a calming practice I developed after my divorce 17 years ago.

When I feel my fears clogging up, I say out loud: “Stop!” This helps me stop my cycling thoughts and just sit with my feelings. Are my fears real? Or just thoughts in my head?

Then I open my hands — I release my grasp — and hold my palms out in front of me while I breathe deeply for a minute. The simple act of opening my palms helps quiet my mind and steady my body. I remind myself that regret is too much past and anxiety is too much future. Let’s stay present. And “let’s love harder,” writes Scottish poet Donna Ashworth.

I find calm and comfort in Ashworth’s simple poems. “Life Without Your Mum" is particularly meaningful to me, with words such as these:

“Life without your mum means you are now she … go forth and do what your mother taught you to do … love. Because one thing is for sure, she taught you well.”

What is a fear you just can't get rid of? Let us know in the comments below.

Jan Tuckwood is an Ethel and also a Janice, which happened to be the 26th most popular name for girls when she was born in 1956. She is an award-winning journalist who was associate editor and revenue content director of The Palm Beach Post for 30 years. She’s also a former fashion editor of The Denver Post, and her work has appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and Glamour magazine, among other publications. She is the editor of five books, including the official history book of Palm Beach County, and she is the co-author of “Too Young to Be Old, ” the 2022 memoir of Diane Gilman, HSN’s “Jean Queen."