Fear

Fear often follows grief quietly at first.

It may not announce itself as panic.
It can look like vigilance. Like bracing. Like scanning rooms, conversations, futures for danger.

After loss, especially sudden or traumatic loss, your nervous system learns a brutal lesson:
Bad things can happen without warning.

So it tries to prevent that from ever happening again.

From a biological perspective, fear is your survival system stuck on high alert. The amygdala - the brain’s alarm centre - becomes more sensitive after trauma. It reacts faster, louder, and more often, even when there’s no immediate threat.

Your body isn’t overreacting.
It’s protecting you with outdated information.

Fear might show up as:

• a constant sense that something terrible is about to happen

• worry for the people you love that feels unbearable

• fear of joy, because joy now feels risky

• fear of the future, or fear of thinking about it at all

This isn’t weakness.
It’s a nervous system that no longer trusts the world to behave.

Grief removes the illusion of safety most of us live inside without realising it. Once that illusion is gone, fear rushes in to fill the gap.

You may find yourself asking questions with no clear answers:

What if it happens again?
What if I can’t survive another loss?
What if I miss the signs next time?

These questions aren’t predictions.
They’re expressions of shock that hasn’t fully settled yet.

Fear doesn’t mean you’re fragile.
It means you’ve seen how much you can lose.

With time - and with gentleness - fear often loosens its grip. Not because the world becomes safe again, but because your body slowly learns that it doesn’t need to live every moment on the edge.

You don’t have to push fear away.
And you don’t have to obey it.

Sometimes the work is simply to notice it and say:

I know why you’re here.
You’re trying to keep me alive.

And for now, that’s enough.