Self Esteem
How Fear Controls Us: Radical Acceptance Chapter Seven
August 7, 2026
— CHRISTINE SPARACINO
This week we read Chapter 7: Opening our heart in the face of fear in "Radical Acceptance" by Tara Brach. In case you missed Chapter 6, there’s still time to catch up.
As we get started this week, I want to offer a trigger warning. As Chapter 7 opens, Tara Brach shares the story of Barbara and the physical abuse she experienced as a child. If this might be upsetting to read, give yourself permission to start reading on page 163 with “During her first semester…”
Brach uses this chapter to explain how Radical Acceptance helps dissolve fear’s control over us, allows us to acknowledge and be open to fear, and reconnect with our true nature.
Barbara’s story illustrates how harmful experiences in childhood persist as fear and negative beliefs about oneself into adulthood. Our childhood experiences lay the foundation, and we create stories about what happens to us.
Barbara’s response to her trauma, and developing compensatory strategy, was to help others and make herself useful. In doing so, she protected herself from rejection and unworthiness. However, in difficult moments, her inner fears overwhelmed her.
Brach explains how this is the trance of fear, how fears controls our decisions, leading us to avoid feeling pain. Fear causes us to contract and live smaller lives.
“We forget that there are people who care about us, and we forget our own ability to feel spacious and openhearted. Trapped in the trance, we experience life through the filter of fear.”
It is a natural tendency to avoid feeling fear and the pain beneath the fear. As humans, fear has kept us alive, prompting the fight-flight-freeze response. We need healthy fear to keep us from life-threatening danger. It is a natural bodily response to potential harm.
The trance of fear that Brach refers to is not this healthy fear. Instead, it is fear that keeps us trapped. She encourages us to examine our fear and ask, “What beliefs are underneath the triggered fear?”
If we have experienced trauma and childhood relational wounding, the fear mechanism works “overtime” to keep us safe, but the signals are disrupted. Instead of having healthy fear, the feeling pops up in everyday moments.
“We are caught in the trance of fear when the emotion of fear becomes the core of our identity and constricts our capacity to live fully.”
Brach discusses how fear resides in the body, leading to constricted muscle tension and rigidity. There is physical evidence of how the soul contracts around fear, in order to avoid future woundings and pain. Practically, this looks like avoidance behaviors, such as opting out of relationships or opportunities in order to avoid rejection.
In the case of Barbara, her fear became like a pair of glasses she wore that distorted her perspective of the world. She worked “harder” to avoid rejection and feeling shame, convinced of her unworthiness.
If we are seeing the world through a distorted belief, we will engage with the world based on that belief. The cycle of shame and fear continues, and Brach urges us to break out of this trance in order to experience freedom and fullness of living.
She discusses the Buddhist concept of taking refuge as a strategy to feeling our fear, the pain beneath the fear, and opening ourselves to belonging. She explains that by taking refuge, we acknowledge that we are not alone and that our true nature is loving.
“We take refuge in the truth of who we are.”
Taking refuge can be seen across spiritual practices and traditions. The practice connects us with our inner experience in an attitude of mindfulness and connects us to our true nature and to a sense of belonging with others. Brach reminds us that when we connect to our belonging, we can meet our fear with the perspective of Radical Acceptance.
When we bring mindfulness to our fears, we can experience the emotion and feelings and the sensations in our body with curiosity, asking what’s beneath the fear. Then, instead of pushing away the experience, we can hold it with compassion and allow ourselves to experience it fully, knowing that it will change and pass through us. Our emotional states and the physical sensations don’t last forever; they are often fleeting.
This approach “widens the lens” and offers us a new perspective. It allows us to lean into fear and ask questions to understand our fear more deeply, rather than pushing it away.
Brach explains, “When we come face-to-face with fear and pain in our psyches, we stand at the gateway to renewal and freedom. Our deepest nature is awareness, and when we fully inhabit that, we love freely and are whole.”
I know the topic of fear is a tricky one. We don’t naturally want to open ourselves to feeling our fear, and we especially don’t want to sit with it. Our evolutionary safety warnings created a natural response to fear which is to either fight it off or run away. And yet, Tara Brach encourages us to acknowledge its feeling in our bodies, to notice our emotions, and to get curious about what is beneath the fear.
If this feels like too large of a task, if you feel overwhelmed with how to apply this, if your pain feels too large to meet on your own, I encourage you to reach out to your therapist or to find a one.
One of the things that is great about therapy is that is offers a space for us to talk about our thoughts and notice how our bodies feel in the presence of another person. Therapists hold space for your experience and can help guide you through, rather than feeling like you’re flailing about on your own. Often the trust presence of another being creates a safe container for us to examine our inner life.
In my personal copy of Radical Acceptance, I have many passages underlined in this chapter, especially the part where she speaks about the chronic tightness that happens in our bodies. One of the things my therapist first noticed about me when I walked through the door was the heaviness of my shoulders, the roundedness of my back, the tension along my neck.
I grew up feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders, and my body reflects it. If this is your experience, know that I understand and I am here with you, acknowledging the difficulty of these persistent physical states.
I often tell clients, “We are wounded in relationships and healed in them.” It is difficult to heal in isolation. Like Brach discusses in this chapter, we need to experience our belonging and to remember our loving nature in order for the stories we have developed about ourselves to change.
Belonging and relationships can feel threatening, especially if you have experienced deep wounding. Move slowly and offer yourself self-compassion as you approach relational healing.
If relationships feel too difficult, consider getting a therapist and using the development of that relationship as a template for further relational healing.
I have recorded the guided meditation, Meeting Fear with an Open and Engaged Presence, for your use.
If you prefer, you could record your own version or have a trusted love one record it in their voice.
As we have done in weeks past, consider journaling about your experience with the meditation. You can use these prompts:
We move on to Chapter Eight. Happy reading!
If you missed Chapter Six, you can read the recap.
