October 8, 2025 • 15 mins
In this episode of the Infinitely Precious Podcast, James reflects on the nature of fear—its biological roots, spiritual meaning, and how it shapes our daily lives. He explains how fear is a natural, God-given mechanism for protection, triggered by the brain’s amygdala, yet often manipulated in modern society to control or divide. James invites listeners to become more aware of their fear responses, emphasizing intentional practices like mindful breathing and meditation to restore calm and clarity. By slowing down, breathing deeply, and choosing presence over reaction, we can move from fear-driven living to love-centered awareness. He concludes by reminding listeners that, whatever fears they face, they remain infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift they already are.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Intro (00:00):
Welcome to the Infinitely Precious Podcast produced by
(00:03):
Infinitely Precious LLC. Yourhost is James Henry. Remember,
you are infinitely precious andunconditionally loved for the
gift you already are.
James (00:13):
Hello, beloved. It's me, James, and it's time for another
opportunity for us to share somethoughts together. As always, I
invite you to, respond if youwish. You can always email me,
share what you're thinking asyou wish,
infinitelypreciousllcgmail dotcom. I'm delighted to have you
(00:38):
as a part of the podcast.
It's good to be able to sharesome thoughts with you.
Hopefully those thoughts arehelpful for you. And if you find
them helpful, I encourage youplease feel free to share the
podcast with others. We streamon, of course, Apple, Spotify,
(01:03):
and you can also just listen tous straight away from, the
website, several different onesin fact. So, it s good to have
you with us.
It s good to have you with us.Today I wanted to talk about
fear and the reason I wanted totalk about fear is because I
think there s a lot of it goingaround. Now, fear is not a bad
(01:27):
thing. Some people think beingafraid is bad. It is not bad.
I do not want to attach anyvalue to it if I want to be
honest with you. Fear arises inus. It is part of our
evolutionary makeup. Fear is ameans of protecting ourselves.
It's the body's way.
(01:48):
It's the most basic bodily waythat we protect ourselves. The
mind, particularly a very tinywalnut sized piece of our mind
called the amygdala in our brainis actually sort of an on and
off switch for fear. It's notreally an on and off switch, but
(02:10):
when we detect things that ourbody says we need to fear, our
eyes see a saber tooth tiger, ora lion or something else coming
towards us, a car is barrelingdown on us in modern sense, fear
takes hold of us. And that fearmeans we don't have time to
(02:34):
think about it. One of thethings the amygdala does is it
cuts off the frontal cortexwhere all of our thinking
happens, cuts that off, and itsays we have to do something
now.
We don't have time to think, isthe saber tooth tiger friendly?
Maybe it's not really going toeat me for lunch, or is that car
gonna really hurt if they hitme? Maybe they're gonna stop. We
(02:57):
don't have time to think aboutthose things. The body says
we've got to do something now toprotect ourselves.
And so there are a variety ofresponses that the amygdala,
sort of puts into play in ourbody. And you have heard these
probably before. If you've heardone of my podcasts over the
years, you have probably heardme talk about it. But, you know,
(03:21):
there is fight, flight, or evenan earlier response more deeply
rooted in us is freeze. Because,you know, if there is no way to
get away, maybe if we don tmove, no one will see us.
So our initial response might beto freeze or to run or to fight.
(03:45):
There s no way to fight anoncoming vehicle. For most of us
human beings, who are notsuperhuman in strength and
capabilities, fighting a lion ora saber tooth tiger or anything
like that is probably not in ourcapabilities. So fight is not a
possibility, but it is one ofthe possible responses to fear.
(04:08):
We are trained to protectourselves.
It is ingrained in us. It sinstinctual. At the most basic
level, we protect ourselves. Its wired into us. And that s a
wonderful thing that is part ofthe human development.
It is meant to protect us. Ifyou share with me a view about
(04:30):
the universe, that it's anunfolding presence, always
constantly unfolding, and thatGod is present in that
unfolding, then somehow Godwanted us to have a sense and
the need to protect ourselves.And there are a lot of things
that can come our way that for avariety of reasons, maybe
(04:52):
because of trauma in ourchildhood or other kinds of
things, elicit a fear responsein us, cause us to be unable to
move, cause us to want to fight.And it might not be physically
fighting, it might be with ourwords. It might be the things
that we say or to run away.
(05:14):
And sometimes running away isnot even physically running
away. It is withdrawing intoourselves and not engaging, not
really being present anymore.So, any of those things can
happen because fear, thatnatural protective instinct,
that then turns into things likeanger and frustration and comes
(05:35):
out as in reactive way, is partof protecting us, of keeping us
safe in the world in which welive. Now, we live in a society
right now in a world whereeverything is about fear.
Political parties use it as amotivator.
Leaders use it as a motivator.They even tell lies to convince
(05:59):
you to be afraid of things thatthere's nothing to be afraid of.
Sometimes, you know, sometimesit is just a way to convince you
if you're afraid enough of thatother thing, that other person,
that other party, that other wayof seeing, if you're afraid
enough of it, then you willfight it. And the best way to
(06:22):
fight it, if it's in thepolitical arena, is to vote for
the person who tells you they'regoing to keep you safe, protect
you. So they like to stir up thefear, and I am the one who will
look out for you, I will protectyou.
It becomes a negative motivator.Instead of voting out of the
(06:43):
positivity of our lives, insteadof acting out of positivity in
our lives, what we act out of isthe fear in our lives. Now there
are moments when that s reallyimportant. Dark alley, somebody
s coming at you, you need tomake a decision. Is this
dangerous?
Is it, you know, and if it is,do I run? Do I fight? Where,
(07:10):
that's a split second decisionand the front of your brain is
cut off, so you don't reallythink about it, your amygdala
tells you this is the response.Your breathing speeds up and all
that kind of thing. So what dowe do in a world where
everything is designed, we tryto use to, our people use
(07:30):
against us, to generate fear inus, so that we're constantly
living at a heightened sense.
It's exhausting to live in thatheightened sense of fear all the
time. It makes it hard for us tomake wise, clear decisions for
ourselves, because we are in astate of fear that has at least
(07:53):
temporarily shut down thereasoning part of our brain.
It's no longer about reason.It's about self protection. It s
about protecting my group, mytribe.
It s about protecting myself, myfamily. And these are the things
I have to do to do that becausethis person or that issue has
(08:15):
arisen, and they told me that sthe only way to protect my
family. It may not even makesense to me, but fear doesn t
get me to make s it s not aboutmaking sense. Fear is about self
protection. So I want to suggestto you that there are ways to
deal with our fear.
(08:36):
When you get caught in traffic,when you're being chased by a
lion, I think it's veryimportant for you to let fear
help you escape and selfprotect. But there are some ways
that we can protect ourselvesagainst fear of the other by
(09:00):
othering people. Fear ofviolence coming our way because
of these others that have beendefined for us. There are ways
to deal with those kinds offears, but it requires that we
develop a kind of practice, away of slowing down. Now what s
(09:21):
interesting about that lovelybrain of ours, one of the things
that happens in the amygdalawhen we become afraid, is that
we, you know, our breathingstarts going more rapidly, we
release, you know, we releaseadrenaline, so that we are ready
to do the things we have to do,the breath is going faster.
There are a number of littleneurons right here in the back
(09:46):
of your brain. I read itsomewhere around 500, a little
tiny group that is in charge ofyour breathing that makes you
breathe. And when the amygdalasends a signal breathe faster,
you do. That little thing makesyou breathe faster, but you can
(10:06):
reverse engineer that. If youcan catch yourself when you
start to become afraid, you seea news story that frightens you.
You hear a story, somethingabout something going on in the
community and it frightens you.Before you react in the moment
(10:27):
by freezing, fighting, orrunning away, if you can catch
yourself and slow down yourbreathing, it will send a
reverse signal to the littlebreathing section of about 500
neurons And in turn, yourintentional breathing slower
(10:53):
will send that notification tothat little tiny walnut size
amygdala in the sort of at thebase of your brain stem, base of
your brain to slow down, to calmdown. Amygdala, it s not as bad
as you think, calm down andfrees you to use your mind
(11:16):
again. There are things that youneed to be afraid of and respond
to right away. No question aboutit.
And there are things you don tneed to be afraid of and respond
right away. React by doingwhatever is one of those three
natural responses. But itrequires an intentionality and
(11:40):
perhaps a practice that beginsevery day in the morning. When
you sit quietly in a space foras much time as you can afford,
I would say you really can tafford much less than twenty
minutes or so. It takes me thatlong to let go of my thoughts.
But sit for as long as you canafford. Maybe you need to afford
(12:05):
more time too if you re livingin a place of fear, but, and
meditate. Meditate by payingattention to your breath to
begin with. You can use a mantraif you want to, or you can use
centering prayer, which is notbuilt on a mantra, but an
intention with an intentionalword that you let go. But
(12:28):
whatever you choose to do, itcan be good to get into a
practice of slowing yourselfdown.
So that when you start to feelthe fear response in your body
and you recognize it. You'llrecognize it because things
begin to tighten up, your breathchanges, other kinds of things.
You can begin to sense fear isrising in you and when you do,
(12:55):
you can take a step back. Slowdown your breathing. Think about
the best response you can giveand respond in that way.
Fear is not bad. Fear isn't goodnecessarily. It is a natural
response, a self protectiveresponse that is designed to
(13:18):
keep you alive and we want youto be alive. But to be fully
alive is not to be afraid allthe time of everything. At least
I think so, and not living onadrenaline and exhausting
ourselves constantly by all ofour fear.
It s taking a step back. It smaking some careful choices
(13:40):
about our grounded breathing. Its maybe consuming less of the
things that make us afraid. Ifthat s media, if that s
television, if that s the news,whatever it is, Maybe it s
consuming less of those things.It s making intentional choices
about how we live.
(14:02):
Fear is a gift from God. It s agift to us to help protect us,
but it can also be quite theopposite of a gift when it
becomes the ruler of our lives.And I do think in today's
environment, we're told to feareverything, anything that's
(14:23):
different than us. And God is alover of diversity. God is a
lover of all the variety andinvites us to love it too, to
love the things that God loves.
So those are my thoughts todayabout fear. Remember, no matter
where you are on this journey offaith, where are you on the
spiritual journey, wherever youare on the journey of fear,
(14:48):
paralyzed or not, anxiousconstantly or not. This piece I
am going to say to you isabsolutely true. No matter where
you are on any of that spectrum,you are infinitely precious and
unconditionally loved for thegift you already are. That is an
absolute truth.
(15:09):
No matter the fear or thejourney you are on, you are a
precious gift. I hope that maybeyou can move away from the
things that keep you from livingthe full giftedness of yourself
and maybe one of those things isfear. Until the next time, I
wish you all the best. Ohprecious ones who have joined
(15:30):
me, Feel free to share thepodcast. I hope it's been
helpful to you and if it'sespecially helpful to you, share
it as far and wide as you want.
Until the next time.
Welcome to the Infinitely Precious Podcast produced by
(00:03):
Infinitely Precious LLC. Yourhost is James Henry. Remember,
you are infinitely precious andunconditionally loved for the
gift you already are.
James (00:13):
Hello, beloved. It's me, James, and it's time for another
opportunity for us to share somethoughts together. As always, I
invite you to, respond if youwish. You can always email me,
share what you're thinking asyou wish,
infinitelypreciousllcgmail dotcom. I'm delighted to have you
(00:38):
as a part of the podcast.
It's good to be able to sharesome thoughts with you.
Hopefully those thoughts arehelpful for you. And if you find
them helpful, I encourage youplease feel free to share the
podcast with others. We streamon, of course, Apple, Spotify,
(01:03):
and you can also just listen tous straight away from, the
website, several different onesin fact. So, it s good to have
you with us.
It s good to have you with us.Today I wanted to talk about
fear and the reason I wanted totalk about fear is because I
think there s a lot of it goingaround. Now, fear is not a bad
(01:27):
thing. Some people think beingafraid is bad. It is not bad.
I do not want to attach anyvalue to it if I want to be
honest with you. Fear arises inus. It is part of our
evolutionary makeup. Fear is ameans of protecting ourselves.
It's the body's way.
(01:48):
It's the most basic bodily waythat we protect ourselves. The
mind, particularly a very tinywalnut sized piece of our mind
called the amygdala in our brainis actually sort of an on and
off switch for fear. It's notreally an on and off switch, but
(02:10):
when we detect things that ourbody says we need to fear, our
eyes see a saber tooth tiger, ora lion or something else coming
towards us, a car is barrelingdown on us in modern sense, fear
takes hold of us. And that fearmeans we don't have time to
(02:34):
think about it. One of thethings the amygdala does is it
cuts off the frontal cortexwhere all of our thinking
happens, cuts that off, and itsays we have to do something
now.
We don't have time to think, isthe saber tooth tiger friendly?
Maybe it's not really going toeat me for lunch, or is that car
gonna really hurt if they hitme? Maybe they're gonna stop. We
(02:57):
don't have time to think aboutthose things. The body says
we've got to do something now toprotect ourselves.
And so there are a variety ofresponses that the amygdala,
sort of puts into play in ourbody. And you have heard these
probably before. If you've heardone of my podcasts over the
years, you have probably heardme talk about it. But, you know,
(03:21):
there is fight, flight, or evenan earlier response more deeply
rooted in us is freeze. Because,you know, if there is no way to
get away, maybe if we don tmove, no one will see us.
So our initial response might beto freeze or to run or to fight.
(03:45):
There s no way to fight anoncoming vehicle. For most of us
human beings, who are notsuperhuman in strength and
capabilities, fighting a lion ora saber tooth tiger or anything
like that is probably not in ourcapabilities. So fight is not a
possibility, but it is one ofthe possible responses to fear.
(04:08):
We are trained to protectourselves.
It is ingrained in us. It sinstinctual. At the most basic
level, we protect ourselves. Its wired into us. And that s a
wonderful thing that is part ofthe human development.
It is meant to protect us. Ifyou share with me a view about
(04:30):
the universe, that it's anunfolding presence, always
constantly unfolding, and thatGod is present in that
unfolding, then somehow Godwanted us to have a sense and
the need to protect ourselves.And there are a lot of things
that can come our way that for avariety of reasons, maybe
(04:52):
because of trauma in ourchildhood or other kinds of
things, elicit a fear responsein us, cause us to be unable to
move, cause us to want to fight.And it might not be physically
fighting, it might be with ourwords. It might be the things
that we say or to run away.
(05:14):
And sometimes running away isnot even physically running
away. It is withdrawing intoourselves and not engaging, not
really being present anymore.So, any of those things can
happen because fear, thatnatural protective instinct,
that then turns into things likeanger and frustration and comes
(05:35):
out as in reactive way, is partof protecting us, of keeping us
safe in the world in which welive. Now, we live in a society
right now in a world whereeverything is about fear.
Political parties use it as amotivator.
Leaders use it as a motivator.They even tell lies to convince
(05:59):
you to be afraid of things thatthere's nothing to be afraid of.
Sometimes, you know, sometimesit is just a way to convince you
if you're afraid enough of thatother thing, that other person,
that other party, that other wayof seeing, if you're afraid
enough of it, then you willfight it. And the best way to
(06:22):
fight it, if it's in thepolitical arena, is to vote for
the person who tells you they'regoing to keep you safe, protect
you. So they like to stir up thefear, and I am the one who will
look out for you, I will protectyou.
It becomes a negative motivator.Instead of voting out of the
(06:43):
positivity of our lives, insteadof acting out of positivity in
our lives, what we act out of isthe fear in our lives. Now there
are moments when that s reallyimportant. Dark alley, somebody
s coming at you, you need tomake a decision. Is this
dangerous?
Is it, you know, and if it is,do I run? Do I fight? Where,
(07:10):
that's a split second decisionand the front of your brain is
cut off, so you don't reallythink about it, your amygdala
tells you this is the response.Your breathing speeds up and all
that kind of thing. So what dowe do in a world where
everything is designed, we tryto use to, our people use
(07:30):
against us, to generate fear inus, so that we're constantly
living at a heightened sense.
It's exhausting to live in thatheightened sense of fear all the
time. It makes it hard for us tomake wise, clear decisions for
ourselves, because we are in astate of fear that has at least
(07:53):
temporarily shut down thereasoning part of our brain.
It's no longer about reason.It's about self protection. It s
about protecting my group, mytribe.
It s about protecting myself, myfamily. And these are the things
I have to do to do that becausethis person or that issue has
(08:15):
arisen, and they told me that sthe only way to protect my
family. It may not even makesense to me, but fear doesn t
get me to make s it s not aboutmaking sense. Fear is about self
protection. So I want to suggestto you that there are ways to
deal with our fear.
(08:36):
When you get caught in traffic,when you're being chased by a
lion, I think it's veryimportant for you to let fear
help you escape and selfprotect. But there are some ways
that we can protect ourselvesagainst fear of the other by
(09:00):
othering people. Fear ofviolence coming our way because
of these others that have beendefined for us. There are ways
to deal with those kinds offears, but it requires that we
develop a kind of practice, away of slowing down. Now what s
(09:21):
interesting about that lovelybrain of ours, one of the things
that happens in the amygdalawhen we become afraid, is that
we, you know, our breathingstarts going more rapidly, we
release, you know, we releaseadrenaline, so that we are ready
to do the things we have to do,the breath is going faster.
There are a number of littleneurons right here in the back
(09:46):
of your brain. I read itsomewhere around 500, a little
tiny group that is in charge ofyour breathing that makes you
breathe. And when the amygdalasends a signal breathe faster,
you do. That little thing makesyou breathe faster, but you can
(10:06):
reverse engineer that. If youcan catch yourself when you
start to become afraid, you seea news story that frightens you.
You hear a story, somethingabout something going on in the
community and it frightens you.Before you react in the moment
(10:27):
by freezing, fighting, orrunning away, if you can catch
yourself and slow down yourbreathing, it will send a
reverse signal to the littlebreathing section of about 500
neurons And in turn, yourintentional breathing slower
(10:53):
will send that notification tothat little tiny walnut size
amygdala in the sort of at thebase of your brain stem, base of
your brain to slow down, to calmdown. Amygdala, it s not as bad
as you think, calm down andfrees you to use your mind
(11:16):
again. There are things that youneed to be afraid of and respond
to right away. No question aboutit.
And there are things you don tneed to be afraid of and respond
right away. React by doingwhatever is one of those three
natural responses. But itrequires an intentionality and
(11:40):
perhaps a practice that beginsevery day in the morning. When
you sit quietly in a space foras much time as you can afford,
I would say you really can tafford much less than twenty
minutes or so. It takes me thatlong to let go of my thoughts.
But sit for as long as you canafford. Maybe you need to afford
(12:05):
more time too if you re livingin a place of fear, but, and
meditate. Meditate by payingattention to your breath to
begin with. You can use a mantraif you want to, or you can use
centering prayer, which is notbuilt on a mantra, but an
intention with an intentionalword that you let go. But
(12:28):
whatever you choose to do, itcan be good to get into a
practice of slowing yourselfdown.
So that when you start to feelthe fear response in your body
and you recognize it. You'llrecognize it because things
begin to tighten up, your breathchanges, other kinds of things.
You can begin to sense fear isrising in you and when you do,
(12:55):
you can take a step back. Slowdown your breathing. Think about
the best response you can giveand respond in that way.
Fear is not bad. Fear isn't goodnecessarily. It is a natural
response, a self protectiveresponse that is designed to
(13:18):
keep you alive and we want youto be alive. But to be fully
alive is not to be afraid allthe time of everything. At least
I think so, and not living onadrenaline and exhausting
ourselves constantly by all ofour fear.
It s taking a step back. It smaking some careful choices
(13:40):
about our grounded breathing. Its maybe consuming less of the
things that make us afraid. Ifthat s media, if that s
television, if that s the news,whatever it is, Maybe it s
consuming less of those things.It s making intentional choices
about how we live.
(14:02):
Fear is a gift from God. It s agift to us to help protect us,
but it can also be quite theopposite of a gift when it
becomes the ruler of our lives.And I do think in today's
environment, we're told to feareverything, anything that's
(14:23):
different than us. And God is alover of diversity. God is a
lover of all the variety andinvites us to love it too, to
love the things that God loves.
So those are my thoughts todayabout fear. Remember, no matter
where you are on this journey offaith, where are you on the
spiritual journey, wherever youare on the journey of fear,
(14:48):
paralyzed or not, anxiousconstantly or not. This piece I
am going to say to you isabsolutely true. No matter where
you are on any of that spectrum,you are infinitely precious and
unconditionally loved for thegift you already are. That is an
absolute truth.
(15:09):
No matter the fear or thejourney you are on, you are a
precious gift. I hope that maybeyou can move away from the
things that keep you from livingthe full giftedness of yourself
and maybe one of those things isfear. Until the next time, I
wish you all the best. Ohprecious ones who have joined
(15:30):
me, Feel free to share thepodcast. I hope it's been
helpful to you and if it'sespecially helpful to you, share
it as far and wide as you want.
Until the next time.
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