In response to the quote “Extreme fear can neither fight nor fly.” by William Shakespeare, one reader of this wordcast pointed out alternative reactions to fear ~ 'freeze, flock, fawn' ~ and hinted at "other F-words"...
Ferreting as a fear response... absolutely. I love it!
And infer... of course. No need to restrict ourselves to F-words... although in essence infer is also one ~ in- is a prefix to 'fer' from Latin fero = to bring, bear, carry...
From here we can add some more 'fer-words': suffer, transfer, prefer, defer, differ, even offer and confer, perhaps
Great one, Veronika! 🙏❤️This resonates with what I’m writing about these days: the witch archetype, our fear of women’s rage, how we push it into the underground cave of our collective unconscious and resurface, bubbles up in distorted ways.
This post really makes you think about how deeply fear is wired into us—like it’s part of our survival blueprint. It’s wild to imagine that “fear” once meant actively scaring someone, like an aggressive force, and now it’s more about what rises up within us. When you look at words like fear, fare, foreign, and forest, they all carry a sense of venturing out, risking something, leaving safe ground, and facing the unknown. It’s got me reflecting on fear in so many nuanced ways now.
Maybe that’s why fear feels like an ancient shadow, especially when we step into something new. But if we see fear as part of the journey, not just a warning—almost like "stress", which can lift us up rather than push us down—then maybe it’s a sign of growth, a push beyond old limits. Just like “fare” and “far” were about moving forward, maybe fear is a call to courage, nudging us toward a life beyond the comfort zone.
Thank you for your fearless writing and brave explorations; it’s truly inspiring. Here’s to letting fear move us forward, not hold us back—and to exploring those “seriously wild words” in our own lives. Happy weekend!
"When you look at words like fear, fare, foreign, and forest, they all carry a sense of venturing out, risking something, leaving safe ground, and facing the unknown." ~ absolutely!!
When we move into the new, take the next step in life, something stirs inside. This forward movement is received as an agitation (= a shaking to an fro), which can stir either excitement or fear, depending on prior experience.
Courage, as we have seen in my recent wordcast 'The Quiet Voice of Courage' (https://veronikabondsymbiopaedia.substack.com/p/the-quiet-voice-of-courage) is not on the same level as fear. It is a 'virtue of the soul' ~ more of a core feature ~ whereas fear would be an instinctive/ emotional interpretation of an agitation in response to a 'forward movement'.
Fear of women's rage... well that's another seriously wild topic.
Your visit here is a lovely start to my weekend 😊 💕 wishing you a magical one too! ✨ 🪄💫
This is a huge word for me! I love your quote, and I would add that the miracle of our lives is the journey from fear to love. I am always astonished just how much the meaning of words shifts over time. Does anything stay the same? I’m sure even the word love has shifted way more than I even can comprehend. Thank you for taking me on this journey. This Safari. I love to get lost in the forest that your brilliant writing takes me through. Blessings and please keep them coming. Thank you Veronika🙏❤️
Yes. The journey from fear to love... how to get there? That's the big question we need to live into... Thank you for bringing this up, Jamie. 💕🙏
As I wrote in response to Lani's comment: fear is always present when we experience any negative emotions. ~ "No matter whether it's anger, shame, despair, frustration, grief, envy, jealousy, worries, you name it, fear is always lurking somewhere in the emotional undercurrents." ~ In other words, fear is not a separate 'state' to 'get rid of'.
Neither is love. Countless spiritual teachers through the ages affirm, love is our essence. Love is who we are. So love must be always with us, even as we experience fear...
My journey with exploring fear in the wildwordwoods of Symbiopaedia will continue next week. These wordcasts are written in preparation for living into the big question, 'How do we move from fear to love?' Is this even the right question? Is it a journey from F to L? or could it be more like a transformation, a metamorphosis, an alchemical process?
We've only just entered this dark and wild forest. With a little guidance of our wondrous words that have evolved over millennia (even if we only have records of give or take 800 years) it won't be too scary 😰🌲 🐉 🌲 🤭
The journey from head to heart to soul. Knowing we live in all. As all. Already home. Lost looking for a map that already knows the way. A spirit having a human experience. Transcending. Alchemy. FEAR: Face Everything And Rise. Why can’t I feel my feet lol. Keep it coming Veronika 🙏❤️🌀
Whew, that was quite the fascinating journey! And I love how you ended with Alexander Huber conquering his greatest fear. The subject of fear though, is one that conjures up many images, stoking up memories from the past, and how much we live with imaginary fears, how we traverse (travel) our minds fixated on everything that could go wrong.
Of course. Fear is a constant companion throughout human life. I'm not sure there is such a thing as 'imaginary fears', perhaps you mean fears of imagined things and stories in our heads? Fear is fear. When you feel it it's always real.
And ~ as many people who have worked in depth with their own emotions, including myself, have discovered ~ fear always comes up as an accomplice whenever we experience any negative emotions. No matter whether it's anger, shame, despair, frustration, grief, envy, jealousy, worries, you name it, fear is always lurking somewhere in the emotional undercurrents.
Thank you, as always, for your feedback and kind support.
Fascinating as ever Veronika. And quite apropos today as we all reel over here with the election results. The link between fear and travel is intriguing, and made me think of how fear itself can be a traveling away from the present moment, into the past or future. But perhaps fear becomes an ally, as you share in the story of the rock climber, when we can allow it to do its transformative work on us, embodied and in the present. Not fearing fear, but trusting its intelligence—that the animal body knows how use the chemicals and take appropriate action, especially when we feel helpless in a situation. I don’t know if any of this makes sense, just spinning on it a bit as my head spins with the emotional upheaval going on over here.
Thank you Kimberly, for reading and feedback on this day(!), and for your courage to face so much fear on your own journey.
Making sense under the influence of fear seems to be one of the big challenges...
Fear as a travel companion of every journey has become an important piece of the puzzle for me too. It is present in every emotional upheaval, no matter what all the other dark hues of the emotional spectrum are called. In my experience it can become a powerful ally especially on the inner journey.
I will contemplate on how this ally can support us in the current global situation of emotional turbulence.
"Not fearing fear, but trusting its intelligence" ... that seems to me to be a key element in all aspects of subjective experience (experiencing various emotional states). All emotions are 'intelligent' in the sense of knocking on the door of our consciousness with something important to contribute to our understanding of a current situation. So the last thing we want to do is 'get rid of' the messengers, but to welcome them and do our best to discern what is they message they are bringing to us. And when it comes to fear, as a very 'base' experience, then we need to listen with extra diligence.
Standing back from fear, (as much as such a thing as is possible) and observing its surrounding countryside with a keen eye for discerning what's really going on, pays handsome dividends, I'm sure.
Maybe another 'f' word associated with fear, is 'flap' (as in 'being in a flap') -- although it's less of a reaction to fear, than another way of describing its landscape.
Fear has saved my life on a couple of occasions but otherwise 'runaway fear' has been rather debilitating. This post takes the sting out of its provocative essence, without downplaying its value.
Excellent essay, Veronika. A great fear of mine is the loss of autonomy and of freedom, which is very real as I see the erosion of said autonomy by increasing restrictions being placed on us, sometimes in the name of security, but more often as a means of control.
My solution is Nature, which gives the truth in all cases. The non-human species can and do communicate such truths, but we humans have to be sensitive to the vibrations. Yes, it sounds unreal, but what we view today as "real" may not be.
Thank you Perry! Yes the erosion (or theft) of autonomy and freedom in the name of security, by first spreading fear of 'terror, plague, and pestilence'... It's a familiar strategy of control.
In my mind, fear is always real, because it's a subjective experience. This is valid and authentic, even if an 'objective threat' cannot be immediately determined.
Fear, as I perceive and understand it, is also a vibration. Therefore, tuning into our fears may be a way to become more sensitive to the truths with which the non-human species resonate ~ the truths of nature, which ultimately have to be the truths of the symbiocene.
You suggest that what we view today as "real" may not be... I fully agree!! xx
Terrific read Veronica, my thanks to add to others.
Afeard of fear ... what was the old saying, 'Fear God and shame the devil'?😊
Interested in the northern / western European mind ... merciless warfare comes into it of course and 'training', which is always an inheritance ... But seeking the 'ascent structure' ... a kind of gothic? Imagine religiously creating narrow stone 'gardens' perched near the the peak of Skellig Michael? Intrepid young American archaeologists / climbers did some precipitous work finding and mapping in the 70s, with gear.
It is easier perhaps to imagine living with care from birds eggs and squabs off the St Kildan cliffs. And I have often wondered what it must have been like to raise children 'at-home' with confidence in the Kalahari Desert. I guess something like that was true for Huber's early start ... he was at-home where love dwells and knows its way around?
Yes, those fearsome Gods... (I've got some of them lined up for an appearance next week).
Huber probably has the mountains in his blood and bones, like the Kalahari bushmen (and -children) carried the desert within them. Having lost that connection with nature (and the Gods), I'm guessing we have to learn to live within and navigate the landscape of our own experience.
Will stay tuned. Words mark the trail, as 'patterans' (latter from British Roma?).
Maybe 'we' have been and are being trained mechanistically, (to use a word) in our modern ways? It has been done many times before for whole societies - states of civilisation - or at least for critical segments under 'command'?
I am interested rather in biology / instinct /intuition / customs & inheritance ... especially child rearing and aquisition of knowledge / skill / 'gnosis' in-situ, (in 'customary' terrain,) but in a 'native sequence' ... a kind of 'ur' humanity? There is always dance and song and story and images.
Blake had an interesting take on big fella god, heaven and hell and marriage, vision and dream.
A bit late but think you / others could value Britih writer David Brazier. I have followed him for a while ... interesting background I share some of. Was struck just now by his post 'Soul Food' and his accompanying poem. Seemed apposite... https://davidbrazier.substack.com
Not too late! Symbiopædia is ongoing work in progress and very much welcomes these kind of suggestions. Thank you for introducing me/ us to David's substack.
Thank you so much for picking out all these facets, Shelly.
Yes, 'forward' appears in every *per-list of words in the etymological online dictionary, linking all the *per-s together. Indicating, I assume, that moving forward brings out the fear in people...
On the other hand, we can also use this connection to interpret a sense of fear as a sign that we are moving forward, no matter which candidate moves into the White House in January, and no matter whether some things appear to have gone into retrogade (women's rights, abortion rights etc.)
We are living in scary times, no doubt about that. And fear is a complex human experience.
So complex in fact that I have another wordcast on 'Fear' lined up for next week.
My deep and heartfelt gratitude for your much appreciated feedback 💗🙏 as we are collectively travelling along this dark and wild track towards an unknown future 🌲🧚🏽🌳
In response to the quote “Extreme fear can neither fight nor fly.” by William Shakespeare, one reader of this wordcast pointed out alternative reactions to fear ~ 'freeze, flock, fawn' ~ and hinted at "other F-words"...
I was familiar with 'freeze and fawn'.
'Flock' is a brilliant one too!
Anyone knows any other F-words as fear-reactions?
Maybe 'feign and fake'?
I just found another one:
Friend!!
also known as the 'Stockholm syndrome' (a theory about why hostages sometimes develop a psychological bond with their captors)
Ferret?
Perhaps even infer?
Ferreting as a fear response... absolutely. I love it!
And infer... of course. No need to restrict ourselves to F-words... although in essence infer is also one ~ in- is a prefix to 'fer' from Latin fero = to bring, bear, carry...
From here we can add some more 'fer-words': suffer, transfer, prefer, defer, differ, even offer and confer, perhaps
Great one, Veronika! 🙏❤️This resonates with what I’m writing about these days: the witch archetype, our fear of women’s rage, how we push it into the underground cave of our collective unconscious and resurface, bubbles up in distorted ways.
This post really makes you think about how deeply fear is wired into us—like it’s part of our survival blueprint. It’s wild to imagine that “fear” once meant actively scaring someone, like an aggressive force, and now it’s more about what rises up within us. When you look at words like fear, fare, foreign, and forest, they all carry a sense of venturing out, risking something, leaving safe ground, and facing the unknown. It’s got me reflecting on fear in so many nuanced ways now.
Maybe that’s why fear feels like an ancient shadow, especially when we step into something new. But if we see fear as part of the journey, not just a warning—almost like "stress", which can lift us up rather than push us down—then maybe it’s a sign of growth, a push beyond old limits. Just like “fare” and “far” were about moving forward, maybe fear is a call to courage, nudging us toward a life beyond the comfort zone.
Thank you for your fearless writing and brave explorations; it’s truly inspiring. Here’s to letting fear move us forward, not hold us back—and to exploring those “seriously wild words” in our own lives. Happy weekend!
What a great reflection! Thank you Katerina 💚 🙏 🌲
"When you look at words like fear, fare, foreign, and forest, they all carry a sense of venturing out, risking something, leaving safe ground, and facing the unknown." ~ absolutely!!
When we move into the new, take the next step in life, something stirs inside. This forward movement is received as an agitation (= a shaking to an fro), which can stir either excitement or fear, depending on prior experience.
Courage, as we have seen in my recent wordcast 'The Quiet Voice of Courage' (https://veronikabondsymbiopaedia.substack.com/p/the-quiet-voice-of-courage) is not on the same level as fear. It is a 'virtue of the soul' ~ more of a core feature ~ whereas fear would be an instinctive/ emotional interpretation of an agitation in response to a 'forward movement'.
Fear of women's rage... well that's another seriously wild topic.
Your visit here is a lovely start to my weekend 😊 💕 wishing you a magical one too! ✨ 🪄💫
This is a huge word for me! I love your quote, and I would add that the miracle of our lives is the journey from fear to love. I am always astonished just how much the meaning of words shifts over time. Does anything stay the same? I’m sure even the word love has shifted way more than I even can comprehend. Thank you for taking me on this journey. This Safari. I love to get lost in the forest that your brilliant writing takes me through. Blessings and please keep them coming. Thank you Veronika🙏❤️
Yes. The journey from fear to love... how to get there? That's the big question we need to live into... Thank you for bringing this up, Jamie. 💕🙏
As I wrote in response to Lani's comment: fear is always present when we experience any negative emotions. ~ "No matter whether it's anger, shame, despair, frustration, grief, envy, jealousy, worries, you name it, fear is always lurking somewhere in the emotional undercurrents." ~ In other words, fear is not a separate 'state' to 'get rid of'.
Neither is love. Countless spiritual teachers through the ages affirm, love is our essence. Love is who we are. So love must be always with us, even as we experience fear...
My journey with exploring fear in the wildwordwoods of Symbiopaedia will continue next week. These wordcasts are written in preparation for living into the big question, 'How do we move from fear to love?' Is this even the right question? Is it a journey from F to L? or could it be more like a transformation, a metamorphosis, an alchemical process?
We've only just entered this dark and wild forest. With a little guidance of our wondrous words that have evolved over millennia (even if we only have records of give or take 800 years) it won't be too scary 😰🌲 🐉 🌲 🤭
The journey from head to heart to soul. Knowing we live in all. As all. Already home. Lost looking for a map that already knows the way. A spirit having a human experience. Transcending. Alchemy. FEAR: Face Everything And Rise. Why can’t I feel my feet lol. Keep it coming Veronika 🙏❤️🌀
I will hang in with you Veronica.😊 Those chalk marks speak of many hands.
Thank you Philip for your companionship 💕🙏
Whew, that was quite the fascinating journey! And I love how you ended with Alexander Huber conquering his greatest fear. The subject of fear though, is one that conjures up many images, stoking up memories from the past, and how much we live with imaginary fears, how we traverse (travel) our minds fixated on everything that could go wrong.
Of course. Fear is a constant companion throughout human life. I'm not sure there is such a thing as 'imaginary fears', perhaps you mean fears of imagined things and stories in our heads? Fear is fear. When you feel it it's always real.
And ~ as many people who have worked in depth with their own emotions, including myself, have discovered ~ fear always comes up as an accomplice whenever we experience any negative emotions. No matter whether it's anger, shame, despair, frustration, grief, envy, jealousy, worries, you name it, fear is always lurking somewhere in the emotional undercurrents.
Thank you, as always, for your feedback and kind support.
"fear always comes up as an accomplice whenever we experience any negative emotions" - astute observations, as always, Veronika! 🔍
this one comes from plenty of experience with delving deep into my own emotional turbulences 😰
Fascinating as ever Veronika. And quite apropos today as we all reel over here with the election results. The link between fear and travel is intriguing, and made me think of how fear itself can be a traveling away from the present moment, into the past or future. But perhaps fear becomes an ally, as you share in the story of the rock climber, when we can allow it to do its transformative work on us, embodied and in the present. Not fearing fear, but trusting its intelligence—that the animal body knows how use the chemicals and take appropriate action, especially when we feel helpless in a situation. I don’t know if any of this makes sense, just spinning on it a bit as my head spins with the emotional upheaval going on over here.
Thank you Kimberly, for reading and feedback on this day(!), and for your courage to face so much fear on your own journey.
Making sense under the influence of fear seems to be one of the big challenges...
Fear as a travel companion of every journey has become an important piece of the puzzle for me too. It is present in every emotional upheaval, no matter what all the other dark hues of the emotional spectrum are called. In my experience it can become a powerful ally especially on the inner journey.
I will contemplate on how this ally can support us in the current global situation of emotional turbulence.
"Not fearing fear, but trusting its intelligence" ... that seems to me to be a key element in all aspects of subjective experience (experiencing various emotional states). All emotions are 'intelligent' in the sense of knocking on the door of our consciousness with something important to contribute to our understanding of a current situation. So the last thing we want to do is 'get rid of' the messengers, but to welcome them and do our best to discern what is they message they are bringing to us. And when it comes to fear, as a very 'base' experience, then we need to listen with extra diligence.
Well said Joshua!
Standing back from fear, (as much as such a thing as is possible) and observing its surrounding countryside with a keen eye for discerning what's really going on, pays handsome dividends, I'm sure.
Maybe another 'f' word associated with fear, is 'flap' (as in 'being in a flap') -- although it's less of a reaction to fear, than another way of describing its landscape.
Fear has saved my life on a couple of occasions but otherwise 'runaway fear' has been rather debilitating. This post takes the sting out of its provocative essence, without downplaying its value.
Flap ~ absolutely! Great word, I love it. Flap (or being in a flap) as in being agitated or panicky... I'd say it's totally a fear response.
Thank you 💗🙏
Excellent essay, Veronika. A great fear of mine is the loss of autonomy and of freedom, which is very real as I see the erosion of said autonomy by increasing restrictions being placed on us, sometimes in the name of security, but more often as a means of control.
My solution is Nature, which gives the truth in all cases. The non-human species can and do communicate such truths, but we humans have to be sensitive to the vibrations. Yes, it sounds unreal, but what we view today as "real" may not be.
Thank you Perry! Yes the erosion (or theft) of autonomy and freedom in the name of security, by first spreading fear of 'terror, plague, and pestilence'... It's a familiar strategy of control.
In my mind, fear is always real, because it's a subjective experience. This is valid and authentic, even if an 'objective threat' cannot be immediately determined.
Fear, as I perceive and understand it, is also a vibration. Therefore, tuning into our fears may be a way to become more sensitive to the truths with which the non-human species resonate ~ the truths of nature, which ultimately have to be the truths of the symbiocene.
You suggest that what we view today as "real" may not be... I fully agree!! xx
Terrific read Veronica, my thanks to add to others.
Afeard of fear ... what was the old saying, 'Fear God and shame the devil'?😊
Interested in the northern / western European mind ... merciless warfare comes into it of course and 'training', which is always an inheritance ... But seeking the 'ascent structure' ... a kind of gothic? Imagine religiously creating narrow stone 'gardens' perched near the the peak of Skellig Michael? Intrepid young American archaeologists / climbers did some precipitous work finding and mapping in the 70s, with gear.
It is easier perhaps to imagine living with care from birds eggs and squabs off the St Kildan cliffs. And I have often wondered what it must have been like to raise children 'at-home' with confidence in the Kalahari Desert. I guess something like that was true for Huber's early start ... he was at-home where love dwells and knows its way around?
Very much appreciated Philip!
Yes, those fearsome Gods... (I've got some of them lined up for an appearance next week).
Huber probably has the mountains in his blood and bones, like the Kalahari bushmen (and -children) carried the desert within them. Having lost that connection with nature (and the Gods), I'm guessing we have to learn to live within and navigate the landscape of our own experience.
Will stay tuned. Words mark the trail, as 'patterans' (latter from British Roma?).
Maybe 'we' have been and are being trained mechanistically, (to use a word) in our modern ways? It has been done many times before for whole societies - states of civilisation - or at least for critical segments under 'command'?
I am interested rather in biology / instinct /intuition / customs & inheritance ... especially child rearing and aquisition of knowledge / skill / 'gnosis' in-situ, (in 'customary' terrain,) but in a 'native sequence' ... a kind of 'ur' humanity? There is always dance and song and story and images.
Blake had an interesting take on big fella god, heaven and hell and marriage, vision and dream.
A bit late but think you / others could value Britih writer David Brazier. I have followed him for a while ... interesting background I share some of. Was struck just now by his post 'Soul Food' and his accompanying poem. Seemed apposite... https://davidbrazier.substack.com
Not too late! Symbiopædia is ongoing work in progress and very much welcomes these kind of suggestions. Thank you for introducing me/ us to David's substack.
I know! It was not at all planned like that...
Thank you so much for picking out all these facets, Shelly.
Yes, 'forward' appears in every *per-list of words in the etymological online dictionary, linking all the *per-s together. Indicating, I assume, that moving forward brings out the fear in people...
On the other hand, we can also use this connection to interpret a sense of fear as a sign that we are moving forward, no matter which candidate moves into the White House in January, and no matter whether some things appear to have gone into retrogade (women's rights, abortion rights etc.)
We are living in scary times, no doubt about that. And fear is a complex human experience.
So complex in fact that I have another wordcast on 'Fear' lined up for next week.
My deep and heartfelt gratitude for your much appreciated feedback 💗🙏 as we are collectively travelling along this dark and wild track towards an unknown future 🌲🧚🏽🌳
response to a comment, now deleted because of political undertones