016: The Terror You Feel Is Just Truth Meeting Programming

🎙️ Episode 016: The Terror You Feel Is Just Truth Meeting Programming

 What Is Fear, Actually? It’s Neurological Friction Between Old and New

Here’s the truth no one ever told you: fear isn’t mystical. It isn’t some divine warning system trying to save you. Fear is mechanical. It’s math.

Your brain is a goal-seeking machine - it doesn’t give a damn about your future. It only cares about survival. It runs old commands on autopilot, like a computer looping the same broken code. And when you introduce a new command - when you decide to pitch bigger, lead louder, or finally step into the woman you know you’re meant to be - your system doesn’t throw you a party. It throws alarms.

That friction? That knot in your chest? That pounding in your ribcage? That’s not danger. That’s not intuition. That’s outdated programming colliding with new truth.

And I know what happens in that moment because I’ve felt it.

• You’re about to pitch yourself at a level you’ve never dared before. Your stomach flips. Suddenly, you’re spiraling. Who do I think I am? They’ll see right through me. I’m not polished enough, smart enough, strategic enough. Your body screams: stay small, stay safe, stay invisible.
  
  

• Or you’re standing on the edge of the biggest deal of your career. The conference room is heavy, every set of eyes is on you, and inside, you hear: if you blow this, you’re finished. One wrong word and they’ll know you don’t belong here.
  
  

Let’s be clear. Those voices are not truth. They’re echoes. They’re programming installed decades ago when someone told you success meant perfection, when approval felt like survival, when the safest way to exist was to shrink.

But here’s the kicker: you’ve mistaken the faulty alarm system for wisdom. You’ve mistaken programming for intuition.

Fear is electricity caught between two circuits: the current self and the emerging self.

And that surge in your chest? That’s not a red light. That’s not “don’t go.” That’s your nervous system trying to rewire under pressure.

Fear is not the enemy. It’s the evidence. The evidence that you’ve stepped beyond the loop, beyond the mask, beyond the script you’ve been performing.

But here’s the part you don’t admit at 3AM when you’re staring at the ceiling:

• You wonder if the fear means you’re not cut out for this.
  
  

• You wonder if you’ll ever feel solid enough, safe enough, certain enough to step without shaking.
  
  

• You wonder if everyone else has some secret formula you missed, because you’re doing all the things, chasing all the strategies, and still lying awake thinking, what if I’m just not enough?

Let me cut through that lie: fear doesn’t mean you’re not enough. Fear means you’re crossing into territory where your old self can’t survive.

So stop romanticizing fear as a stop sign. Stop spiritualizing it as some “gut feeling” telling you to stay safe.

Fear is friction. Fear is circuitry. Fear is truth colliding with programming.

And when that electricity surges through your system, you’ve got two choices:

• Collapse back into who you’ve been, recycling the same results, the same doubts, the same smallness.
  
  

• Or recognize that the surge isn’t danger. It’s your expansion trying to fire.
  
  

That’s the real diagnosis of fear. Not intuition. Not weakness. Expansion…breaking through.

The Inner War of Desire vs. Programming

Here’s the battlefield you wake up on every single day: on one side, desire - the truth of who you’re becoming, the vision of more, the knowing that you were made for impact, for influence, for wealth that doesn’t run out.

On the other, programming - the subconscious loops built on years of needing to be good enough, safe enough, liked enough.

And every decision you make? Every hesitation? Every late-night spiral? It’s this war: desire vs. programming.

For you, desire whispers, charge $20K for that offer - you know you can deliver. Programming hisses: “who do you think you are? They’ll think you’re greedy, they’ll ghost you, you’ll burn your reputation.”

Desire says, hire the team, scale the vision, step into CEO mode. Programming panics: “...you’ll lose control, you’ll lose money, you’ll expose yourself as someone who doesn’t have it all together.”

So you do what? You shrink. You stall. You busy yourself with small moves that keep you feeling productive but powerless.

For you, desire pushes, go after the multi-million-dollar deal, put your name on the board, take the damn risk. Programming recoils: if you blow this, you’re done. You’ll embarrass yourself in front of your peers, your boss will write you off, you’ll never recover.

Desire says, step into the promotion, command the room, speak with authority. Programming spits back, don’t you dare outshine. Don’t make them uncomfortable. Don’t be too much.

And so you play smaller than you are. You aim for the target you know you’ll hit instead of the one that scares you. You keep proving yourself over and over because programming tells you that one miss erases all your wins.

And here’s what you don’t tell anyone:

• You feel like you’re constantly at war with yourself.
  
  

• You have the vision, the fire, the ideas - and then the programming pulls the emergency brake.
  
  

• You’re exhausted from being pulled in two directions: wanting to rise, terrified to fall.
  
  

• You’re sick of the masks you wear to look confident while inside you’re screaming, what if they finally realize I don’t have it all together?
  
  

You’re tired of wondering: How much more do I have to prove before I finally feel enough?

So, let me be blunt: this war doesn’t end by “balancing” desire and programming. It ends when one of them dies.

Because programming doesn’t compromise. It doesn’t take the day off. It’s relentless. It’s coded to protect you - even if protecting you means suffocating you.

And desire? Desire won’t compromise either. It will keep gnawing at you, haunting you, waking you up at 3AM with that restless ache that whispers, you’re made for more.

That ache isn’t going away. You can bury it under work, under Netflix, under “I’ll get to it when the time is right.” But it’s not going to die quietly.

This is why you feel stuck in cycles. Because every time desire collides with programming, you confuse the clash for failure. You tell yourself, If I were really cut out for this, it wouldn’t feel this hard. I wouldn’t be this scared. I wouldn’t second-guess myself so much.

No. The clash doesn’t mean you’re broken. The clash means you’re alive. It means your future is pulling on you so hard that your old identity is fighting to survive.

This is the battlefield of high performers. Not strategy. Not skill. Identity.

So here’s the brutal truth: you’re not afraid of failure. You’re afraid of winning in a way your current identity cannot hold. You’re not afraid of being rejected. You’re afraid of being seen without the mask. You’re not afraid of doing more - you’re afraid of what happens when doing more isn’t enough to hide the fact that you still don’t feel enough.

That’s the war: desire vs. programming. Truth vs. survival. The woman you’re becoming vs. the woman you’ve been.

And here’s the choice every time: keep obeying programming, or finally let desire lead.

How to Distinguish Truth from Trauma

Here’s the trap you’ve been living in: you think every surge of fear, every wave of anxiety, every tight chest means danger. You’ve been taught to label all discomfort as trauma.

That misdiagnosis? It’s what’s keeping you stuck in loops.

Because if you can’t tell the difference between trauma and truth, you’ll retreat every time you’re standing at the edge of your next breakthrough.

Think about the last time you pulled back:

• You mapped out a bold launch, raised your prices, or thought about stepping into visibility in a way you never had before. And then? The chest pain, the spiraling thoughts, the panic. You told yourself, maybe this isn’t aligned, maybe the timing is wrong. So you shrank it back down to “safe.”
  
  

• You had the shot at a career-defining deal. But before you even got into the room, you were already sweating through your shirt, heart pounding, telling yourself, if my body feels like this, it must be a sign I’m not ready. So you softened your pitch. You didn’t go all in.
  
  

And in both cases, you told yourself, better safe than sorry. But the truth? You weren’t “safe.” You were stuck.

Let’s be crystal clear:

• Trauma disconnects you. It shuts you down. You go numb, checked out, frozen. You can’t think straight, can’t move, can’t feel possibility. Trauma is collapse.
  
  

• Truth, even when it terrifies you, does the opposite. It lights you up. It makes your pulse race, your skin buzz, your breath shallow. It feels like fire in your chest. It’s intensity, not emptiness. Truth is charge.
  
  

So stop confusing aliveness with danger. Stop treating electricity as if it’s a warning. That current ripping through you isn’t trauma - it’s your nervous system short-circuiting as your old identity tries to hold on while your future self kicks the door down.

This is why you’re exhausted. This is why you lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering:

• Why do I always retreat when I say I want more?
  
  

• Why does fear always win?
  
  

• What if I’m just not built for the level I dream about?
  
  

You’ve been hypnotized into thinking that fear means stop. That intensity means danger. That the surge in your chest is proof you’re not ready.

It’s the biggest lie keeping high performers stuck in cycles of almost - but never all the way.

Listen carefully: the question is not, am I scared? The question is, what kind of fear is this?

• Does it collapse you? That’s trauma.
  
  

• Does it charge you? That’s truth.

Truth doesn’t feel calm when you’re standing at the edge of expansion. Truth feels electric. Truth feels like cliff-diving. Truth feels like every cell in your body is screaming, move.

And if you’ve been telling yourself that discomfort means “don’t,” you’ve been running from the very frequency that was trying to pull you into your next level.

So let’s end the confusion:

You’re not stuck because you don’t know what to do. You’re stuck because you keep labeling desire as danger. You’ve made truth the enemy and trauma the excuse.

And as long as you keep mislabeling the surge in your chest as a stop sign, you’ll never cross the line into the identity you’ve been asking for.

This is the line in the sand: collapse belongs to trauma. Charge belongs to truth.

And your next level? It’s sitting inside the charge you’ve been running from.

The Identity Death Required to Rise

Here’s the brutal truth: you don’t get to keep her. The woman who got you here cannot take you where you’re going.

That version of you - the one who hustled, who outworked everyone, who bent herself in half to be impressive enough, acceptable enough, good enough - she doesn’t cross the next threshold with you. She dies here.

And that’s why it feels like terror. Because death is never quiet.

The identity that made you six figures was the hustler. The woman who wore burnout like a badge. The woman who took every client, answered every DM, built her entire self-worth on proving she could do it alone.

She worked. She clawed. She made money, but she never felt wealthy. And when you imagine seven figures, eight figures, you imagine that same woman just working harder. But that’s a lie. That woman collapses at seven figures. She can’t hold it. She can’t scale it. She doesn’t survive it.

She dies so the CEO can be born.

The identity that made you the star performer was the pleaser. The one who smiled through exhaustion, the one who kept her head down and hit quota, the one who made her boss proud, her team comfortable, her numbers predictable.

She got the praise. She got the awards. She hit her numbers. But she’s also the reason you lie awake wondering, what if this is the highest I’ll ever go? Because at the level you want - the promotion, the boardroom, the million-dollar contracts - that pleaser doesn’t make it.

She dies so the leader can be born.

And here’s what you don’t tell anyone: you’re terrified of letting her die. Because she’s protected you. She’s kept you safe. She’s the reason you made it this far.

But she’s also the reason you feel like a fraud when you succeed. She’s the reason you’re performing, not leading. She’s the reason you keep building success that feels like sand slipping through your hands.

In the middle of the night, you don’t admit this out loud - but you know: If I stop being her, who am I? And that’s the real terror. Not the next level. Not the money. Not the visibility. The real terror is the death of the self you’ve been hiding behind.

You can’t skip the funeral. Every transformation is a death.
The hustler dies.
The pleaser dies.
The perfectionist dies.
The chameleon dies.

And most women refuse to bury her. They drag her corpse into the next room. They keep her alive with just enough oxygen to stay familiar, just enough to say, see, I haven’t really changed.

That’s why they plateau. That’s why they sabotage. That’s why their lives look impressive on Instagram but hollow in real life.

Because they’ve refused to die.

Listen, death is violent. It feels like panic because your nervous system is mourning a self it’s identified with for decades. But if you’re waiting for the process to feel comfortable, you’ll wait your whole life.

The only way out is through. The only way to rise is to burn. The only way to live as your future self is to bury the one who’s chained to your past.

And here’s the part that’s going to sting: if you don’t choose the funeral, life will deliver it for you.
The collapse.
The burnout.
The failed launch.
The missed promotion.
The breakdown that forces you to see what you’ve been refusing to bury.

So you can keep pretending you’re both women at once. Or you can make the choice most people won’t: to kill the mask before it kills you.

That’s the price of rising. Every new level demands a death. And the question you have to answer is: are you willing to bury the woman who kept you safe… so you can become the one who makes you sovereign?

Embodied Rituals for Moving Through Resistance

Here’s the truth: you don’t out-think fear. You don’t out-strategize terror. You don’t Google your way past resistance.

You embody your way through it. You burn it through your nervous system until it becomes fuel instead of friction.

Because here’s what you’ve been doing instead:

• You’ve been trying to “mindset” your way out of fear. Affirmations on the mirror, podcasts in your earbuds, a new strategy to keep you busy. But the second the contract lands in your inbox or the wire transfer number has more zeros than you’ve ever seen, your stomach knots and your breath turns shallow. And you think, if I were really ready, I wouldn’t feel like this.
  
  

• You’ve been trying to “power pose” your way into the boardroom. Rehearsing every word, over-preparing every angle, telling yourself that if you can just look confident enough, the fear will go away. But when the meeting starts, your heart still slams against your ribs, you’re sweating through your shirt, and you’re praying no one notices. And you think, if I were really cut out for this, I’d feel calm by now.
  
  

Let me cut you open with the truth: readiness is not calm. Readiness is charge.

That shaking? That’s not weakness - it’s your system recalibrating. That racing pulse? That’s not danger, it’s expansion firing in your veins. That knot in your gut That’s not misalignment, it’s your old identity being ripped out by the roots.

You’ve been told to interpret these sensations as stop signs. They are not. They are weapons.

Fear is your body showing you where the upgrade is trying to install. Terror is the sign you’ve hit the edge of the mask and the beginning of your real power.

So when resistance surges, here’s what’s required:

• Presence as Command: Instead of running from the surge, stand in it. Feel your chest pound, your breath catch, your body shake, and decide, this is desire dressed as terror. This is proof I’m in the right place.
  
  

• Movement as Rebellion: Move the charge through you. Scream. Shake. Run. Hit the heavy bag. Cry until your body releases. Tell your nervous system, this is not collapse, it’s birth.
  
  

• Future Self Lock-In: Close your eyes and see her. The entrepreneur who already signed the $100K client. The sales professional who already closed the $10M deal. She’s not afraid. She’s certain. Anchor her voice, her posture, her energy right now. Not tomorrow. Not “someday.” Now.
  
  

These aren’t practices for comfort. They’re rituals of war. They’re how you prove to your body that fear doesn’t own you anymore.

Because let’s be honest, you’ve been negotiating with resistance. You’ve been saying: when I feel less anxious, then I’ll step. When I feel safe, then I’ll launch. When I feel calm, then I’ll ask for the money, go for the deal, claim the room.

That’s why you’re still awake in the middle of the night wondering, why does it never get easier? Because you’re waiting for fear to disappear instead of learning to carry it.

The women who rise? They don’t wait for the body to feel safe. They decide that the body shaking is the sign to move.

So here’s the reframe that will end the delay pattern forever:

Fear is not an enemy. Fear is not a weakness. Fear is not proof you’re unworthy.

Fear is the evidence. Fear is the portal. Fear is the ritual.

And every time you choose to stand in it, move through it, lock into the future self on the other side of it - you are rewiring your identity at the cellular level.

That’s how you collapse the gap between who you’ve been and who you’re becoming.

That’s how you stop performing and start commanding.

That fear? It’s not a sign to stop, it’s a sign to shift. The panic, the doubt, the chaos - that’s not a warning, it’s proof you’re breaking through programming. But if you want to cross that barrier without retreating, you need the right container. That’s what The Sabotage Shift Challenge™ gives you. Three days to dismantle the sabotage, rewire your identity, and rise without looking back. Step in - and learn to burn through fear not by force, but by frequency.

https://sabotageshiftchallenge.com/register