Part 1: Fear as protection - a Black History Month reflection
It’s Black History Month, so let’s get real about fear and victimhood. Fear has been a constant companion for Black folks—an unavoidable response to navigating a society steeped in anti-Blackness, systemic violence, and relentless marginalization. Fear has protected us, warned us of danger and helped us survive. But it has also been weaponized against us, twisted into stereotypes that justify harm or displaced into self-doubt and mistrust within our own communities.
This duality of fear—both as protection and as harm—is not a simple binary. Fear can guide us toward our needs, but it can also be exploited by the systems around us, keeping us disconnected from our power and each other. As fear dominates the current political and social climate, many of us find ourselves caught in cycles of anxiety, frustration, and hopelessness. To truly honor Black history, I want us to take some time to confront the ways fear has shaped our survival, and ask: how can we reclaim it as a tool for healing and transformation? And what does it mean to embrace appropriate victimhood as part of the healing process?
Understanding fear: a trauma-informed perspective
Fear is both natural and essential, deeply tied to our survival. **Evolutionarily, fear is an inciting force—it pushes us away from danger and into action. It teaches us to recognize threats and unmet needs through a physiological response we cannot ignore.
However, in today’s systemic and cultural contexts, fear carries additional weight. For those navigating racism, transphobia, ableism, and other forms of oppression, fear becomes a justified response to the violence and harm embedded in our environments.
Fear has long been used as a tool to establish and maintain cultural dominance—it is a defining characteristic of white supremacy culture. It is designed to disconnect us from ourselves, each other, and the world around us, severing our deeper spiritual connections to hope, creativity, and divinity. In this disconnection, we become more vulnerable to the demands of racialized capitalism, conditioned to endure rather than to thrive.
So how do we get to the roots of our fear and make it a tool rather than a hindrance?
Functional vs. Dysfunctional Fear
To work with fear, it’s important to recognize its nuances:
Functional Fear: This is when fear speaks through your wounds, helping you notice what needs healing or protection. It guides you to grow in ways aligned with your current needs and reality.
Dysfunctional Fear: This arises when fear has been ignored, suppressed, or displaced. It appears out of sync—reacting to past harm rather than the present moment.
Both types of fear reflect your body’s intelligence, but dysfunctional fear requires deeper care. It often signals a lack of safety—internally or externally—that needs to be addressed before clarity and growth can emerge.
DYSFUNCTIONAL FEAR is a normal reaction to a DYSFUNCTIONAL CULTURE.
To be clear for those of us that have been oppressed and marginalized for generations, dysfunctional fear is a part of the survival process. Black folks have used our fear to lead, to stay steady, and to resist relentlessly. But we’ve also had to hide the parts of our fear that had no safe place to exist.
Dysfunctional fear often develops in childhood, when we lack the emotional or cognitive capacity to understand and process threats to our safety.
A Black child unable to manage fear of a parent's unpredictable behavior
A Black queer child unable to manage fear of hiding their identity for safety
A Black teenage girl unable to manage fear of an emotionally abusive partner
A Black disabled child unable to manage fear of a teacher or school system that wasn't built for them
A Black kindergarten child unable to manage fear of a school safety officer putting him in handcuffs
What begins as functional fear—a natural response to danger—can, over time and through repeated harm or systemic violence, turn into dysfunctional fear. Instead of signaling a present threat, it becomes a persistent undercurrent, shaping how we navigate the world even when the immediate danger is gone. Dysfunctional fear is often generational and unprocessed or unresolved.
While these examples speak to Black experiences, dysfunctional fear is not exclusive to Black folks. It is a human response to unsafe conditions, taking different forms depending on one’s lived experiences. For some, it may be tied to family dynamics, economic instability, gendered violence, or other forms of harm.
As adults, we have the power to cultivate a safer relationship with fear. It can become a signal to notice and respond compassionately rather than reactively.
The reframe: meeting fear where it lives
From my experience navigating and recovering from Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD)—a condition that often emerges from sustained exposure to trauma, including the compounded impacts of racialized violence, intergenerational trauma, and personal trauma—and treating those who have complex relationships with trauma, fear lives in three places:
The Body
The Mind
The Environment
For me, yoga, dance, and acupuncture have been instrumental in healing fear within my body, while CBT, EFT, ancestral healing, and therapy have played crucial roles in addressing fear in my mind. Insisting on healthy, loving, radically safe relationships has been essential in navigating fear in my environment. This journey has often required leaving relationships and homes and trusting myself to build new ones. Now, I find myself safer than ever, with fear no longer a constant companion.
Safety doesn’t mean the absence of fear—it means that now, fear can be met with love instead of survival mode.
While we have little control over the violent evolution of the culture we exist within, we do have the power to shape our immediate environments in ways that reinforce protection, safety, and belonging. By making intentional choices about where and with whom we spend our energy, we create spaces that support our healing and allow fear to serve as a signal rather than a constant state.
Moving forward: building a safer relationship with fear
To move toward healing and transformation, we must build a relationship with fear and victimhood that is rooted in compassion and curiosity. Here’s how to start:
Notice the Fear: When fear arises, pause and ask yourself, “What is this fear trying to tell me?”
Identify the Need: Is your fear pointing to a wound that needs healing, a boundary that needs protecting, or a change that needs to happen?
Respond, Don’t React: When fear feels overwhelming, try grounding practices like deep breathing, moving your body, or journaling to regulate your nervous system. Remember, regulation is not suppression.
Reclaim Your Power: Remember that acknowledging harm doesn’t mean surrendering agency. Use fear as a guide to meet your needs and take intentional action.
Turn Towards Community: Find support in ways that resonate with you while honoring the capacity of those you love. Healing does not happen in isolation—humans are deeply social creatures, and we are not designed to find safety and recovery alone. But support can be complicated. Many of us have been taught to either overextend ourselves or to shrink for fear of being a burden. Learning to accept care without guilt and to build reciprocal, nourishing connections takes time. Trust that you are worthy of support, and seek spaces where love, respect, and capacity are in balance.
Fear and victimhood are not easy companions, but they are powerful ones. By reframing our relationship with them, we create space for growth, healing, and transformation—not just for ourselves but for the systems we’re working to change.
Fear can be messy, and victimhood can be uncomfortable. But both are deeply human.
With you in The Deep End,
V Woods
Diving Deeper: The Receipts
National Center for PTSD - Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Racial Trauma
Dr. Joy DeGruy - Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome
Audre Lorde - Sister Outsider
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