Waiting for the Next Bad Thing

when fear from the past steals the peace from your present

I know I’ve been quieter than usual lately, and believe me, I’ve missed sharing with y’all. This season of my life has been a weird one, for sure. For a while, I just felt this urge to explode with my truth and share everything I was experiencing. My joy, my new love, my healing journey—all of it—was dying to get out with exclamation points. But recently, I felt something change inside me. I desire to make everything smaller. To keep moments more intimate, and hold some things for myself.

I imagine it’s self-protective in a way.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been deep in the beauty of life, just learning to be present and soak it all in. After an unexpected divorce and a year of healing, everything just feels shiny and new. Laughter has stepped in where grief once lived, and life feels damn near effervescent.

Like this week, when my best friends flew into town and we lit candles and danced around my living room, wearing flower crowns on our heads and blanket-capes on our shoulders, laughing until we about peed our britches. Or last night, when I watched my kids’ eyes light up over a homemade blackberry cobbler. We sat down and I actually had time to enjoy them—not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. Having energy for myself that I can share with my children is an entirely new parenting experience. All these moments are filling holes in my heart and life that I didn’t even know existed.

This is a season where joy has taken center stage, and I’ve leaned into it fully. (Leaning away from the internet for a while has brought me a lot of calm, too.)

I’m trying to find the right balance.

But lately, underneath all that growth—underneath the laughter, the love, and the beauty—I’ve started to feel something else show up: a fear I didn’t expect. It crept in slowly, this unsettled feeling, like a shadow I couldn’t quite shake. Smack dab in the middle of my newfound bliss, I could feel the storm clouds gathering.

I just knew the bottom was about to drop out. Something was wrong—or it would be soon. I could feel this impending doom in my bones, with no evidence to support its existence.

Life was beautiful, literally nothing had changed.

What in the hell was wrong with me?

After everything I’ve been through, after all the healing and work I’d done to get here—shouldn’t I be able to embrace this peace without any hesitation?

Turns out, the answer was nope.

What I’ve realized—and this is something no one really prepares you for—is that even in the most beautiful phases of life, your trauma can still peek through. And that’s where I found myself recently—standing in the middle of this season of joy, unexpectedly sucker-punched by anxiety.

It all came to a head in the middle of what should have been a simple moment. I’d been invited to a party, and I wanted my boyfriend to be my date. But for some reason, I was struggling to ask him. I spent three minutes prefacing the question with a string of “what ifs” and “I totally understand if you don’t want to’s,” building it up like some huge thing he was most certainly going to reject. And the craziest part was, I had no idea why I was doing this—he had never given me a reason to feel that way.

After my nervous rambling, he lovingly stopped me and asked, “What in the world are you so worried about? Please don’t put thoughts in my head that aren’t mine.”

I felt embarrassed for a moment, like I had been exposed—this raw, unhealed version of myself creeping back in. And then a wave of emotion hit me out of nowhere, and I found myself fighting off tears. Not from sadness, but from relief. Because none of this was ever about him. It wasn’t about anyone but me and the pain that I thought had been long since buried. I was reacting to old wounds, anticipating rejection from a place of trauma, not from my current reality.

But he had seen right through the layers of my anxiety, and instead of pushing me away, he lovingly reminded me that I didn’t have to carry this baggage with him.

I could set it all down and keep on walking.

And that’s what I wanted, too.

It was a turning point for me, this perspective shift, but I knew I needed help to process it. So I got in with my therapist, who introduced me to a term I’d never really thought about before: hypervigilance.

It’s when your body and mind remain in a state of heightened alertness, even when the danger is gone. It’s a coping mechanism leftover from trauma, one that makes it hard to relax, to trust, to believe that peace can last.

That was it.

That’s what I had been feeling—a sense of doom creeping into my moments of happiness. It was both a revelation and a heartbreak. Here I was, thinking I’d reached this place of peace, only to realize I was still in survival mode. My body had become so used to bracing for impact that it didn’t know how to relax or trust, even in the safest spaces.

It made me realize just how deeply trauma imprints itself—and how much work I still had left to do. I couldn’t let my past steal my happy future, so I asked my therapist how I could heal this.

She gave me some strategies which have helped me immensely, and I wanted to share them with you… you know, just in case you’re also familiar with that strange, scary fear that comes with a new life of safety.

---

1. Recognize What’s Happening

The first step is acknowledging that this fear isn’t about your current circumstances. It’s old trauma rearing its head, trying to protect you from imagined threats.

For me, this looks like noticing when my body is tensing up in moments that shouldn’t call for it. Asking my boyfriend to a party, for example—if my mind starts to race or my chest feels tight, I tell myself, “This isn’t your past, and he isn’t that person. This is now, this is him, and we’re safe.”

---

2. Ground Yourself in the Present

When anxiety creeps in, it’s easy to get swept up in worst-case scenarios. I’ve found that grounding exercises—like deep breathing, going for a hike, or simply being mindful of the moment—help bring me back to where I am now instead of experiencing the trauma of my past. Sometimes it’s as simple as closing my eyes and smelling my blueberry coffee, soaking in the kids’ laughter in the next room, or even feeling the grass under my feet. These small moments anchor my soul to the present, where yesterday’s troubles don’t exist.

---

3. Challenge the Fear

Anxiety thrives on uncertainty. When those “what ifs” start swirling around in my mind, I try to challenge them. I ask myself: What evidence do I have that something bad is about to happen? Most of the time, the answer is none. This helps me see that the fear is just a leftover habit from a time when I had to be on guard.

---

4. Lean on Your Support System

Talking through these feelings with people I trust—whether it’s my boyfriend, my best friend, or a therapist—has been so helpful. Sharing your fears takes away some of their power. I’ve learned to lean on people I trust—especially my partner. After that conversation about the party, I realized how important it was to let him in and trust in the love that we share. Sure, it’s vulnerable and scary to let yourself be seen. But I promise, your healing is worth it.

---

5. Give Yourself Permission to Feel

I used to think that healing meant not feeling anxious or scared anymore. But I’ve learned that healing is about allowing myself to feel those emotions without letting them define me or change my behavior. It’s okay to be scared sometimes. It’s okay to have doubts and fears. It doesn’t mean you’ve regressed or that you’re irreversibly broken—it simply means that you’re human.

If you’re in a season where joy and fear are living side by side, take heart, my friend. You aren’t alone. Healing isn’t linear, and sometimes our old wounds show up even in the middle of our best moments.

---

While I’m not entirely healed, and I know that I’ll continue to face these struggles and thoughts, I am learning that I have these tools I can turn to, to challenge the lies in my head. Healing is a practice, and it’s something I’ll have to keep working on, day by day, as I keep moving forward.

If you find yourself bracing for something that might never come, take a breath and remember: You deserve this.

You really, really do.

You deserve every bit of the healing and joy that you’ve had to excavate from years of trauma. And you’ve worked too hard to let yesterday’s fears steal from your presence and peace.