How to Do the Scary Thing: Overcoming Fear & Discovering Hidden Potential
What if the only thing standing between you and a version of yourself you've never met is one scary thing? Not a big dramatic leap — just one thing that makes your stomach drop a little. One room you almost didn't walk into. One yes you almost didn't say.
Most of us never find out what we're actually capable of. Not because we lack talent, and not because the opportunity never came. Because when the scary thing showed up, we said no — or we stood at the door and turned around. In the episode above, I tell the story of the year that changed that for me. Here's the short version, plus the research and the tools behind it.
The Girl Who Stopped Talking
It started with a lisp. Every time I opened my mouth, something came out wrong, and other kids let me know it — loudly, repeatedly. So I learned what children learn fastest: open mouth, get hurt. The solution was obvious. Don't open your mouth.
By the time I corrected the lisp through years of speech therapy, the silence had become its own thing — a strategy, a version of me that had decided invisible was the safest way to exist. Layer on a childhood of constant moving, never staying anywhere long enough to be truly known, and a father whose presence made being seen feel dangerous in a different way entirely. By 16, living in Alaska and completely off the rails, my mother made the decision that terrified her most: she sent me to live with my father in a small Kansas town.
Mrs. Reeves
New school. Again. Except this time, someone paid attention in a way no teacher ever had the chance to before — because we'd never stayed anywhere long enough. Mrs. Reeves noticed my writing, not in a passing way, but in a this-is-something way. She wanted me to take her public speaking class.
My answer was absolutely not. I took it anyway, mostly because I was more interested in Mrs. Reeves than in the alternative. What she gave me instead was a progression I didn't know I needed. First, just the two of us in her classroom, working a memorized piece — The Tell-Tale Heart — over and over, adjusting mid-delivery. Then four judges in a competition room. Then my own class of new peers. Then the gymnasium, the whole town, the spring event.
I stood up there and delivered it to everyone. Somewhere in the middle, I looked into the stands — my brother, my dad, both of them captivated. Afterward, my brother, whose approval meant everything to me, said: "Wow. I had no idea you could do that." Really, Universe? This was in here the whole time and nobody sent a memo?
A few months later, I went in to audition for the school musical for a speaking role. They asked me to sing instead. I hadn't prepared a single note. I sang anyway. Afterward, someone from the school's music group asked how nobody had ever known I could sing. I didn't know either — until I stayed in the room.
The Research: Why the Scary Thing Feels Impossible
Psychologists who study shame describe it as developing from the human need for approval — when a child experiences repeated disapproval, shame becomes the response, and it makes you smaller, quieter, less visible, because visible is where the pain lives.
Martin Seligman's research on learned helplessness explains the rest. When a child grows up in an environment they can't control, they learn at a biological level that their actions don't matter — that there's no point in trying. The American Academy of Pediatrics has found that early adversity leaves a literal signature on developing brain architecture, not just a metaphorical one. None of this is weakness. It's a nervous system doing exactly what it was trained to do.
But here's the part that changes everything: Seligman's research also shows learned helplessness is reversible — not through motivation, but through mastery experiences. Moments where you take an action, stay in the room, and survive the scary thing. He called this immunization: a progression of small mastery experiences that build a genuine buffer against helplessness, laying new neural pathways alongside the old ones. Psychology Today describes this capacity — neuroplasticity — as the brain's ability to keep growing and building new networks throughout an entire lifespan, not just in childhood.
That's exactly what Mrs. Reeves built without ever naming it that way: a progression, each step slightly more terrifying than the last, each one adding evidence to a case my brain was quietly building.
Five Ways to Do the Scary Thing
The wiring is the same for everyone, even if the story looks different. Here's the progression.
Identify your scary thing. Not the huge, dramatic version — the specific thing that makes your stomach drop a little. Write it down. A scary thing with a name is smaller than one without.
Find your Mrs. Reeves. Someone who sees you clearly and gives honest, specific feedback — a mentor, a friend who tells the truth kindly, even a book or community. The feedback loop matters more than people expect.
Build your progression. You don't go from invisible to a gymnasium in one step. Find the version of your scary thing that's just scary enough to be a stretch, survivable enough to actually attempt. Do that first.
Say yes when everything in you says no. Not to everything — to the specific flutter of excitement followed by resistance. That flutter is information. The resistance is your nervous system doing its job. Say yes anyway.
Be someone's Mrs. Reeves. Once you've lived this, you know exactly what those conditions feel like. Look for who in your life is circling their own scary thing, and help build the safety that lets them say yes.
If the Resistance Runs Deeper Than Nerves
For some people, the resistance isn't just nerves — it's something older, and the idea of being seen or risking failure feels genuinely unbearable, not just uncomfortable. If that's you, what you're carrying isn't weakness. It's the logical result of a nervous system that learned to protect you the only way it knew how, and it often needs more than a progression of small steps to untangle. A therapist or counselor trained to work with that wiring isn't a failure to do this yourself — reaching out for that support is exactly the kind of scary thing this whole episode is about.
You Have No Idea What's In You
None of us do, really — because we only ever discover what we're capable of by doing the thing that terrifies us. The version of you that can command a room, write the book, have the conversation, or make the change isn't waiting to be discovered. It's waiting for you to create the conditions. You don't need a Mrs. Reeves to start. You just need one small step. One scary thing. One yes. And then another.
References
Seligman, M. E. P., & Maier, S. F. (1967). Failure to escape traumatic shock. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74(1), 1-9.
Seligman, M. E. P. (1990). Learned Optimism. Knopf.
American Academy of Pediatrics (2012). The Lifelong Effects of Early Childhood Adversity and Toxic Stress. Pediatrics, 129(1).
EBSCO Research Starters — Shame (Social Emotion).
Psychology Today — Neuroplasticity.
Peale, N. V. (1952). The Power of Positive Thinking. Prentice Hall. (Referenced from Episode 2.)
