Image Source: Margaret Lazzari

Psychological energy is alive and carries a way of being — inhaling and exhaling, expanding and contracting, vibrating and emitting a frequency. It exists at a point of origin — possessing a shape and form before the tectonic plates of life experience shape its edges and contours.

Expansionary in its nature, psychological energy behaves with a strong sense of agency — determined to express itself through the human being that carries its action potential. It does not require permission to express itself — and is therefore, ever-present and inevitable. But for the human being to detect its presence, decode its signal, and harness its action potential, requires parsing noise, and listening to the cadence of its rhythm.

The return on invested time and effort allocated to deciding where this energy should be focused and why is captured only in the long-run. Because free from unnecessary constraints that impose expectation upon its being — psychological energy, when correctly channeled through the conduits of society and culture, discovers its reason for being, grounded in purpose and meaning.

Psychological energy behaves like bodies of water — calm, rough, and chaotic. Small and large. Deep and shallow. Cold and warm. These interrelated categories, though not entirely exhaustive, metaphorically encapsulate the suite of human wavelength and frequencies.

As this energy expands its territory, it encounters all types of signage, obstacles, and terrain. The warning signs which signal rocky terrain is ahead, are our pathways of interest. It is at these junctures, when the human being chooses between pathways, the timeline of a life story is split — and a version of reality is chosen and brought into being. In this classic story of opposing forces — where the character structures of fear and optimism, protect and connect, engage in deliberation and arrive at consensus — a competition ensues center stage for the role of protagonist.

This inner tug of war creates psychological tension. For a brief moment in time, a stalemate ensues. In the process of deliberation, where a dialogue unfolds between the trinity of feeling, thought, and value — and inner consensus is reached about which pathway to travel and why — clusters of psychological energy are given space to gather form. Then, when feeling, thought, and value come into alignment — a course is set for a defined longitude and latitude. The question then becomes — which direction does the human being travel, and why?

This is a story about the nature of forces that lead south — the phenomenology, experience, and character structure of fear and regret. These psychological characters must be understood. Because if fear claims victory, wins the tug-of war, overrules our inner logic, and, through the forceful will of history, suppresses expression of positively charged ions — is when we forgo the being, in human-being.

The Phenomenology of Fear and Regret

“When we elect the fearful path, we regress, we infantilize, we oversimplify, and we cut ourselves off from development and enlargement.”

“How can one choose clearly, prudently, when the lens through which one sees the world is itself provisional and distorting?”

- James Hollis | Creating a Life: Finding Your Individual Path

Fear exists in a state of gathering — a meeting between the past, present, and future. In its model of governance, the less welcoming version of the past plays the role of inner-world leader — dictating the direction of the present and future. Holding the power of unelected office, the voice of this powerful minority can hold majority voting power on all decisions involving where the human being travels and why.

A dictator in its way of being, fear suppresses the free speech of positive ions lying dormant, but waiting to be freed from the constraints of history. In this way, potent negative ions distort views of self and world — biasing perspective towards pessimism, and channeling information through the filters of past experience. In its skewed version of reality, only consequences are seen and understood. But innate within human beings are competing ions that introduce positive cognitive friction, which strive to balance the scales and broaden its view — allowing new light, and thus, new information to pass through.

But fear, which can be deeply institutionalized into our inner culture, carries with it, hardcoded stories about self, others, and world that can be difficult to rewrite, change, and amend. New light may be allowed to pass through. But given the entrenched nature of fear, when light shines upon it, its dense surface area has the effect of refracting — and rejecting attempts of assimilation and integration.

New experiences are required to create tectonic shifts in the psychology of the human being — creating space between the cracks, and allowing new data points to be accepted and internalized into value system.

In this way, we learn something about structural integrity of fear — defensive in its nature — the strength of its will reinforced through a desire to control and maintain the status quo. It is naturally motivated by survival and resistant to change.

Fear’s survival is enabled by its sensitivity. Its emotionally charged — easily triggered by reminders of the past. These reminders bring with them, ways of feeling and thinking that transcend time. From the past to the present they traverse, carrying stories backdropped by the forceful inertia of negative emotion — creating a narrow view in how the story is predicted to progress and end.

A generalist in its thinking, fear, though originating from a specific time and place — carries its logic across all pathways it travels upon. In this way, fear paints a broad brush — and doesn’t discriminate based on who or what. Instead, jumps to conclusions about consequences without fully understanding the scope and magnitude of opportunities. Therefore, fear is logically illogical — coming across as reasonable — but bending facts to support its mandate to defend and protect.

Fear and regret are close siblings. Tied together through shared experience. But fear, the sibling with a deeper, more entrenched lived history, is the first-born — brought into being through life experience that damages the soul. When fear is brought into being, it carries a lifespan — and is endowed with a deep memory bank of images that paint pictures of its anchors and origins.

Though protective and well-meaning in its intent — fear breeds catastrophy on one’s potentiality and way of being. The consequences of a life dominated by fear has adverse effects felt and experienced only later on — when enough milage has been accumualted along life’s journey — and the cumulative price of obeying its orders has been paid through deficits in experiences, memories, and relationships. We become forever indebted to these losses — for paying them back, and filling the felt void of these losses, can what ultimately drive us forward. The energy is transformed — and reincarnated into something more.

As it relentlessly expands its territory, fear plants seeds that breed avoidance and inaction. As we progress along life’s journey and reflect back on places we’ve traveled, its often the things we didn’t do that cultivate the inner topography where all that can be traversed is the limitless terrain of past experiences that could’ve or should’ve been. This is regret.

If not spoken to, addressed, and collaborated with, fear can become our silent companion indefinitely

— quitely dictating the direction of our journey — where avoidance of people and place — and regret for what could’ve been categorize our outer and inner topography. If we wave the white flag and surrender our being to these forces, ultimately, our drive for connection, growth, and everything that makes us human becomes stunted and oppressed. We lose connection with ourselves and others.

But living in harmony with fear is easier said than done. This feeling state and its accompanying phenomenology can have overwhelming breadth and depth — pervasive in its presence, controlling in its magnitude, and debilitating to one’s sense of self and way of being. The strength of its current provides the opportunity for its energy to be captured and transformed — transcending its original shape and form, and reincarnated into something more. This transformation is fueled by the overwhelming phenomenology of fear itself — a powerful force that signals something within needs to change. In this way, fear possesses a purpose — carrying qualitative data about where to travel next and why.

This is a story about the phenomenology of fear and regret — how these lived experiences are experienced, inside the minds of human beings. Fear and regret share core threads and commonalities — coming from the same branch of feeling states — originating from the larger family tree of psychological energy. They speak in a unique dialect — and carry information about necessary change and transformations.

We can find that fear can ultimately fulfill us. Because the inevitability of this feeling state, when combined with the self-confidence to forge forward, can collide in us to form experiences that shape value system and character structure.

“The interlocking powers of fate and hubris

collide in a person to form character.”

-James Hollis

About The Author

Alex is a former Freelance Content Writer for the Visual Capitalist – one of the world’s fastest growing publishers with a global audience of ~1,000,000+. Their work has been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, CNET, Business Insider, and many more. He currently writes for the lol’s in his creative and professional blog, Psyche, by Alex Kwok – a portfolio of writing projects in psychology creative writing and investment research.

His writing also extends into his early business career – with 3+ years of diverse experience across analyst, market research, and business development-focused roles. Across these roles, which cover a diverse range of industry contexts across robotics, blockchain, agriculture, and financial services industries, he has accumulated 2+ years of experience writing technical analysis reports to support decision-making of senior management teams, including proposals, evaluation and recommendation reports, and industry studies.

He is an alumni from a top 10 Canadian business school, SFU’s Beedie School of Business – with a strong intellectual interest in the intersection between business strategy, finance, psychology, statistics, and mathematics.

He is passionate about reading and writing.

Reference

Lazzari, M. (2021–2022). Breathing Space paintings. Retrieved April 15, 2025, from

Hollis, J. (2000). Creating a life: Finding Your Individual Path. Toronto, Canada: Inner City Books.