MYTH: If you feel afraid, you're a coward.

MYTH BUST: If you don't feel afraid you might not have the full picture!

Sometimes feeling afraid is the right and proper response to a dangerous situation - but that doesn't make anyone a coward. Cowardice could be remaining afraid and not doing anything to remedy the situation, but it is more complex than that. Let's not be so quick to judge.

We need to be mindful that there may be a trauma response in there somewhere. There are different responses to danger. Most people are aware of fight and flight - but there is also freeze and fawn.

Some people just freeze. Their brain shuts down and they dissociate. Others roll over and appease an attacker. This is not cowardice - this is a learned behaviour to a past danger which that person didn't know how to survive. ‍It was an act of love and courage at a time when there was no other perceived way out.

So, if you are inspired to do something, if you are invited to be something greater than you have believed, but you are afraid - that doesn't make you a coward. It doesn't mean anything about you other than you have a normal human response to the unknown.

However, if it impacts you and you are unable to act because you are crippled by your fear, then that simply means you need to get some help to heal that very traumatised part of you. That, my friends, is the greatest act of courage we can see!

Support mental health for everyone. Mental health needs to be normalised as much as physical health, so when you, or someone you know, are crippled by fear, remember to have kindness and compassion because they are running on an outdated mental programme which needs an update. Getting support for that update is an act of pure self-love.