Do you realize that just about every decision you make is somehow related back to a subconscious fear? Now, fear is not always a bad thing. After all, if we weren’t afraid of very dangerous situations, we probably wouldn’t be here today. Fear has kept our species alive. It’s hard-wired into our biology as a survival mechanism.

Welcome to Quantum Waves of Wellness. I’m your host, Dr. Paula Apro—Doctor of Natural Medicine, holistic health mentor, and your guide to unlocking the healing power within. Today, I want to explore how unconscious fear quietly controls your life path—and how, without realizing it, it can slowly guide you off course.

When most people think about fear, they think about very obvious and tangible things like fear of heights, flying, or public speaking. But the most powerful fears are often the ones you don’t even consciously feel. They live underneath your awareness, subtly influencing your choices, your relationships, your health, and even the opportunities you let in.

One layer of fear that I want to talk about today is something that doesn’t often get discussed in conventional wellness spaces, and that’s the idea that some fears don’t originate in this lifetime at all.

From an energetic and quantum perspective, it’s very possible that we carry imprints from past lives. These imprints don’t show up as memories in the traditional sense, but rather as unexplained reactions, aversions, or fears that don’t logically line up with our current experiences.

I’m pretty sure that I’m dealing with something like this because sometimes I have an irrational fear inside of cars. Of all the dangerous things I’ve done in my life, like hang gliding, whitewater rafting, flying in a sailplane, driving motorcycles, mountain biking, etc, I think I’m the most uncomfortable in the passenger seat of a car. Doesn’t it seem strange that a passenger seat of a car would scare me more than the back of a motorcycle?

That never made sense to me.

There has to be some kind of unresolved fear energy there—possibly connected to a traumatic death in another lifetime involving a vehicle crash, apparently where I was not in the driver’s seat. Perhaps this also has something to do with my difficulty trusting others. hmmmmm

Whether or not you personally subscribe to the idea of past lives, you can’t deny that fear energy can exist without a clear origin story in this lifetime. And your nervous system responds to it as if it were happening right now.

Then, on top of that, add the fears that we do acquire early in this lifetime.

We come into this world with a nervous system that is highly impressionable. As infants and young children, we don’t have the cognitive ability to rationalize danger. We absorb emotional information directly through our bodies. And we especially pick it up from others.

I don’t have very many memories of my mother, as she died just after I turned 14, but I do remember her being afraid of everything. She would have fits when my father took us kids for motorcycle rides, she wouldn’t come out on our boat, she got too nervous just watching us on the dock, and she would barely even ride a bicycle. How could all of this fear not trickle down into my nervous system?

And speaking of my mother, as I just mentioned, I lost her to cancer when I was just a kid, and something that I recently heard from a family constellations healer made my ears perk up. She explained that ‘our mothers are our first love’ and if things ‘aren’t right’ with our mothers, it will affect all of our romantic relationships.

This really made me stop and contemplate my never-ending fear of losing my husband to an illness. I am as hyper vigilant about his health as I am my own, maybe even more so, because of this deep-seated fear that I acquired in my childhood.

We don’t often look back to our earliest years for explanations for our current struggles, but I can assure you, all the answers can be found there. The fear we pick up during childhood gets stored in the nervous system. And once stored, it unfortunately never dissipates on its own.

Instead, your nervous system spends your entire life trying to calibrate around that fear, constantly scanning for danger and constantly adjusting your physiology to stay safe.

Where there is fear, the body assumes there is danger.

And here’s something that we have all already heard, but it’s worth re-stating...

Your nervous system does not know the difference between a real, immediate threat—like a bear chasing you—and a perceived threat—like the thought that your boss might fire you, or that you’re not good enough, or that something bad might happen.

To your nervous system, danger is danger. Period.

In both scenarios, the body activates the sympathetic nervous system—the fight, flight, or freeze response. Stress hormones surge. Muscles tense. Breathing becomes shallow. Blood is diverted away from digestion, repair, and long-term healing.

At the same time, the parasympathetic nervous system—the system responsible for rest, digestion, immune function, and regeneration—is sadly placed on hold.

This is not a problem in short bursts. But when subconscious fear becomes chronic, the body can remain stuck in a low-grade stress response for years... or, for the rest of your life.

And this is where Traditional Chinese Medicine gives us a beautiful lens to understand what’s going on.

In Chinese medicine, the season of Winter is associated with the Water element, which is governed by the Kidney and Bladder meridians.

In my previous podcast, I discussed Kidney energy, which is our deep energy reserves and is responsible for our vitality and constitutional strength. Today, I want to focus on Bladder energy, because the primary emotion associated with the Bladder is fear.

Think about a classic movie scene where someone gets so frightened that they pee their pants. While it’s often played for humor, it’s actually a perfect illustration of how intense fear directly impacts Bladder function.

Now, instead of intense, acute fear, imagine low-level, persistent subconscious fear—the kind most people live with every single day. That fear doesn’t cause dramatic symptoms, but it slowly disrupts Bladder energy over time.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Bladder is not just a storage organ for urine. Energetically, it’s responsible for discernment, boundaries, and the ability to let go of what no longer serves us—physically, emotionally, and energetically.

When Bladder energy is imbalanced, we may see symptoms such as:

* Frequent urination or urgency

* Difficulty fully emptying the bladder

* Low back or sacral tension

* Chronic tension or rigidity

* A tendency to hold on—emotionally or mentally

The body is quite literally struggling to release.

From a practical standpoint, to help support your Bladder energy, you can try things such as staying properly hydrated, keeping your lower back warm during the cold months, avoiding excessive stimulants that tax the nervous system, and of course, there’s the go-to breathing exercises and meditation (which, quite honestly, are usually the cure for whatever ails you.)

But we also can’t forget about frequency, my favorite subject. Sound and vibrational medicine can be powerful allies to help support the bladder energy and reduce these hidden fears.

Fear usually lives below conscious awareness, which means talk-based approaches don’t always reach it. Frequency, however, speaks directly to the nervous system and the energetic body.

Specific sound frequencies can gently encourage the body to return to a state of balance—without force and without reliving trauma.

This is exactly why I created my sound healing subscription, which delivers frequencies that are aligned with the Chinese Medicine Five Element theory. These frequencies work subtly, meeting your body where it is, and helping to release stored fear patterns that you may not even realize you’re carrying.

You don’t have to identify the fear.You don’t have to understand it.You simply allow the nervous system to recalibrate.

Remember, fear is only trying to protect you. It doesn’t mean to disrupt your equilibrium. It’s OK to have some healthy fear, but we need to let the non-beneficial stuff go.

When fear is gently released, life begins to flow forward again.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Quantum Waves of Wellness.If this information resonates with you, I invite you to hit one of those subscribe buttons and possibly explore my sound healing subscription.

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