Three moments of fear

I spent the weekend thinking about fear. Not the loud kind, but the quiet kind that settles into the body. The kind you feel in your chest before you can name it. A low hum under everything. 

I think many people are living with that sensation right now, even if they cannot fully articulate it. 

Three moments brought this into focus for me. 

The first was unexpected. I picked up Dan Brown’s new book hoping for a distraction and instead found myself reading about consciousness, spirituality and a field I had never come across before called Noetics. The idea that our awareness, intention and inner life might shape reality is not new to our work, exemplified through our experience with Transform Trauma Oxford, but it surprised me to see these ideas woven into a thriller. 

It felt like the world whispering back to me. A reminder that these questions are everywhere if we pay attention. 

The second moment came through an article I read about the long human history of panic. It described people in ancient cultures experiencing the same racing heart, trembling and sense of dread that we label panic attacks today. What moved me most was how they responded. 

Not with medication. Not with isolation. But with each other. 

They gathered. They sang. They rocked in rhythm. They prayed. They breathed in sync. They created rituals that helped fear move through their bodies instead of trapping itself inside them. 

The article quoted Avicenna, writing nearly a thousand years ago, who said that movements of the soul begin in the heart and reveal themselves through the body. Somehow that line felt as modern as anything we hear in somatic trauma work today. 

The third moment was far more ordinary. 

I was in London for dinner with a colleague. She told me her phone had recently been pulled straight out of her hand while she was walking down the street. Later, when I instinctively reached for my own phone to order an Uber, she immediately told me to hide it. 

My home is in the countryside in South Wales, where I’m fortunate enough not to think twice about things like this. But in that moment, I felt my breath shorten and my shoulders rise. A small alertness crept into my body. 

It reminded me how quickly fear can take hold, even in the most mundane moments. 

All of this kept circling me back to Terror Management Theory, something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, and which also happened to appear in Dan Brown’s book. The research suggests that when human beings are even subtly reminded of their fragility, the nervous system contracts. People become more defensive, more rigid, more reactive, more certain of their worldview. 

Mortality, even hinted at, narrows the mind and tightens the heart. 

And our world right now is filled with these reminders. News cycles, climate fear, economic instability, political hostility, rising violence and racism, algorithms designed to agitate, even walking through a city with a phone in your hand. 

So the fear makes sense. It is not imagined. It is not irrational. It is human. 

But it is not the whole story. 

Fear may be part of being human, but it does not have to define how we live. Consciousness is mysterious, but it can be shaped. Meaning expands us when fear tries to contract us. 

And this is where I feel a deep sense of pride and purpose in the wider ecosystem of work we’re building across Masters Events, Common Threads and Mint Partnership. It’s also why I’m not personally consumed by fear, despite everything happening in the world around us. 

Because at the heart of all of it is meaning, connection and community. 

The same spirit is present in the work Mint is part of. Masters Events brings people together in person. Common Threads keeps conversation and belonging alive between gatherings. Mint Partnership helps ideas find their shape, language and way into the world. Underneath all of it is the same intention: to help people feel less alone in a world that increasingly fragments and overwhelms us. 

To me, this work has never just been about events, content or strategy. It’s about gathering as medicine. Community as antidote. Meaning as a form of healing. 

And when thousands of people come together each year at Oxford, something happens that cannot fully be explained through logistics or programming alone. People breathe differently. Listen differently. Their systems soften. Their hearts open. They remember they are not alone in this complicated, hurting world. 

Common Threads feels like an extension of that same intention. A way to remain connected between the gatherings. A way to create small but consistent reminders of belonging in a world that constantly offers reminders of danger and division. 

I am proud that Mint Partnership plays a role in this too. Not by gathering people in the same space, but by helping important work in trauma and mental health become clearer, more accessible to the people who need it. Sometimes that means crafting a shared language. Sometimes strategy. Sometimes helping an idea find the right shape so others can recognise and connect with it. Perhaps that is another kind of gathering: not bodies in a room, but purpose, language and understanding coming together in a way that helps people feel less alone. 

I increasingly think this may be one of the only real antidotes available to us. Not isolation. Not endlessly bracing ourselves. But coming together and sharing space, meaning and presence. Allowing rhythm, conversation, ritual, movement and community to regulate something ancient inside us. 

Allowing both science and spirit to guide us back towards steadiness. 

Fear may be ancient, but so is community. 

So is ritual. 

So is healing. 

And we are still allowed to choose them. 

With love, 

Araminta 

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Araminta is our Founder and CEO.