How to stop being afraid of peace
Resisting urgency
Silence is unsettling for many people. How long can you sit in silence before you or someone else breaks it? If you observe people having a conversation, you’ll notice that any pause is quickly interrupted with more talk. There’s something about the stillness of silence that can feel deeply uncomfortable.
I am an interrupter—not because I don’t appreciate the space to reflect on what has been said, but because I’m often filled with ideas prompted by the other person’s words. This compulsion to respond is driven by anxiety and eagerness. I worry that if I don’t speak up, I’ll miss the chance to contribute or share something helpful.
When I’m facilitating workshops, I deliberately slow down the pace of an interaction, giving people time to think and form their ideas before offering them to the group. Slowing things down can help those who are less confident or who need more time to process feel able to participate. I can sit in awkward silence for long stretches, prompting people to reflect on why those pregnant pauses feel so uncomfortable.
In more informal situations, like chatting with a friend, those facilitation skills can fly out the window. We each want to catch up, debrief, and support one another. I have to remind myself to put on my facilitator hat—listen deeply, help my friend explore their thoughts more thoroughly. That means embracing pauses, avoiding interruption, and focusing on their thoughts and feelings, rather than my own.
So, what’s happening that makes it difficult for so many to allow pauses and silence to exist in a conversation? Why do we feel the need to fill that silence, to quickly extinguish it, as if something uncomfortable or even wrong happens when there’s a gap in the flow of words? What is it about silence that feels like it must be filled rather than allowed or even embraced?
Humans are inherently social beings, evolutionarily driven to seek connection and acceptance. Silence that follows spoken words can trigger feelings of rejection, stemming from ancient experiences of social exclusion1. When we interpret a moment of silence as rejection, it can feel like an existential threat, questioning our survival instincts.
In conversations, silence often represents uncertainty. It signals an unknown outcome—how the other person will respond—and a desire to control how we are perceived, hoping their response will affirm our worth. This anxiety is rooted in survival mode, contrasting with the confidence that comes from self-acceptance. Each moment of uncertainty within silence offers an opportunity to embrace the present, resisting the pull of the familiar default of anxiety.
Uncertainty, when approached with openness, holds the potential for peace. It is the absence of worries, self-doubt, and judgment, replaced by ease, calm, and lightness in our sense of self and place in the world. True peace is not dependent on external events; it does not disregard the difficulties around us. Each emotional state offers its own narrative, shaped by beliefs about ourselves and the world. The reality of being at peace is a vastly different experience than the reality of resentment, as it fosters a sense of embodied presence rather than conflict.
Most people seek peace or at least a break from suffering or boredom, even if they don’t consciously label it as peace. If peace is in demand but in short supply, it's worth examining what might be blocking it.
I've previously written about the Liberation Cycle, a process through which a person separates from false, restrictive, or outdated authority figures. This can be initiated voluntarily, when the individual seeks truth, shedding false beliefs and adopting new understandings of reality. However, more often than not, it's a process that unfolds unconsciously, without anyone actively seeking it. It’s the journey someone undergoes when they find God, leave a cult, or end a relationship — a transition from one worldview to another.
This cycle unfolds on personal, societal, and cosmic levels. It starts with something that challenges your perspective — a change in a friend’s behaviour, a setback at work, witnessing a disturbing event — anything that creates disturbance of your status quo. This disruption triggers a psychological process that urges you to identify beliefs or patterns that no longer serve you. At first, the issue might not be clear, but it sparks a period of questioning. As clarity emerges — often revealing something you’ve contributed to in a relationship or situation — you begin making changes to disengage from unhelpful dynamics. The final phase is releasing the old paradigm, allowing for growth and transformation.
Release
A personal example of the final phase — release — was when I had to make the decision to leave my role as a research scientist. I realised that the culture was contributing to my burnout, and despite trying to make adjustments to actively assimilate, nothing seemed to help. The release came when I accepted that I wasn’t cut out for that culture, or even the profession in that form. I had to let go of the fantasy I had about my professional future and status, and physically exit the organisation.
Once I made the decision, I felt a sense of relief. I started looking forward to the end, but then this intense urgency took over — I needed to reinvent myself before I left, to preserve my pride. I couldn’t just sit with the decision and let myself grieve the end. Instead, I piled on more pressure, fantasies, and job-searching tasks, convincing myself that the energy I had was a sign that I was on the right track and that the universe was supporting me.
I dove into learning a new industry while juggling work, parenting, and other activities to compensate for the shame I felt about leaving my job. The chaos I created showed up as conflicts with my husband, my kids getting really sick, and my mom flying halfway across the world to help. And of course, none of my job-searching efforts paid off. I wrapped up my time at work with little fanfare and a whole lot of exhaustion. Looking back, I see how much unnecessary turmoil I created because part of me just couldn’t accept that my professional life was ending. I needed one last attempt to make things work.
Urgency is the anxiety that something has to happen now… or else. But what exactly am I afraid of?
Being forgotten.
Being insignificant.
Being invisible.
Being left out.
Losing access to whatever gave me status.
Losing my place in the world.
Being seen as a failure.
Missing out on opportunities.
Fear, fear, fear of things that don’t actually matter.
What I was really afraid of was accepting peace with the decision that finally brought relief. There's this part of me that couldn't accept who I’d become after choosing to change my path. That part wasn’t ready to let go of the identity I had spent so long building as a research scientist. And that fear — the fear of leaving behind something that once seemed so important — was what created the urgency to do anything to avoid releasing that old identity and the paradigm associated with it.
Instead of sitting with the discomfort of uncertainty, I craved the familiar chaos. I found comfort in doing — even if it was pointless. At least it gave me the illusion of control in a world I was used to navigating. Because when I’m busy in the middle of chaos, I’m not a failure. I’m productive!
Seeking chaos, even if it’s unintentional, can be a conditioned response to a history of family dysfunction, even if the dysfunction was minor. We live in a culture of urgency, not a reflective or patient one. It’s easier to let urgency and its fear-based narratives control you. We have access to conveniences to override boredom, mask discomfort, and distract from suffering.
When you've been trained to act out of urgency instead of learning to resist it, it tricks you into thinking you're making progress. Urgency shows up when a natural pause enters your life — a moment where you're given a final test: do you embrace the stillness, or do you return to your original state that you worked so hard to change during the previous phases of the Liberation Cycle.
What I’ve learned is that when things quiet down and that rush of urgency kicks in, it's really just the signal that the end of the RELEASE phase is near. I just need to hold stead and avoid making any new decisions or seek out new distractions. Resist the impulse to act and do the opposite of what every fibre of your being is screaming at you to do.
Resisting urgency while coaxing that urgent part of you to settle down and surrender to this final stage of the liberation cycle makes experiencing peace possible. It’s the reward after completing the arduous process of making a substantial change to your circumstances, overcoming the backlash, and reaffirming promises you made to yourself to not revert to your old ways.
During this time, I can feel flat or unsettled. The urgency comes in to fill the void, and I convince myself I’m not making a difference. I lose inspiration, procrastinate, numb out, or dive into household tasks. I think my writing is pointless, uninteresting, or that I’ve run out of things to say. But I’ve learned that feeling demoralised is a feature of the final test and to surrender to it, despite my deep discomfort. Eventually, the breakthrough comes — fresh ideas, new connections, old connections resurfacing, serendipitous encounters, and a sense that everything is on track.
If you're going through this now or have experienced it before, let this piece be a reminder to resist the tendency to rush and make things happen when the sense of urgency strikes. There's a bigger process unfolding and you're on the verge of a breakthrough. Allow yourself to pause, reflect, and rest. A new beginning is imminent bringing with it the resources you will need to undergo the next phase of the Liberation Cycle.
This is the Fool’s journey — gaining wisdom through hardship and the tests that come with striving to improve your life.
How is this related to narcissism?
A feature of interpersonal narcissism is the need to be in control over another’s behaviour, perceptions of you, even how they feel about you. This is not implying that you or the other person is a narcissist so don’t go there. Moments of uncertainty, discomfort, shame, and the fears listed above can cause any of us to reclaim control over our circumstances, which can unfortunately involve attempts to control others.
Hacking our narcissistic traits requires an ability to surrender control over things that can’t be controlled — other people. I described surrender in one of my earliest pieces:
It’s yielding to a greater force - a force of nature, a higher power, a greater purpose or to the present moment once you’ve realised you can’t force solutions or situations to go your way. It’s not about surrendering to another person (unless you’re in a consensual arrangement about domination). This requires trust and faith that even if you let go of needing to be in control, everything will be ok.
I could go on about how social media robs us of peace rather than facilitate it but I won’t because Holly Math Nerd did a brilliant job at it. Check out her unified theory of networked narcissism.
To my readers, it would be fabulous if you could share some of your experiences of the Liberation Cycle and how you fend off urgency (or don’t). How did the description of the RELEASE phase land with you?
As always, thank you to all my readers and subscribers who engage with my work and who have taken some of the ideas on board, implementing them in your own lives to make a change. Learning about your experiences about how my work has opened your eyes, facilitated catharsis, pissed you off, or helped you think differently is a real privilege. Knowing that I’ve had an impact on any of your lives keeps me going during those challenging phases of my own journeys through the Liberation Cycle. So thank you for sticking with me and for honouring my work with your attention, subscriptions, comments, and appreciation.
Nathalie
Koudenburg, N., Postmes, T., & Gordijn, E. H. (2011). Disrupting the flow: How brief silences in group conversations affect social needs. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(2), 512-515.
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I believe that a common threat to our individual and collective thriving is an addiction to power and control. This addiction fuels and is fuelled by greed - the desire to accumulate and control resources in social, information (and attention), economic, ecological, geographical and political systems.
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I am so grateful for you and your writing. You teach things I did not know I needed to learn, but then I read you and I realize that part of me knew the truth you're telling all along. It's hard to put this into accurate words. Thank you.
This is very helpful. I too tend towards filling silence with other people. This is partly because I live alone and hanging out in person with people I enjoy is comparatively rare in my life. I *hate* driving home thinking of things I wanted to bring up, but didn't. It's a good reminder to trust that every conversation isn't the last. There will be more and I don't have to fit everything in this time.