Breaking Free from the Cycle of Fear
How Fitness Helped Me Reclaim My Life While Living with Chronic Pain
The Cycle of Fear
For years, I lived in fear of my own body. Physical activity seemed like a dangerous gamble, where every movement felt like a potential trigger for the kind of increased back pain that could sideline me for days or weeks. Fear trapped me in a vicious cycle: I avoided physical activity to prevent pain, but that avoidance only deepened my fear and left my body weaker over time.
Anyone who has suffered physically or emotionally over prolonged periods of time knows how these cycles of fear can entrap you. We become convinced that any step forward will only make things worse, so we stay put, waiting for a change that never comes. These cycles of fear can feel impossible to escape. Breaking out requires more than just a change in circumstances, it often requires a complete shift in mindset.
Around the time I turned 30, my mindset on my physical health began to change. For years, I had simply coasted on the benefits of youth. Our bodies can endure a lot of neglect in our 20s, but I knew it wasn’t sustainable. If I wanted to remain healthy later in life, I needed to steadily increase my physical fitness. This wasn't just about staying slim. I wondered how I could remain physically healthy enough to enjoy the life I wanted. I thought about my future as a husband and father, wanting to keep up with my kids and carry them around. Could I really be a supportive husband and engaged father if I let my body deteriorate?
While I was still afraid of increasing my pain, I was convinced that something needed to change. I needed to be able to at least do basic physical exercises in order to ensure my future health.
Facing My Fear
For most of my life in chronic back pain, I saw physical therapy as an attempt to take the pain away. I’d do my exercises for a few weeks, hoping for relief, and when that relief didn’t come, I’d give up in frustration. It felt pointless.
Then something clicked. What if, instead of trying to eliminate the pain, I focused on building strength in spite of it? Could a good trainer teach me how to lift weights and exercise while protecting my back and preventing flare-ups? My goal shifted from trying to eliminate my pain to seeing how strong I could become without dramatically increasing it.
Changing my mindset was the first step, but then I had to act on it. It took me months to gather the courage to make an appointment for physical therapy. I was still afraid of failure, still questioning whether I could handle it. That fear didn’t disappear overnight. Even when we recognize the cycle of fear and glimpse a way out, finding the courage to act can take time. Confronting these cycles isn’t easy. It requires us to face uncertainty head-on, to take a step forward even when the outcome isn’t guaranteed. For me, making that appointment was the first step in finally breaking free.
Testing My Limits
In early 2023, I finally began physical therapy for the first time in years. Armed with my new mindset and an awesome trainer, I committed to getting stronger, even if it meant working through my pain. As long as my pain levels didn't dramatically spike, I was going to force myself to push through.
We moved slowly, carefully monitoring my body and pain levels. I started with bodyweight exercises and gradually moved to weightlifting. Initially, I used machines to brace my back (which felt less intimidating) and eventually progressed to dumbbell and barbell exercises.
At every step, I feared my back pain would skyrocket, but it mostly stayed the same. I learned to be in tune with my body and what would start to increase my pain. For example, despite trying multiple variations, barbell deadlifts always temporarily increased my back pain. It’s not a debilitating increase, but it’s enough that I can’t complete my other exercises well. So my physical therapist and I found other exercises to strengthen those same muscle groups without increasing my pain.
Weeks of careful strength training at physical therapy increased my confidence in my fitness journey and my curiosity about what my body could handle. My trainer helped me plan solo workouts to do at the gym in addition to our weekly sessions together. I had spent more than 15 years convincing myself that I didn’t belong at the gym, and I was initially incredibly intimidated and self-conscious. It took a lot of time to feel confident there, but little by little, I built a routine.
After a few months, I "graduated" from physical therapy and focused solely on the gym. Still a novice in the gym, I joined a new group fitness app from an Instagram “fitness influencer” whose content I had found genuinely helpful. Angus mapped out our weekly training sessions, and the app tracked our progress. It was during this time that I finally began to feel confident in the gym and believed that I belonged there, just like everyone else! For the first time in my life, I started to identify as someone who prioritized fitness. I was at the gym at 6:00am, 4 days a week. Not even Swiss snowstorms could stop me!
Even with this progress, however, fear lingered. I was cautious in the gym, hesitant to push myself too hard for fear of causing a major setback. This slow and steady approach was probably wise, but I couldn’t help wondering: What were my body’s true limits? How far could I go without crossing the line into debilitating pain?
Breaking the Cycle in Thailand
After nearly a year of slow but steady strength training in the gym, I finally devised a plan to fully confront my cycle of fear head-on. Throughout that year, I had no shortage of excuses for not pushing myself harder physically. I had moved abroad and no longer had access to my medical support group. I was juggling a stressful job and didn’t want to risk injury in the gym that might sideline me from work. On top of that, the cold weather often aggravated my pain, so I avoided pushing myself too much during my first Swiss winter. The list of justifications was endless, even if they felt legitimate at the time.
But last spring, I quit my job in Switzerland, and before starting a new role in Italy that September, I decided to decompress by backpacking around Southeast Asia. I knew Thailand had become something of a fitness hub, and months earlier, I had stumbled across the website of a fitness boot camp on the island of Koh Samui. At the time, I never thought I would actually do it. But the question lingered: Could my body handle something like that?
Well, now was the time to find out. For the first time, I had the chance to truly test my limits. Worst-case scenario, if I pushed too hard and ended up causing my back pain to dramatically flare up, I could always recover on a Thai beach, drink in hand. With no work deadlines or major commitments hanging over me, it felt like the perfect opportunity to experiment.
I arrived for the week-long “total fitness retreat” excited and terrified. I wrote a deeper dive about it here:
The Most Difficult Thing I’ve Ever Done
Reflections after completing a week-long fitness boot camp in Thailand.
The daily schedule was relentless: an early morning circuit class, a mid-morning strength and conditioning workout, and a high-intensity evening session. Just reading it felt impossible.
To my complete amazement, I discovered that my body was capable of far more than I had ever believed. The boot camp pushed me through grueling workouts, from strength training circuits to intense cardio drills and Muay Thai boxing. Each day brought new challenges that I would have dismissed as impossible just months earlier.
But I didn’t just push myself physically. I listened to my body and committed to rest and recovery. Every afternoon, I took a two-hour nap. I got a 90-minute massage most days (shout-out to $5 Thai massages!), attended optional yoga and stretching classes, and made full use of the gym’s recovery center with its sauna, cold plunge, and hot mineral baths.
For the first time in my life, I could be singularly focused on my health and well-being. The challenge now is figuring out how to maintain that level of commitment in a sustainable way for the rest of my life.
That week changed everything. I broke through a cycle of fear that had controlled me for half my life. For more than 15 years, my mind and body had been lying to me, insisting that I couldn’t do what I had just done. The boot camp was the culmination of an 18-month journey of slowly testing the validity of that lie and finally crushing it.
Finding Freedom
Fear has a way of taking root in our lives, especially for those of us who live with chronic pain. It whispers that any movement, challenge, or step outside our comfort zone will lead to disaster. Fear convinces us that staying still is safer than taking a risk. But fear lies. It traps us in cycles: fear of pain, failure, rejection, or the unknown. And then those cycles quietly take control of our lives.
Breaking free from fear takes more than just time or patience. Sometimes, it requires bold, even dramatic, action. For me, breaking the cycle of fear involved quitting my job and traveling halfway around the world to push my body to its limits. But the specifics don’t matter as much as the principle: it was an intentional step toward confronting what had been holding me back.
The key is to identify the cycle of fear that’s keeping you stuck and start experimenting with ways to disrupt it. Maybe it’s having that difficult conversation you’ve been avoiding. Maybe it’s signing up for a class or activity that feels intimidating. Maybe it’s committing to a small, consistent step forward. Whatever it looks like for you, the important thing is to take that first step. And then keep going.
Step by Step
Since that boot camp, I’ve committed to pushing my limits in the gym, growing stronger and more confident week by week. I reconnected with Angus, the online trainer I previously worked with, and he’s now my 1-on-1 coach. He plans every workout, tracks my progress, and keeps me accountable to my high-protein diet and overall health and fitness goals.
My pain is the same as it’s been for over 18 years, but my relationship with it has transformed. I’ve learned to measure success not by the absence of pain, but by the progress I’m making in spite of my pain.
If you’re feeling stuck, I hope my experience encourages you to take that first step. I know how hard it can be. Booking that first physical therapy appointment was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. It was just a phone call, but I had built up so much fear. Fear of my body. Fear of failure. Fear of making things worse. The afraid part of my brain knew that phone call could mark a turning point, so it threw everything at me to delay or postpone it. But eventually, I made the call, and it set everything in motion.
Two years later, I can’t believe how far I’ve come: physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Let go of fear and take that first step, no matter how uncertain it feels. Change doesn’t happen overnight, but it starts with a decision. I made a simple phone call, which set me on a path I never thought I’d be strong enough to walk. It hasn’t been easy. It’s often felt like one step forward, two steps back. But that’s the pilgrimage I’m on: a step-by-step process of growth and resilience.
Breaking the cycle of fear takes time, but every step chips away at its hold.
Start small, stay consistent, and give yourself grace along the way.