Fear, Guilt, and Shame – Shadows of Esteem and the Theft of Agency
- Brainz Magazine
- 3 hours ago
- 7 min read
Written by Justin Edgar, Coach
Justin Edgar is a life and breathwork coach and creator of The Art of Creative Flow, blending entrepreneurship, education, and mindful somatic practice to help individuals, leaders, and teams move beyond struggle and burnout to reconnect with clarity, vitality, and purpose.
Fear, guilt, and shame are powerful shadows that strip us of joy, silence our laughter, and diminish our agency. Through faith, courage, and vulnerability, we can restore dignity, freedom, and connection. At its heart, it is a call to reclaim our birthright of curiosity, laughter, and creative power.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." – Voltaire
Introduction: Too afraid to laugh
Voltaire’s line cuts like a shard of truth across the centuries. God, Creator, Source, the Original Agency of the universe, is framed as a comedian. Creation itself is a cosmic act of play, of laughter echoing into form. Yet humanity, he suggests, sits as an audience too afraid to laugh.
That is the human condition in its shadow. We are born radiant, luminous with possibility, equipped with the qualities that allow us to love, to create, to act in freedom. Picture yourself as the three-year-old child you once were, eyes wide with wonder, laughter bubbling easily, imagination spilling into every corner of the room. That is not a sentimental memory; it is the truth of what you carry still. The luminous possibility of the child is the essence of who you are. And yet so often we live bent beneath invisible burdens, unable to rise, unable to laugh, unable to remember that the joke of existence is joy.
At the centre of this paradox are three primal forces: fear, guilt, and shame. They are the shadows that stalk our lives, robbing us of vitality, silencing our laughter, and shrinking our capacity to create. They are not just fleeting emotions but patterns that shape entire societies. They are not only inner saboteurs but outer mechanisms of control.
And if we are to reclaim our joy, our laughter, our very agency, we must first name them clearly, understand their architecture, and remember the trinity of esteem they oppose.
The trinity of esteem: Faith, courage, vulnerability
Every act of creation, every life lived with dignity, rests upon what might be called the trinity of esteem:
Faith: The trust that we belong here. I felt knowing that “I am safe. I am part of the whole. Life itself holds me.”
Courage: The willingness to step forward, to take action even when outcomes are uncertain. The heart in motion.
Vulnerability: The openness to feel, to connect, to receive. The willingness to be touched and changed by life.
Together, these form the architecture of esteem. Not self-esteem in the shallow sense of ego affirmation, but esteem as resonant self-love, self-belief, and embodied dignity. Esteem is not a thought. It is a state of being. It is felt in the body as confidence, belonging, and coherence. It is lived in our choices, expressed in our posture, and revealed in our laughter.
As Einstein reputedly once said, “Everyone should ask themselves, ‘Is this a friendly universe?’” The answer, he suggested, determines the course of our lives. Faith, courage, and vulnerability are the qualities that allow us to answer “yes.” They are what tether us to the sense that life is friendly, that creation is for us, not against us.
To esteem oneself is to stand inside the truth of being, to know that you are worthy, capable, connected.
The shadows: Equal and opposite
But every light casts a shadow, and the trinity of esteem is no exception.
Faith vs. Fear
Faith says, I am safe. Fear says, I am not safe.
Fear is the master of negative emotion. It contracts the body, narrows perception, and keeps us scanning for threat. It fractures trust and isolates us from the flow of life.
Courage vs. Guilt
Courage says, I am free to act. Guilt says, I am wrong to act.
Guilt paralyses agency. It turns energy inward, locking us in loops of self-recrimination. We become hesitant, doubtful, and afraid to step forward.
Vulnerability vs. Shame
Vulnerability says, I am enough as I am.
Shame says, I am not enough. Shame contracts openness. It whispers that our very being is unworthy, silencing expression and severing connection.
These are not random shadows. They are the precise equal and opposites of esteem’s trinity. They strike at the very root of our agency. They convince us that we have no choice, no worth, no right to belong.
This is why they are so disempowering. To live trapped in fear, guilt, or shame is to forget that the fundamental gift of life is agency, the freedom to choose, to create, to respond. Agency is the Creator’s essence. Creation itself is the act of agency. To be alive is to participate in that agency. And yet fear, guilt, and shame steal it from us.
A culture of shadows
If fear, guilt, and shame were merely private struggles, they would be daunting enough. But our predicament is far worse: they are actively propagated and magnified by the culture we live in.
The dictum of modern media is simple: if it bleeds, it leads. Fear is profitable. Outrage keeps eyes glued to screens. Anxiety keeps fingers scrolling. Algorithms are designed to privilege content that provokes fear and anger because those emotions are sticky. They hijack attention. They keep us hooked.
Institutions, too, have long leaned on fear, guilt, and shame as tools of control. Religious systems have wielded guilt as a mechanism of compliance: You are guilty unless redeemed by us. Political and corporate powers rely on shame to enforce conformity: You must look like this, act like this, earn this much, or you are not enough.
Fear, guilt, and shame are not only emotions; they are the currency of control. They keep societies compliant, consumers consuming, congregations obedient, and citizens afraid.
The irony is stark: we live in a culture that both pathologizes these emotions in individuals and simultaneously manufactures them at scale. We call them disorders when they appear in people, but we call them strategies when deployed by systems.
The neuroscience of diminishment
It would be a mistake to think of fear, guilt, and shame as merely “bad feelings.” They are far more insidious, for they reshape the very functioning of the brain.
Fear triggers the amygdala and hijacks the nervous system into fight-or-flight. Cortisol floods the body. The world narrows to threat detection. Higher-order cognition is suspended.
Guilt and shame, too, light up the brain in ways that keep us stuck in spiralling loops of the outer cortex. Rumination. Self-recrimination. Endless replay of what went wrong, what we did wrong, who we are wrong to be.
And while the outer cortex spins, the creative midbrain, the seat of imagination, agency, and flow, is silenced. We lose access to the generative capacities that allow us to problem-solve, to imagine alternatives, to create anew.
In essence, fear, guilt, and shame shut down the very part of the brain that connects us to life’s coherent field of love, the field that always supports, always guides, always provides the answers we truly need. Love, as origin, is the most foundational need of the human form, the energetic pulse from which everything emanates into being in a universe where everything is energy.
This is why these emotions are so crippling. They are not simply unpleasant. They actively disconnect us from our agency and from the intelligence of life expressed through love itself.
The way back: Reclaiming agency
And yet, and here lies the hope, the shadows can be met. Fear, guilt, and shame need not define us. They are invitations to return to esteem.
Faith challenges us to perceive beyond what is visible. It keeps us anchored to the unseen coherence that undergirds all things.
Courage allows us to step onto an uncertain path. It governs our willingness to act in alignment with energies not yet materialised.
Vulnerability surrenders control. It opens us to receive what the universe has in store, trusting that, whether sweet or bitter in the moment, it carries us toward better things.
These qualities govern our relationship not only to the visible, material world, but also to the invisible field in which all life is held. They tether us to the energetic forces that nourish, sustain, and flow through us. They remind us that everything is energy, and that esteem keeps us connected to the very rhythm and pulse of life.
In choosing faith, courage, and vulnerability, we reclaim agency. And with agency comes freedom.
And freedom, when felt in the body, is always expressed in the same fruits: joy, curiosity, adventure, exploration, wonder, awe. This is why we instinctively pair freedom with laughter, freedom with play, freedom with discovery. They are the natural expressions of a life no longer bound by fear, guilt, or shame.
Conclusion: Laughter, curiosity, and the wide view
Voltaire’s laughter returns at the end. God is a comedian. Life itself is a cosmic play. Creation is agency in motion, joy in action.
When we are too afraid to laugh, it is not because life has ceased to be comedic, but because fear, guilt, and shame have stolen our agency. They have convinced us we are not free, not worthy, not safe to participate.
But to esteem oneself, to live in faith, courage, and vulnerability is to remember. To remember that agency is our birthright. That we are creators. That laughter is not frivolous but sacred, a sanctifier of a life lived in coherent rhythm.
As Chaplin reminded us, “Life is a tragedy in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.” Agency is what gives us that long-shot view, the ability to widen our perspective and see life whole.
Einstein once confessed,
“I have no special talents. I am only intensely curious.”
Curiosity is agency’s twin flame (the other being our capacity for imagination). Its etymological root: cura, meaning “to care for, to pay heed,” reveals why curiosity and empathy entwine so naturally. To be curious is to care. To care is to open to relation. And relation is the fertile ground in which I may experience love.
Curiosity expands our perceptual awareness. It allows us to see beyond the visible, to perceive context more broadly, to imagine what is possible. In this way, curiosity is not only the foundation of science or art but a pillar of esteem itself.
And so perhaps laughter, curiosity, and love are inseparable. Together they remind us that freedom is not an abstraction but a lived state, expressed as wonder, play, awe, and joy.
Voltaire’s comedian still plays. Chaplin’s long shot still beckons. Einstein’s curiosity still whispers. The question is whether we, the audience, will join in, free enough to laugh, bold enough to create, open enough to care.
Author’s note
For readers seeking practical tools to actively cultivate the trinity of faith, courage, and vulnerability, see my earlier Brainz Magazine article, “From Fear to Freedom.” It offers step-by-step practices to help bring these qualities into daily life.
Read more from Justin Edgar
Justin Edgar, Coach
Justin Edgar is a life and breathwork coach, speaker, and creator of The Art of Creative Flow, a transformational program helping individuals, leaders, and teams move beyond burnout and reconnect with purpose, creativity, and resilience. With a unique background spanning financial markets, Montessori education, wellness entrepreneurship, and somatic practice, Justin brings rare depth and insight to his coaching. His work empowers clients to harness clarity, intuition, and creative flow as tools for personal and professional breakthroughs.
