Fear isn’t always loud. Sometimes it looks like anger. Sometimes it looks like shutting down. Sometimes it looks like a kid throwing a chair across the room or an adult convincing themselves they’re “fine,” even when they’re absolutely not.
In our latest episode of If You Have Feelings with Matt Lovinger, a residential counselor at a therapeutic boarding school, he named fear in ways most people never say out loud and every word landed.
Because when you work with kids who have been kicked out, sent away, misunderstood, mislabeled, or terrified for reasons they can’t articulate, you learn a lot about what fear really looks like.
And when you’ve been that kid?
You learn even more.
Before We Dive In
Before jumping into this guest episode, listen to our short minisode, where we break down fear as an emotion: what it does in the body, why it spikes when we’re overwhelmed, how we misinterpret it, and what it’s actually trying to protect.
🎧 Listen to the I’m Feeling: Afraid minisode on →
Fear of the Unknown
Matt explains that many of the kids he works with don’t just feel afraid. They’ve lived inside fear for so long that it’s become their default setting.
He shares:
“You're getting sent away to somewhere you don't know… A lot of the time they’ll trick their kids like, ‘we’re going on vacation,’ and then drop them off and leave them. I think that's where the trust, the fear… all this comes in.”
Imagine being 12 and waking up in the middle of the night to strangers taking you from your home. Imagine thinking you’re going on a trip and instead being left at a wilderness camp with nothing familiar in sight.
Of course fear shows up as anger. Of course it shows up as shutting down. Of course it shows up as total mistrust.
Fear is rarely the first emotion we see, but it’s almost always the one underneath.
The Cause + Center of Their Anger
When Matt talks about how kids externalize fear, he says something every adult needs tattooed somewhere visible:
“I'm just the one that's right here. I'm the easy target… I separate their actions from the person.”
Kids aren’t “bad.”
Kids aren’t “manipulative.”
Kids aren’t “dramatic.”
Kids are scared and nobody ever taught them how to say that out loud.
And adults?
We’re not much different.
Fear + Anger = Twins Who Don’t Want to Admit They’re Related
Fear feels vulnerable.
Anger feels powerful.
So we choose anger.
“I think fear turns into anger because… I get mad at myself. Like, why am I afraid? Why am I feeling this fear?”
Kids do it. Adults do it. Our nervous systems do it automatically if we’ve never learned anything else.
About Matthew
Matthew Lovinger is a 25-year-old personal trainer and mental health advocate, who has struggled with anxiety and depression his whole life. He found fitness and it changed his life for the better. He has made it his mission to help younger men find themselves through fitness.
Follow on Instagram.
