How to Taper Fear-Triggers
How to Taper Fear-Triggers
The food your Bear has quietly been feeding on
By David Powers, Ph.D.
When most people think of tapering, they think about medication. They think of micro-cuts, stabilization, holding patterns, and watching the calendar like it holds some kind of divine answer. Or as if we were doing prison time and waiting for parole.
But what if I told you that fear also needed to be tapered?
What if you’ve been unknowingly cold-turkeying your nervous system every time you throw yourself into a fear spiral, binge on symptom stories, or try to eliminate anxiety with brute force? No, not in the true sense of withdrawal, but in terms of how it spikes your system.
This is not meant to alarm you, but it is a very serious topic.
My friends, fear is a drug. It floods the body with stress hormones, greatly increases glutamate, and teaches the brain what to expect next. The more you engage with it, the more your system anticipates it, like clockwork. And just like benzos, fear becomes a survival strategy that stops working, but still refuses to let go.
You'll find yourself still engaging with triggering content even though you hate it. It's truly a vicious cycle.
Stage I: Restoring Hope
In Stage I of my Recovery Program (Restoring Hope), one of the most vital (and most overlooked) objectives is the need to begin tapering off fear triggers.
Even though it’s outlined in materials, recovery videos, and related content, adnoseum, it’s the one thing many students gloss over. It’s not uncommon for me to have seasoned students in Stage II or III who are still engaging in daily fear content. This usually comes in the form of reading scary content on various online forums, watching triggering YouTube videos, or ruminating with fellow benzo friends.
Their symptoms flare, and their heads spin in fear, and yet they're confused as to why they cannot calm their system. But ask yourselves, how is the survival system supposed to start regulating and calming if we continue to feed it signals of danger?
Answer = It doesn't.
The goal early into our work together is simple: Taper off your fear triggers.
The Trap of All or Nothing
Most people in withdrawal feel stuck between two extremes:
Avoid everything to avoid panic (aka feed the Bear), or
Conquer everything at once to prove I'm not weak
(aka scare the Bear into hibernation).
Neither works. The first keeps you stuck. The second sets you up for setbacks.
Instead, what we need is what we already understand so well: a taper.
Think of your fear triggers like a cluster of jagged nerve endings. You don’t need to hack through them like a machete in the jungle. You need a plan, a rhythm, and a safe place to return to after each exposure. That’s how rewiring happens. It's gradual, driven with compassion and understanding. We don't simply force ourselves to change everything all at once.
Step-by-Step: How to Taper Off Fear
1. Identify Your Triggers ✔️
Be brutally honest.
Are you living on Benzo Reddit or Facebook groups?
Do you have a “benzo buddy” who feeds you doom daily?
Are you glued to scary YouTube channels, podcasts, or articles?
Do you compulsively Google symptoms or check BP/pulse every hour?
Are you hyperfixated on your symptoms?
2. Rank Them (Least → Most Triggering) ✔️
Not all triggers hit the same. Some might give you a jolt, while others feel like a full-blown storm.
Rank them from 1 (mild) to 10 (severe).
3. Begin With Gentle Reduction ✔️
Just like a med taper, start small.
Drop one forum.
Skip one scary video.
Delay one round of symptom-checking.
Cut back on talking with triggering people
Each cut teaches your system safety. The goal is to create an insulated bubble of positivity and health. If you want your nervous system to heal from trauma, help remove the fear triggers that remind it of war. Give the CNS so much positivity that it has no choice but to begin to embrace calm again.
Yes, even while tapering and in withdrawal!
4. Pair Reduction With Safety Practices ✔️
This is where lulling and pushing come in:
You push by disengaging from the source of fear.
You lull by grounding afterward: breathing, journaling, music, movement, silence.
The nervous system learns through contrast: the danger signals fade, and we return to safety. Keep firing this sequence?
5. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat ✔️
The brain wires through repetition. One skip won’t change much. Ten begins the rewiring. And by one hundred... now you’re in Stage II territory!
The Neuroplasticity Principle
Every time you disengage from fear and ground yourself, you rewire the pathway.
Every time you feed the Bear, you deepen the groove of fear.
Choose wisely. How bad do you truly want to heal?
Are you willing to run the experiment?
If so, then take my advice, taper off the fear triggers.
You can thank me later.
Warning: The Bear isn't going to like this at first!
He believes all of this obsession with fear triggers is actually an act of solving the problem. He feeds on these fears as if they were delicious food. It draws him, and then he becomes more alarmed.
It's a vicious cycle, my friends. And it needs to stop.
He will try to talk you out of it.
You will experience some withdrawal.
But keep strong.
Lean toward the calm and our North Star recovery program.
Soon, the Bear will begin to calm again, and you will be surprised how much better you feel. Don't give up, and don't be forceful. The trick is to be gentle, compassionate, and taper gradually. Don't be too upset with yourself if you backslide. It's expected. Just refocus and get back to work.
You know how it's done.
A word of advice: Don’t Wait to Feel Ready
You’ll never feel ready. That’s the trap.
But you can be willing. You can start small.
Instead of asking:
❌ “What if this makes me worse?”
Ask:
✅ “What if I’m training my nervous system right now?”
✅ “What if this discomfort is the rewiring process?”
✅ “What if my life is on the other side of this?”
Final Thought
You’re not weak because you’re afraid.
You’re brave because you’re here, willing to put in the work.
And you don’t need to be perfect. Perfection is another Bear trap.
No one is perfect.
Just get started.