The Places That Scare You
Book Review: The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times By Pema Chödrön
» Encountering a book that met me in a way that I didn't quite know yet how to meet myself «
There are books that offer us knowledge, and there are books that seem to know something about us.
Pema Chödrön's The Places That Scare You was, for me, one of the latter.
I came across it while travelling in northern India, at a time when my familiar sense of self was becoming unexpectedly untethered. The roles, responsibilities and meaningful activities that had given shape to my life were temporarily absent, and in their place I was encountering an unfamiliar emptiness. I wrote about this experience in Becoming Nobody Special.
What I found in Pema's writing was not a solution to that emptiness, but something altogether more reassuring: an invitation to stop treating it as a problem.
At the heart of her teaching is a radical, and rather tender, proposition. The places that frighten us, the places where our familiar strategies fail and our sense of certainty begins to unravel, may also be the very places where compassion and wisdom become possible.
Fearlessness begins with softness
We might ordinarily imagine fearlessness as a quality of strength, courage or resilience. Something we cultivate in order to withstand the difficulties of life.
Pema offers something rather different.
Instead of bracing against our discomfort, she invites us to soften towards it. To notice the impulse to defend, escape, explain or fix, and to become curious about what happens when we don't immediately follow that impulse.
This is not an invitation to become passive or indifferent. Nor is it about denying the reality of suffering.
It is about developing the capacity to remain present with our experience, even when that experience is uncomfortable, uncertain or deeply tender.
In the Buddhist tradition, this is part of the path of the warrior. Not someone who conquers their fear, but someone who cultivates the courage to keep their heart open in its presence.
The tenderness beneath our protections
One of the central teachings in the book is bodhichitta, often translated as the awakened heart.
Pema speaks of a fundamental tenderness within us, a capacity for openness and compassion that can become obscured by our habitual ways of protecting ourselves.
We build identities, develop strategies, cultivate competence, seek recognition and establish a sense of belonging. These are deeply human movements, often born of our need for safety and connection.
But sometimes, when those familiar structures are interrupted, we encounter something underneath them.
A soft spot.
It may first appear as sadness, vulnerability, loneliness or fear. We might instinctively want to cover it over, to return to the reassuring familiarity of who we know ourselves to be.
Yet Pema invites us to consider that this tenderness is not evidence of weakness.
It is a doorway into our shared humanity.
And rather than becoming somebody stronger, wiser or more spiritually accomplished, the invitation is to become more available to the tenderness already present.
Recognising the hook
Another teaching that particularly resonated with me was the Buddhist concept of shenpa.
Shenpa describes the experience of becoming hooked—caught in a familiar emotional reaction, belief or habitual response. Something happens, and almost before we realise it, we're pulled into an old way of organising our experience.
We might defend ourselves, withdraw, become preoccupied with what somebody thinks of us, or find ourselves urgently trying to restore a sense of certainty.
The hook can be remarkably subtle.
During my travels, I discovered how quickly the spacious possibility of becoming nobody could transform into the distressing belief that I was nobody special.
One small word had changed my relationship to the entire experience.
What I appreciate about Pema's teaching is that recognising the hook doesn't require us to condemn ourselves for being caught.
The recognition itself creates a little space.
We begin to notice the familiar pull, perhaps even feel it in the body, without immediately having to act upon it.
And in that small opening, another possibility becomes available.
Compassion in the midst of groundlessness
Throughout the book, Pema returns to the experience of uncertainty and impermanence—the absence of the solid ground we so often seek beneath our lives.
She calls this groundlessness.
Our instinct may be to restore stability as quickly as possible, to rebuild the familiar structures that give us a sense of who we are and where we belong.
But Pema suggests that groundlessness is not necessarily something to overcome.
It is part of the human condition.
And when we can meet that uncertainty with friendliness rather than resistance, something begins to change.
Compassion becomes less of an ideal we aspire towards and more of a way of being in relationship with our experience.
This compassion is not reserved for the parts of ourselves we find admirable or acceptable. It extends towards the frightened, confused, defensive and longing parts too.
Perhaps especially towards those parts.
A living practice
As a Hakomi practitioner, I found myself recognising a deep kinship between Pema's teachings and the principles that underpin mindful, body-centred psychotherapy.
Mindfulness allows us to notice what is happening.
Awareness brings our habitual patterns into view.
And loving presence offers the possibility of meeting what we discover without judgement, with curiosity and compassion.
What moved me most about The Places That Scare You was not simply the wisdom of its ideas, but the quality of presence I experienced through the writing.
There was something profoundly reassuring about encountering an author who seemed so willing to sit alongside the very experiences I was trying to understand.
Her words did not ask me to become somebody different.
They invited me to stay.
And perhaps that is the quiet heart of this book.
Fearlessness is not the absence of fear, nor the achievement of some permanent state of peace. It is the growing willingness to remain in relationship with life as it unfolds, including the parts that frighten us. To soften rather than brace. To recognise the hook without becoming the hook. To discover that the tender heart is not something we need to manufacture, but something we can learn to uncover.
The Places That Scare You is a book I would recommend to anyone finding themselves at an unfamiliar threshold—through grief, change, uncertainty, or the quiet unravelling of a once-familiar sense of self.
Not because it offers a way out of those experiences.
But because it offers a compassionate way of being with them.
It became my essential companion!
