Hey friend,

We’re living in an anxious time.
Everywhere you look, people are on edge.
Uncertainty is in the air. Pressure is in our bones. Fear is running the show.

If you’ve ever experienced anxiety, then you already understand what Western psychology calls automatic negative thoughts—those reflexive, repetitive, intrusive mental loops that convince you the worst is about to happen.

And one of the loudest, most paralyzing of those thoughts is catastrophic thinking.

You know the drill:

The plane’s going to crash.
I’m going to run out of money.
They’re going to leave.
It’s all going to fall apart.

It’s black-and-white thinking.
No nuance. No middle ground.
Just two options: everything’s fine—or everything’s on fire.

And for much of my life, that second option—everything’s on fire—was the one driving the bus.

The belief that if I slipped up even slightly, it would all come crashing down…
That belief was my operating system.

I’ve tried every tool in the book:
CBT, thought labeling, rubber bands on the wrist, journaling, reframing.
I became a pro at managing the spiral.

And to be honest?
It helped.
It gave me temporary relief. It gave me something to do with the anxiety. It gave me hope.

But none of it ever answered the deeper question:

Why is the catastrophic thinking there in the first place?

That’s what this article is about.

Not how to manage the fear.
But how to understand it.
How to strip away the band-aids and finally see what’s underneath.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re living at the edge of a cliff—
If your anxiety makes you feel like life could collapse at any moment—
I want to share how I got to the root of mine.

And if my story resonates...
If it helps even a little with your own fear, your own spiral, your own version of the cliff’s edge—
Then I’m grateful.
Because that means something beautiful is already beginning.

The Fiery Pit of Hell

The way I’ve come to understand my catastrophic thinking is this:

Imagine waking up every morning and stepping onto a tightrope.
That’s your life.
And beneath that tightrope? A fiery pit of hell—an endless abyss of shame, punishment, failure, and destruction.

Your job is simple:
Walk the tightrope.
Perfectly.
Without wobbling.

Because if you lean too far left or too far right—if you misstep, if you mess up—then you fall.
And if you fall?
It’s over.
Game over.

That was the inner world I lived in for most of my life.

It sounds dramatic, I know.
But it’s the truth.

This wasn’t some story I told to get pity.
It was the system I created—as a little boy—to survive.

You see, I didn’t have parents who knew how to parent.
I was raised by wolves—not literally, but emotionally, spiritually, energetically.
My parents were locked in their own war. Distracted. Broken. Absent.

There was no lap to land in.
No arms to fall into.
No voice saying, “You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

So I built a substitute.

If I couldn’t rely on a loving parent to guide me, I would rely on fear.
If no one else was going to protect me, I would terrify myself into staying in line.

And it worked.

That fiery pit of hell—that vivid image of what would happen if I strayed—became the parent I didn’t have.
It taught me: Don’t lie. Don’t steal. Don’t screw up.
It kept me sharp. Focused. Behaving.

At 16, I moved out and got my own apartment.
I was still in high school—supporting myself.
No safety net. No backup plan.

Just me… and that pit.

It got me up for school.
It got me through exams.
It got me into college.
It got me jobs. Promotions. Success.

But not through love.
Through fear.

I didn’t have a warm, steady voice saying, “You’re doing great.”
I had an internal fire screaming, “Don’t mess this up or you’ll burn.”

That was the system.
That was the parent.
And for a long, long time…

It worked.

What Therapy Doesn’t Always Tell You

This catastrophic thinking—this fiery pit of hell I built—
it kept me in line.
It kept me walking the tightrope.
It kept me from falling apart.

But it also created enormous suffering.

It gave me anxiety.
It fed my perfectionism.
It left me exhausted, hypervigilant, never able to fully rest.

It was a paradox.

Because on one hand, this system I created saved me.
It gave me structure. It gave me rules. It parented me.
But on the other hand, it terrified me.
It yelled. It threatened. It punished.

It was like living with an abusive parent who also made sure you got to school on time.

Imagine waking up every morning and stepping onto that tightrope—again.
And yes, the tightrope keeps you from falling into the flames below…
But walking that tightrope is also its own kind of hell.

Fall, and you suffer.
Stay balanced, and you still suffer.

You feel trapped.
Like you're damned either way.

And eventually, the pain catches up to you.
You start breaking down.
You start looking for help.

So you go to therapy.

You go because you want to get rid of the anxiety.
You want to kill it. Heal it. Beat it. Bury it.
You want it gone.

That was me. For years.

I treated my catastrophic thinking like an opponent.
Like an enemy I had to slay.

If I could just overcome it…
If I could just beat the panic, the perfectionism, the fear…
Then I’d finally be okay.

But here’s the thing therapy doesn’t always tell you—especially Western therapy:

When you treat something as your enemy, you feed it.
What you resist… persists.

Whether you’re using CBT tools or taking Xanax every day, the underlying belief is the same:
“This thing is bad. This thing is in the way. This thing has to go.”

But that very mindset—of fighting, fixing, forcing—is what keeps it alive.
You’re trying to push out the fear, but you’re just giving it more power.

And that brings me to what I now see as the first real lesson:

Your anxiety, your perfectionism, your catastrophic thinking—it was a gift.

Yeah, I know.
It didn’t feel like one.
It was a gift wrapped in shit.
But it was a gift nonetheless.

Because it came into your life to protect you.
It came to guide you.
It came to parent you when no one else could.

That’s the secret.

That fiery pit of hell I created?
That tightrope?
It was my protector.
It was the system I built to survive a world where I had no emotional safety.

And yes, it used fear.
But the intent behind it… was love.
Twisted love. Primitive love. Survival-mode love.
But love all the same.

I didn’t have parents to tell me, “Don’t lie. Be kind. Stay in school. Do your best. You’re safe.”
So I invented a system that told me:
“If you don’t do all those things, you’ll fall and be destroyed.”

That system got me through.
It gave me a way to function.

And when I finally saw it clearly—when I stopped trying to get rid of it and instead chose to understand it—something shifted.

I stopped resisting.
I started listening.

And I realized:

This fear wasn’t my enemy.
It was my teacher.
It was my backup parent.
It was a love I couldn’t name.

And once I acknowledged that—once I could say,
“Thank you for helping me. Thank you for keeping me alive”—
everything began to change.

It stopped needing to scream.
It stopped needing to control me.
Because it finally felt seen.
It finally felt heard.
It finally felt… loved.

And when you can look at the thing you’ve feared most—
your anxiety, your spiraling thoughts, your impossible perfectionism—
and say:

“I see why you came.
You were trying to love me.”

Then it stops feeling like a curse.
And starts feeling like an ally.

And that’s when it begins to lose its grip.
That’s when it starts to dissolve.
Not because you conquered it…
But because you finally stopped fighting it.

When Survival Stops Working

Something remarkable happens when you stop fighting the very thing you think is ruining your life.

When you stop resisting the anxiety.
When you stop wrestling the perfectionism.
When you stop demonizing the part of you that catastrophizes and overthinks and tries so damn hard to be good.

And instead… you begin to love it.
You begin to understand it.
You begin to work with it—not against it.

That shift—though subtle—changes everything.

Because once that inner war starts to calm, something strange and beautiful begins to stir:

You start craving peace.

Not as an idea. Not as a concept.
But as a felt need. A hunger. A longing.

You start to realize how much energy you’ve spent trying to survive.
How much of your life has been about not falling into the pit.
How many of your choices—your money goals, your career ambitions, even your relationships—have really been about one thing:

Avoiding punishment.
Avoiding failure.
Avoiding shame.
Avoiding pain.
Avoiding falling.

And when life is about avoidance, it’s not really living—it’s just surviving.

Most people don’t live lives of joy, or freedom, or purpose.
They live lives built on avoiding the worst.

And so did I.

Every job, every achievement, every dollar in the bank was a way of telling myself:
“See? I’m safe. I won’t fall.”

But here’s the thing no one tells you:

Once the part of you that’s been walking the tightrope starts to heal…
Once you realize the rope itself was just a scared child trying to stay alive…

You start to want more than survival.

You start to want peace.
You start to want joy.
You start to want a life you can actually live—not just endure.

And here’s what I’ve learned:

When you get to that point—when peace becomes the priority—life responds.

It starts handing you assignments.

They may come wrapped in discomfort.
They may look like scarcity, delays, disappointments, or loss.
But they’re not punishments.

They’re invitations.
They’re initiations.
They’re the curriculum designed to teach you how to walk the right road—not the tightrope.

Because if all you’ve ever known is tightrope walking…
you don’t know the first f*cking thing about peace.

You need to be shown.
You need to be molded.
You need to be loved into a new way of being.

And life knows how to do that.

Here’s the wild truth:
To live a peaceful life, there’s nothing you need to do.

That might sound strange—especially if you’re used to doing, fixing, muscling, striving.
But peace doesn’t come from action.
It comes from allowance.

Because peace isn’t something you earn—
Peace is something you accept.

And once you start healing that inner system—once the tightrope starts to dissolve—
you’ll realize:

You are not the doer anymore.
You are being done.

Life itself begins to shape you.
To parent you.
To re-form you into someone who doesn’t need fear to keep them on track.

You’ll start to notice synchronicities.
Opportunities falling through—mercifully.
People arriving with the next lesson.
Doors closing, not to punish you—but to redirect you toward gentleness.

And your only job is to say yes.
To surrender.
To stop panicking.
To trust that peace is not something you create—
It’s something life conspires to give you…

…if you’ll let it.

The Assignment I’m In Right Now

When I got back from walking the Camino in Spain a couple of weeks ago, I thought I was returning to a new life.

I had been cracked open.
I had met God on a mountaintop.
I had touched something sacred and true.

So naturally, I assumed life would meet me with momentum—opportunities, abundance, clarity, clients. I thought I’d ride the spiritual wave straight into expansion.

But that’s not what happened.

Instead… everything dried up.

The momentum I had before Europe? Gone.
Jobs postponed.
Opportunities vanished.
Payments delayed.

Silence.
Stillness.
Emptiness.

Everywhere I looked, doors that once felt open were now closed.

And for a moment, I panicked.
I felt the old fear creeping in, whispering:

“You’re in danger.”
“You need to get moving.”
“Start hustling. Start pushing. Make something happen.”

And then I saw it—clearly, unmistakably:

The left road.
The road I’ve walked my whole life.
The tightrope of survival.
The fiery pit beneath it.
The voice of fear, beckoning me back.

“Come,” it said.
“This is no time for peace. You need panic. You need pressure. You need the fuel of anxiety to keep you safe, to keep you alive.”

It told me:
If you don’t act now, you’ll end up broke.
Homeless.
Alone.
A failure.
A man with a shopping cart and no name.

It was familiar.
It was loud.
And it was a lie.

Because this time—maybe for the first time—I didn’t run.
I didn’t listen.
I didn’t reach for my phone, or my planner, or my hustle.

Instead, I closed the door.

And I turned toward the right road.

The road of trust.
The road of rest.
The road of love.

The same road I had been walking in Spain—hiking boots on, tears streaming, cracked open and carried by something far bigger than me.

And I asked that voice—the one I now know is not the parent of fear I had followed for so long.
This was a different voice entirely.

The voice of love.
The voice of the right road.
Some might call it the voice for God.

It’s the quiet one—always there, but so often drowned out by the louder voice of panic and punishment.

And I asked it:

What do I do?

“Do less.”

Not more.
Less.

In a world built on metrics and output and grind, that answer felt insane.

But I listened.

And so I slowed down.
I went to the sauna.
I jumped in cold water.
I laughed with my kids.
I played reggae in the kitchen.
I danced barefoot.
I prayed.
I made love.
I wrote.
I waited.

I did everything the left road would have shamed me for doing.

And here’s the miracle:

I didn’t die.
I didn’t spiral.
I didn’t disappear.
I didn’t fail.

In fact—I grew quieter.
Stronger.
Softer.
Wiser.

Because this is the real difference now:
My perspective has changed.

Where I used to see drying-up leads and unpaid bills as punishment or failure…
I now see them as assignments.

Not from the universe.
Not from karma.
But from Love itself.

And this particular assignment?

It’s about learning to trust what I know more than what I see.

Because my whole life, I’ve only ever trusted evidence.
Evidence that I’m okay.
Evidence that I’m safe.
Evidence that I’m winning.

But what if I don’t get the evidence first?

What if this is the evidence?
What if silence is the invitation?
What if emptiness is the portal?

This moment—this stillness, this space, this absence of proof—isn’t a punishment.

It’s my curriculum.
It’s here to initiate me into deeper trust.
To teach me to believe even when I don’t yet see.
To remind me that God doesn’t speak through dollar signs and deadlines.

He speaks through quiet.
Through surrender.
Through the refusal to hustle when everything in you is screaming to run.

And I’ll say this as clearly as I can:

I would rather learn this lesson—this trust without evidence—
than have ten checks hit my account this week.

Because this trust will change everything.

And no amount of money, momentum, or marketing can give me what this peace has already begun to offer.

This is the road I’m walking now.
The right road.
The one without panic.
The one where love leads.

And I’m not turning back.

Reparenting Through Love

If you really read my words—if you take a high-level view of what I’m saying here—you’ll see it:
I’m in the midst of a reparenting process.

It’s not just about healing, or resting, or taking on less work.
It’s about switching parents.
Switching guides.
Switching the GPS that runs my life.

Because whether we realize it or not, every one of us is following a parent.
An internal voice that directs us, disciplines us, motivates us.

For most of my life, that parent was fear.

But fear didn’t just yell from the sidelines.
It raised me.
It shaped me.
It told me how to stay safe.
It warned me not to mess up.
It kept me walking that tightrope.

And in its own way, it worked.

That fearful parent helped me survive.
It made me productive.
It made me careful.
It kept me “good.”

And I don’t look back and resent that.
In fact, I honor it.
I see now that I chose that parent for a reason—because I had to.

But let’s be honest about what kind of parent it was.

It was punishing.
It was harsh.
It was relentless.
It taught me through panic.
Through shame.
Through stories of what would go wrong if I ever let up.

And I know I’m not the only one.

Even if you had loving, gentle, attentive parents in your home—once you stepped outside, the world became your parent.

And the world is not loving.

The world teaches through punishment.
School teaches through punishment.
Religion, business, government, even friendship groups—most of it runs on fear.

We’re all living under this same parental system, and most of us never question it.
Because it’s all we’ve ever known.

Fear becomes normalized.
Punishment becomes love.
And the tightrope becomes our home.

So yes—what I’m going through right now is an assignment.
But even more than that, it’s a reparenting.

I’m learning to say:
“Thank you for everything you taught me, fear.
Thank you for keeping me safe.
But I don’t need you to be my parent anymore.”

I’m choosing a new guide now.
And this new guide speaks a different language.

This parent tells me to rest.
To take a walk.
To have fun.
To sing. To dance.
To stop taking everything so seriously.
To love myself.

And if you’ve spent your whole life following the punishing parent, this new one is going to sound insane.

You’ll hear that loving voice say, “Take it easy,” and your old system will scream,
“That’s dangerous! You’ll fall apart! Everything will collapse!”

But here’s the real truth:

The punishing parent is the crazy one.
That’s the insanity.
The one telling you you’re never enough, that you have to hustle or you’ll die, that love has to be earned—that’s the delusion.

Love is sanity.
Joy is sanity.
Rest is sanity.

And it’s taken me 47 years to start believing that.

I used to think life was about achievement.
About proving myself.
About staying safe by being good.

But now I know the real work of this life is much simpler:

It’s to change your parent.
To stop following the fearful one.
And start following the loving one.

That’s it.

Everything else—the careers, the relationships, the failures, the heartbreaks, the dreams—
All of it is just the curriculum.
All of it exists so we can learn to make a different choice.
To choose again.

My father never made that choice.
He lived and died walking the tightrope.
He stayed loyal to the punishing parent until the end.

And I don’t blame him for that.
He was doing the best he could with the parent he’d been handed.

But I believe we all come back until we finally choose love.

And maybe this is my time.
Maybe this is yours.

Because here’s what I know for sure:

The moment you choose the right road—choose love—
You’ll discover you’re not alone.
You never were.

You’ll start to feel held.
Supported.
Cared for.

Not in theory, but in your actual, lived experience.

You’ll hear a voice inside say,
“You’re safe now.”

And you’ll believe it.

For the first time in your life, you’ll feel loved.
Not because you earned it.
Not because you achieved something.
But just because you exist.

That’s the real parent.
That’s the right road.

And it’s waiting for you whenever you’re ready.

-Tony

P.S.​
I’m looking for five people to help me test a new 12-week program I’ve been creating—totally free. No charge, no catch. Just your time, presence, and honest feedback.

The idea came to me while walking the Right Road across Spain. It’s a program for anyone who’s ready to leave the fear-led path behind and start walking a different way. A truer way. Your own Right Road.

The journey is built around 12 revelations—the same ones that helped me switch from anxiety, panic, and performance… to trust, peace, and self-love. Each week, I’ll guide you through one of them with video lessons, simple assignments, and a weekly live Zoom call with me and the group.

You’ll also get access to a new AI-powered coach I’m building—your own private Right Road guide to support you in real-time, whether you’re stuck, spiraling, or just need a reminder of what’s true.

If this resonates and you want to be part of this first small group, just reply to this email with the words “Right Road” and I’ll send you the details. We’ll likely begin in the next couple of weeks, and you’ll only need a couple of hours a week to participate.

Let’s walk this road together.