It is sometimes a challenge to see whether the mind state is a wise caution questioning a good intention, or a paper tiger trying to throw us off balance, just coming up due to the past. There is in Buddhism what we call a "wise fear," what we call "Moral Dread". But this wise fear is based in the understanding of the Four Noble Truths, and cause and effect. That is, understanding that we are going to cause results to come from everything we say, think and do. And through this Moral Dread, we don't want to receive the results of these unbeneficial actions, speech and thoughts that arise.
Thus through this wise fear/Moral Dread, we try to be aware of our actions, speech and thoughts so that we don't create suffering for ourselves and others. However this wise fear doesn't necessarily have to have a lot of agitation in the mind. It's just a wise caution to be careful, understanding the dangers of unawareness. When habitual fear comes up, there seems to be more agitation arising in the mind and it is very helpful to balance this with the first step, noting it as fear, then feeling it in the body, then trying to feel compassion for oneself, and compassion for anyone else in the world that may be experiencing fear.
When we have more balance due to this process, we can examine our intentions more. Because it is intention that brings unbeneficial or beneficial results to ourselves and others. If we just allow the fear to agitate the mind, we won't see clearly enough to see whether the intention will create difficulty for ourselves or others in the future. Concerning taking care of ourselves, after we understand the inherent dangers of this world and the fragility of this body, we also realize that we have to take care of our body in this world and not take unnecessary chances just through a sense of excitement and adventure. Sometimes that is difficult, to know whether it is fear or wise caution in this particular instance. So it's a matter of making wiser choices with the decisions we make to see that we don't expose ourselves to unnecessary dangers.