Dear Alicia:

I think that you having been spanked and yelled at by your parents is relevant to your anxiety. It is not uncommon to be spanked and yelled at, unfortunately for so many of us. But it scares a child every time it happens. And so, anxiety is as common as yelling and spanking.

Aggression at home, exercised by a parent against a child leads a child to experience anxiety. Bullying in school is more aggression and more anxiety.

Next, we look in the mirror and give ourselves a hard time, for having a nose too big (a concern of mine, by the way, has been anyway), and so we direct aggression against ourselves.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be safe of aggression by minimizing it in our lives best we can, stay away from people who are aggressive to us, not availing ourselves to aggressive people, and then, wouldn’t it be a way better way to live, to not be aggressive toward ourselves, to not continue this tradition of aggression?

anita