* Dear Airene: I didn’t consider it myself until I did consider it very recently. Thank you for the note.

Dear Peaches:

Fear, ongoing (anxiety) is a very powerful emotion. I think it is the most powerful emotion there is. It makes sense that it is because it is supposed to alert us to real danger. Keeping safe is any animal’s first priority, before eating, before mating, etc. First attention is to danger.

When you (and I) fear being judged and disliked, your fear is a biological fear of a social animal, to be rejected from the social group, the herd, for example. Without the social group (protection from predators, cooperative feeding, etc.), a social animal is in physical danger.

So we are social animals but our safety is not dependent on strangers liking us, right? But biologically we are designed to care if others like us and feel threatened when they don’t.

And then to add to this fear, when you judge yourself saying that you “should ‘grow out’ of that faze by now”, you are sending yourself the message that there is something wrong with you for not growing out of this phase my now. It is scary for a person to consider that there is something wrong with them.

So we add fear on top of fear.

(I don’t think anxiety is a phase, unfortunately, it is a condition, possible to heal from but it takes a long, long time, unbelievable amounts of patience, mindfulness, perseverance)

anita