Dear Ali:

Anxiety is ongoing fear, fear from long ago that was not settled. Unsettled, it keeps interrupting our lives. If is similar to this: a lioness spots a deer, the deer notices, immediately the deer experiences fear. Fear is the most powerful emotion in nature. The reason it is the most powerful, that is, it causes more distress than any other emotion, is because the animal needs to motivate to act immediately and use a lot of energy in doing so (running away or fighting).

Feeling the intense distress of fear, the deer immediately runs and escapes the lioness. Having escaped, it relaxes, the fear is settled and the deer resumes eating and living like before.

But what happens if the deer is stuck in a cage with the lioness, and let’s say the lioness is tied to a post so it can’t reach the deer, but the deer doesn’t know it. The deer feels in danger on an ongoing basis and it has nowhere to run. In this scenario the fear does not settle. Over time, the deer develops anxiety and even when freed from the cage and the threatening lioness, its fear is still unsettled. It has become and continues to be unsettled and gets reactivated again and again, aka anxiety.

We humans often find ourselves in a cage. For too many of us, unfortunately, the cage is our childhood home. The threat is not that we will be eaten alive. Instead the threat is being hit or yelled at, or hearing people yelling and fighting, and/or being rejected, insulted, and so forth. And children have no way to run away. The fear is ongoing and it becomes anxiety, even when freed from the cage, that is, even when leaving the childhood home.

What do you think/feel at this point?

anita