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Many of us are prone to feelings of intense anxiety – and at the same time, experience immense shame for doing so. Yet there is nothing remotely embarrassing about being highly susceptible to anxiety. We need to understand the origins of our moods and learn to talk about them with an open heart and a resolute mind.
Every human worries on occasion, but for some of us, the suffering is on a quite different and more life-destroying scale: we are, without wishing to be ungrateful or absurd, more or less permanently anxious.What makes matters so hard for us, the anxious, is that we are unable to maintain a distinction between what objectively deserves terror and what automatically and unthinkingly provokes terror. The quintessential calming question – ‘Is there actually anything to be scared of here?’ – can’t even enter consciousness: there’s no sense that a benign response could even be possible.
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Photo: Screenshot
