"Where the fear, there is your task!"
Carl Jung
Anxiety. What a subject, dear reader, and on it I have quite a portfolio!
Throughout my life, I have faced many anxieties. Social, intimacy, and the worst of them all, low self-esteem, which I would define as being anxious about even existing.
When your mind has anxiety about anything, it becomes very tricky. Here are some of the trinkets in its toolbox:
First, it demonizes the thing you are scared of. You try to belittle relationships and friendships, and you despise seeing happy couples on the street (in an abnormal way). If you have intimacy anxiety, then your mind will work 24 hours to look for defects in people sexually attracted to you. This happened to me; Your expectations of a partner are ridiculous precisely to prevent you from having one. When it comes to low self-esteem, to your mind you will always be blamed, even if you don’t have anything to do with the situation.
“Did it rain? well, maybe that’s because you committed a sin and God is preventing you from having a good day”
Secondly, creates a blind spot: Operating on fear, your mind will try to avoid the subject all the way around. When my social anxiety was really bad I couldn’t even fathom working or even having a life around people. My current goal for example, as a career, is about becoming a psychologist. So you might wonder… how in the hell was I supposed to make that goal if I am scared of people? of criticism? The answer is, I wasn’t gonna make it, and that made me vulnerable to all kinds of scams because when you feel yourself closing the walls around you, there seems to be no other choice but to look for shortcuts. Another example of this amazing avoidance on a subconscious level; When I finally reached out to try to make friends, for some reason, I selected two women who turned out to be lesbians. My mind, fearing intimacy, wouldn’t let me have heterosexual women as friends because that would leave me vulnerable. Imagine that, having a mind obsessed with keep you a virgin!
“Doing what you love won’t put food on the table. A man must do what he must to be a provider and take care of his family, doesn’t matter the cost!”
If you ever tried building a consistent routine at the gym, you surely know about this one. Mysterious flu to make you stop changing your habits. The first time I kissed a woman I had such a terrible reaction I even had diarrhea. I couldn't even talk to her again after that without feeling nauseous, which left me no other choice but to stop any sort of interaction. This is also a kind of self-sabotage because you are expecting to be damaged when dealing with situations your mind has resistance to.
“Oh, yeah. Being even close to these people makes me sick!”
These are but personal examples of very troubling, or what psychology would consider pathologies because they are abnormal, and prevent people from having a functional life, but there are also normal anxieties built in our DNA to protect us from danger, like the violent repulsion we feel towards spoiled food. So, when we talk about anxiety, what we are talking about is a defense mechanism. It’s not good nor is it bad. It’s a strong impression printed in a deep corner of the mind, and by association, similar situations or even people, pay the price.
So what do we do against the supreme power of our minds? We can only perceive what they let us perceive. Our reality is made from what it allows us to see.
Facing a battle of evil vs. good will get you nowhere. Because you are using anxiety against anxiety. That’s a funny one. If you perceive anxiety as a bad thing, you will feel anxious when you feel anxiety and then try to force it down making it even worse. Moreover, you can only create further anxieties by perceiving things from the frame of good and bad.
What has helped me is to feel it like a machine. So, if your mind is operating over the assumption that sex is going to fucking kill you, then what you do is put it to the test. You face the situation in an endurable way. For example, what I did with my intimacy anxiety was to have a date for two hours once a week (I learned from that first kiss) with someone who was attracted to me (my current girlfriend). Please notice. Your mind will be constantly bombarding you with reasons about why the person in front of you is terrible. Notice that and try not to attach to what it points out. Consider it to be a natural reaction and carry on. Eventually, your mind will notice that for some reason you didn’t die by talking to someone attracted to you and it will rectify over time.
So… how many times until our mind rectifies these impressions? That’s a very good question! Even though I have faced those fears to even manage having a “normal” life it might take a few years depending on the gravity of the situation. If your anxiety is way too reactive you might need meds to be capable of enduring it and help your mind realize nothing bad happened.
Here’s when self-love is key. Comprehension with yourself, self-understanding. Perhaps, like if you were raising yourself over like your very own child. Sometimes you need to be firm but also caring and compassionate about the pain that caused you to be in that situation.
Your mind uses all the tricks in the bag to avoid change. It craves normality and protects it even if inconvenient or painful. If your mind manages to convince you to drop the towel then you might also believe it is right! And that’s when the worst actions of humanity throughout history are made. Like killing countless people because they think differently from you, or just of a different skin color. But at a personal level, it will most surely prevent you from building the life you want for yourself. That means you will have to conform, and as you do, also hate will build inside of you. Envy, remorse, and a miserable life come from that.
So this is my proposal to you. After dealing with my fears I have noticed my mind opening, making me more loving, understanding, and even smarter, because there’s no greater fool than the one filled with hate! I have even faced my fears of roaches. Now, instead of just crushing them and leaving their bodies as a warning to the other bugs, I am capable of holding them in hand to a safer place. There’s a lesson in this.
What you don’t fear, you can understand. Of what you can understand you can learn. Of what you can learn you can love.
I don’t know about you but, if there’s a chance to love life, or love it even more, I would take it.
Won’t you?
Thank you for reading!
