Accepting your fear can be the key to overcoming it

If fear were a friend coming to your house, you wouldn’t close the door, lock it, and throw away the key. You would hug him with open arms, hand him a hot drink, and offer him the comfort of comfort to make him feel better. Why do we so often treat ourselves and our fears in exactly the opposite way?

BBC answers this question by focusing on the uneasiness factor that is often triggered in moments of need and fear of not knowing what actions can trigger what outcomes. “Uncertainty can increase the threatening nature of a situation,” psychologist Ema Tanovic told the outlet. It’s not even about countering direct threats per se, it’s really about the ability to exaggerate unpredictable situations in our mind. As a result, some people who experience anxiety may not act at all, because the risk of adding to the uncertainty of the situation is greater than if they did nothing.

But don’t be fooled, relieving our anxiety only numbs our anxiety, doesn’t cure it, and treating it as such belies the fact that we could benefit from what our minds are trying to tell us: that we either caring about a stranger amount about something, or that there is a bigger problem that needs to be addressed.