Anxious

He knew that fear was the core of all anxieties: a fear of gaining weight led to anorexia; fear of crowds led to agoraphobia; fear of losing control led to panic attacks. Anxieties were an oversensitivity to perceived fear, be it spiders, the opposite sex, confined spaces, whatever. On a neuronal level, anxieties and phobias were caused by overreac

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we must learn to differentiate between fears and anxieties. Fears are states of apprehension which focus on isolated and recognizable dangers so that they may be judiciously appraised and realistically countered. Anxieties are diffuse states of tension (caused by a loss of mutual regulation and a consequent upset in libidinal and aggressive control

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Anxiety is simply insight that we haven’t yet found a productive use for, that hasn’t yet made its way into art or philosophy.

Anxiety is not a sign of sickness, a weakness of the mind, or an error for which we should always seek a medical solution. It is mostly a hugely reasonable and sensitive response to the genuine strangeness, terror, uncertainty, and riskiness of existence

We panic because we rightly feel how thin the veneer of civilization is, how mysterious other people are, how improbable it is that we exist at all, how everything that seems to matter now will eventually be annihilated, how random many of the turnings of our lives are, how much we are prey to accident. Anxiety is simply insight that we haven’t yet

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Such anxiety is a response to an unconsciously perceived threat to self-esteem—to the sense of control, efficacy, and worth. The fear seems to be metaphysical, directed at the universe at large, at existence as such. It implies that “to be” is to be in danger—beyond any ordinary, rational sense in which this may be said to be true. There is a feeli

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