Dismissing fear and anxiety as not useful to our quest for connection is as dangerous as choosing to live in constant fear and anxiety.

In the research, you can find many lists of what elicits fear in us. The items range from rodents and snakes, to the inability to see our surroundings, to observing our children in peril. However, no matter how much the lists vary, one item is on every list I’ve seen: the fear of social rejection. We can never forget that we experience social pain

For anxiety and dread, the threat is in the future. For fear, the threat is now—in the present. Fear is a negative, short-lasting, high-alert emotion in response to a perceived threat, and, like anxiety, it can be measured as a state or trait. Some people have a higher propensity to experience fear than others.

Dread occurs frequently in response to high-probability negative events; its magnitude increases as the dreaded event draws nearer. Because

Researchers found that labeling the emotion as excitement seems to hinge on interpreting the bodily sensations as positive. The labels are important because they help us know what to do next.

Anxiety and excitement feel the same, but how we interpret and label them can determine how we experience them.

In her book The Dance of Fear, Dr. Harriet Lerner writes, “It is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. You want to feel comfortable, so you avoid doing or saying the thing that will evoke fear and other difficult emotions. Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the

Avoidance, the second coping strategy for anxiety, is not showing up and often spending a lot of energy zigzagging around and away from that thing that already feels like it’s consuming us.

Worrying and anxiety go together, but worry is not an emotion; it’s the thinking part of anxiety. Worry is described as a chain of negative thoughts about bad things that might happen in the future.