In essence, their emotions are outrunning their ability to process those emotions. It’s not clear why this is happening faster than ever before, but one researcher commented, “Over the last thirty years, we’ve shortened the childhood of girls by a year and a half.”

The Brave Theory is where we want her to land—it says she’s capable and strong and that God has already given her all that she needs. She can do the scary thing.

Let me say one last time before we move on: I don’t believe any of us is ever “cured” from anxiety, because of the way anxiety is tied to our temperaments and our giftedness.

Your daughter will experience trouble, pain, and possibly even trauma this side of heaven. But you are instrumental in how that trouble translates. The combination of you, God, and the right help can turn that trouble into good eventually. There is always hope.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, whom you may remember from his literary classic The Brothers Karamazov, first talked about it in his essay “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions”: Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute.

The older I get, the more I come to believe individuals who are type A deal with a little (or a lot of) baseline anxiety. And our productivity, efficiency, and organization are all systems to keep our worlds in control. They’re how we manage our anxiety or keep it at bay so it doesn’t take over.

What is one goal you would like to see your daughter move toward? How can you help her set up and practice her ladder of exposures?

Think about a timeline for your daughter’s worries. How have they evolved and with what major life events have they coincided?

Bravery exists in the presence of fear, not the absence of it.