Irrational Much?

Here is the thing about anxiety:  it is usually very generalized and encompasses many aspects of life.

A person might have a phobia--a very precise fear.  Anxiety, however, is a general sense of fear of living itself.  This fear can morph into panic disorder or OCD, or a phobia can morph into any of those.

The root of it all, though, is irrational fear.  No one wants to be in a car accident or have a house fire or have a break in or be bitten by a dog.  The normal person does not allow their "that would suck" to turn into a life altering "I can't live my life because of what if's"



The funny thing is that people who are scared of more than one thing are usually scared of all of those things happening at once.

Let's think about this:  is it reasonable to anticipate, to the point of crippling fear, a break in at 3 am....THEN a car accident at 10 am....THEN a sudden heart attack at 5 pm?  Why not throw "Possible meteor strike at about 2:30",  just to round out the day?

The point is this: these fears are unreasonable.  Yes, people have car accidents, break ins, and heart attacks (and we reckon even get conked on the head by a meteor).  But all people do not have those, in fact most don't.  And no one has all of those close together--might as well buy a lottery ticket.  So to flow from one fear to another is to anticipate all of those incidents happening all at the same time (or within quick succession).

Yes, those things are scary and might happen, but our logical mind can look around and say "I have taken every reasonable precaution and I can look at other people who are living their lives without this fear."

You might be afraid to do this.  You might think the SECOND you give up focusing on your fear is the VERY SECOND that a meteor carrying a fiery hound will land on your car as you back out of your garage giving you a heart attack.

That is not true.  That is "magical thinking" that Outliers with emotional and imaginational OE's are prone to.  It is the dregs, the filth, of your emotional and imaginational ability.  It is letting the canary go and keeping the poop caked cage liner (no, really).



Now, you know you are being unreasonable and irrational.  Your logical mind tells you that you are.  We know.  We know that you are struggling with this huge fear and also lambasting yourself for being so illogical when you are supposed to be so smart.  That's ok.  There is a way through all of this.  We just need to understand a little more about what is really wrong and what tools we have.