[roguecoder]

Anxiety typically motivates some form of avoidance, as it is an attempt to keep ourselves safe. Every time we give in to anxiety and avoid a thing, it reinforces our anxious respons, so we become more and more avoidant of the thing we are anxious about over time.

The solution typically suggested is to realistically consider the actual consequences of the worst-case scenario and sit with that until it stops being overwhelming. Then we can consider what we could do to mitigate that actual realistic worst-case possibility, and then after figuring out what it would take we get to decide if we want to put in all the effort to take those precautions or if actually it's fine, we can just do the thing despite our anxiety yelling at us. And when we do the thing and nothing bad happens, our body has a chance to learn that it is actually safe after all and it doesn't need to freak out trying to protect us.

If instead we avoid the thing, that makes us more anxious in the future. And if we try to skip examining our fears and just muscle through, we'll end up associating doing the thing with feeling strung out on adrenaline, which also isn't great.