I am new here

Hi. I am a 26 year old man living with general anxiety. I find myself feeling like a victim to fear. I try to make myself appear fearless...I'm a pretty big guy, I have good posture, and I speak confidently. But...

·Every day I go to work, I am fearful that I will lose my job even though I am a great worker and am told this by my employer regularly.

·I fear confrontation, avoid it at all costs, and on the incredibly rare occasion that I am met with confrontation, I react to it with motionless silence most of the time. If someone hits me I hit back...but if someone is in my face and I feel threatened, I do nothing.

·I am in an incredibly happy relationship. We are celebrating two years today, actually...but for completely unfounded reasons I always fear that she will end it for some reason. We have talked about it and she assures me she won't. She is very supportive of my condition.

That's just a little about me. What prompted me to join a forum was my learning that my father thinks I am a coward. I have looked up to him my entire life, and hearing that from him sent me into an all night panic attack, giving me nightmares where my teeth fell out one by one.

I am not quite sure what I expect to gain from posting this here...but it was my first post, so I guess consider this my introduction.

Dear TraceOfSanity:

Could very well be that your father threatened you when you were a child, and you lived in fear of him. A child is naturally afraid of a parent's rejection. All he had to do to scare you is to repeatedly express disapproval of you.

As a child you were not a coward, you were a child, reacting automatically to your environment. An adult still carries childhood experiences in the brain, in the form of multiple neuropathways, re-living one's childhood, scared.

Your thoughts?
atina

Growing up, my dad worked a stressful job. He was never physically abusive, only hitting us as a form of justifiable punishment (I believe in spanking children). But he had a very short temper and would yell often. We were always walking on eggshells whenever he would come home on break or for the night. I remember being nervous whenever I expected him to be around.

Dear TraceOfSanity:

Clearly your father scared you, and understandably so. Yelling is scary. Not knowing when he will yell again is scary. No child can not be scared in such circumstances. Walking on eggshells happens when one is scared, trying to prevent the next yelling. Definitely explains your anxiety, doesn't it?

atina