Continuing this one here - Paul's Journal - #13 by Kub933
I am wondering now whether it is the same with fear and anxiety, to what extent I have taken on the belief that I show how important an event is for me by how anxious I feel about it.
I am wondering this because even nowadays doing my hen party jobs there is almost always an element of anxiety before the event. I have done hundreds of these by now and 99% of them have gone very well and not a single one has ever ended badly. There really isn’t anything that could remotely justify the anxiety, nothing left that I can link it back to.
It’s almost as if I feel like I am supposed to feel anxious, that feeling anxious is the ‘correct way’ to experience such an event. That if I am not feeling anxious I somehow don’t care about how important the event is.
I can see this being conditioned from a young age, when you have your first ‘big day’ at school, the adults will try their hardest to impress upon the child the importance of taking it seriously, of how important the event is and that some flavour of fear/stress/anxiety is the correct lens for this experience.
From then on the child learns other ‘important events’ which rightly should be experienced through this anxious energy - exams, performances, making good first impressions etc.
In fact writing this now it seems to me that the fear is used as a means of control, as in the child is forced to see an even as important by teaching them to fear it. In this way they have no choice, they will treat this thing as seriously as we want them to, the fear will ensure this.
Because why is it that all the anxiety inducing events are so cliche? 
Why is it always the first day at school/new job, or performing in front of a crowd, or doing something for the first time etc Doesn’t it seem a bit suss?
Why isn’t anxiety a bit more original lol
I know that the general explanations will involve some kind of evolutionary thing saying that we evolved in a different environment and that’s why we get anxious now but I am not so sure.
I can see the kid messing about in a busy city centre and the mum pulling him to the side and telling him with seriousness ‘look everyone is laughing at you’, she is teching him when it is correct to feel anxious, and in this case it will teach him not to make a fool of himself in front of others.
And with these hen party events, these are filed in my psyche under ‘performance’. And who would be so foolish to perform in front of others without some anxiety?!
So the category of feeling (anxiety) is matched with the category of event (public performance).