The feelings of fear—whether tension and anxiety, shyness, self-consciousness, caution, holding back, or distrust—have the purpose of escape from the imagined threat, and to put psychological distance from the feared situation or person. Paradoxically, as we have pointed out before, because the fear is powerful, the very process of holding it in mind can make that which is feared come into our life. It is like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The energy of fear generates an inner focus on all the negative things that could happen, and that focus can coalesce the appearance of the very events that
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