Judging your anxiety/fear only amplifies your overall distress and does not serve you. Moreover, stop trying to condemn your anxiety as irrational, and stop trying to make it rational or legitimate. By the same token, stop judging others’ anxiety as irrational or illegitimate…

No anxiety is any more legitimate than any other anxiety…

I once met an airline pilot with a fear of public speaking. He stated that he would rather be thousands of feet above the earth in a plane that’s just lost both of its engines than speak in front of a group of people. For him, it was more anxiety-provoking to speak in front of people than to be inside of a crashing plane. For some people, public speaking is no problem, but being inside an air plane, crashing or not, would be absolutely unbearable.

Does this sound familiar to you? Do you have anxiety in some situations that is perhaps no problem for others and vice versa?

This is why it does little good to make sense of your anxiety. And judging or comparing your anxiety only produces shame and makes anxiety worse. The best thing you can do for your anxiety is to accept it without judgment and shed the excess distress that doesn’t serve you.