Anxiety is one of the emotions that I have to consciously think about how to express. I have to imagine what people look like in the movies when they're scared, and then I try to reproduce it. I can show many other emotions naturally, without thinking about it: happiness, anger, disgust. But fear I have to consciously simulate. (I suppose if I was in a bus going off the edge of a cliff or someone stuck a gun in my face, my repressive instincts would be overcome and I'd look terrified, but in normal situations it doesn't come out.) I think I've internalized the ability to hide it, to camouflage it as annoyance or boredom, so thoroughly that I have to layer a bad acting job over my lockdown of the natural expression.

I didn't know this until I got in group therapy and realized that many of the other people in my group (the women, in fact) didn't register the fact that I was feeling a lot of anxiety, even though I talked about all the time. When I talked about it, they didn't see any reflection of it in my face or body language, so what I said didn't register. I could say that I was feeling anxious, I could tell them about situations where I was paralyzed with anxiety, and still the absence of the expression they expected outweighed what I was telling them. They even accused me of withholding and not being open about my feelings until I learned how to act it out for them. I had to fake it to be accepted as authentic; my words were not enough.

This knowledge has proved to be very important to me. I realized that in many situations where I have mentioned my fear of something without expressing it physically, people have assumed I was lying. For example, when I talk about my fear of the financial consequences of a purchase, if I don't show fear, my wife may assume my fear is not real, and I'm making up an excuse because I want to spend the money on something else. Also, in situations where everybody else is feeling and expressing fear, if I don't consciously produce an expression of fear, I will come off as apathetic and detached.

It's very, very frustrating. From a young age we learn we are punished for showing fear, conditioned to hide it, and then later we realize there are situations where we are punished for our inability to show it.