biggest fears that I hear both in my work in counseling and as a pastor and as a

Buddhist teacher and these are the fears of rejection, loneliness, and death. The fear of rejection and abandonment is kind of clear given that our

species survives and relies on attachments and social connections,

we're a social species, and the way we thrived

and evolved and became such a successful species not in terms of the earth but just as a thriving species

is because we affiliate so well. We have high levels of oxytocin, we have massive forebrains that inhibit

midbrain, fight flight impulses so we can interact with people and we can form attachments and

we can form meaningful bonds and as a result of how dependent we are on social connections and attachments

as our means to survival, we developed regions of our brain that are massively

influential in the secretion of neuromodulators and also that reward us or penalize us depending upon how robust our social bonds are. For instance, regions like the dorsal anterior cingulate

cortex and so on and so forth. When human beings are socially abandoned,

rejected by others. It can activate fear, centers of the

brain, of course the amygdala and the peg, that make it as terrifying as any experience we can endure.

Attachment wounds are or abandonments or are social rejections. are,

or, you know, of course, endemic in anxiety,

in anxiety disorders, cluster B disorders,

substance abuse, and reliance on substances and so forth.

So I think it's pretty clear just how painful social rejection can be and there are in certain age

groups epidemic of suicide and suicidal ideations when people feel

socially humiliated especially in teenage groups. The fear of loneliness can seem like it's very much the same to a degree as the fear of abandonment or rejection,

but we can have robust attachments and connections and still

fear experiences of social or emotional isolation. The brain needs the experience of being seen in the eye of the other

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