Our deepest, greatest fear is rooted in Judgment, Rejection, Separation. Three different conditions but roll into each other as a whole. Aside from survival instincts like food, shelter and safety, the fear of judgment, rejection, separation is most of the times what influences our thoughts, words and actions. It is our most primal social fear, fear of losing our friends, family, tribe, community, circle.
Judgment, Rejection, Separation in the form of failure, inadequacy, embarrassment, criticism, alienation, neglect, loneliness, exile, isolation. Try this, trace back any non-life threatening fear to the first principles of fear of judgment, rejection, separation. But our response to those fears is as if they are physical, life-threatening fears, when all it might result in is maybe embarrassment, failure, humility.
But that makes sense at a instinctual primal level, social animals like lions, wolves, dolphins, deer use that instinct to conform behavior and habits that is optimized for survival – moving as a group, eating certain food, reacting to sounds and movement, interaction within the pack, submitting to a hierarchy. While primal animals have refined these evolutionary instincts to perfection, we humans seem to fallibly conform to non-survival fears that often lead to disfunction and disproportionate responses. When these fears of judgment, rejection, separation are not only non-fatal but almost inconsequential, and definitely to the degree we blow them up to be in our imagination. The fears are almost illusionary.