Make active awareness your new choice. Our own minds produce images that they then fear and resist. So psychological fear and negative imagination go hand in hand, and nothing in imagination is real. But fear feeds itself, and the more that it justifies itself through worry, the more real it seems. The next time you feel that contraction of fear seize you, try to understand that worrying over the condition that is blamed for the disturbance will only ensure that the condition will repeat itself. Don't be passive to the fearful reaction and follow the path that it would lead you down. Instead, make a new choice to be actively aware in that moment. Be the observer of the movement of that consciousness, seeing the associations it is making and the attachment it is creating through those reactive thoughts and feelings. In redirecting your attention this way, you will see that this fear-based consciousness is threatening you with the loss of something valuable if you do not take action to protect the image that it is attached to. Then you will begin to see that the image you have identified with is not you, and it does not need to be protected.