“I’m afraid of…” isn’t necessarily something that’s easy to say. But even so, we all know it: anxiety. Anxieties—along with bouts of their more immediate cousin, fear—accompany many of us our whole lives long. Some of these we succeed in overcoming, while others we might even turn out to need a bit, and still others seem impossible to shake. In this issue’s Special section, you can read how anxiety and fear aren’t always purely negative, but rather were and still are emotions that can sometimes be necessary and helpful. What’s more, there are strategies out there that can help us deal with these feelings and ultimately either shake them off or at least learn to live well with them and their effects. You can also read about the devices used by composers to generate fear in movies, the methods successfully employed by music therapy to combat anxiety disorders, and the strategies with which the arts and culture go about breaking down anxieties and fears of the less helpful variety. In any case, one thing will become clear quite quickly: you definitely don’t have to deal with these feelings alone!
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