All relationships demand that we trust the other person. However, due to our personal history, this can sometimes prove a challenge. Our brains are wired to remember the risks that come from encounters with others, such as those in our childhood. Therefore certain words or situations may trigger deep felt unconscious memories and the brain automatically applies an expectation of danger to them. Our stress and anxiety rises, and we feel trapped. Our instinct is to run away. This happens even though our strengths and resources are greatly different now than what they were when we were little.

Thus it can help if we increase our capacity to see these fears as they arise in order not to be influenced by our automatic reactions to them. A way if doing so is outlined here:

Anxiety, dread, worry and even panic are just mental states like any other. Recognize fear when it arises, observe the feeling of it in your body – watch it try and convince you that you should be alarmed – see it change and move on. Verbally describe to yourself what you are feeling, to increase frontal lobe regulation of the limbic system. Notice how the awareness which contains fear is itself never fearful.  Keep separating from the fear; settle back into  the vast space of awareness through which fear passes like a cloud.

Rick Hanson, Buddha’s Brain