I have a friend who is both a student of Kabbalah as well as a psychologist – he told me that they now have mega-studies (looking at all studies) Remarkably there is absolutely nothing that a psychotherapist says or does that matters! – it all depends if the person has empathy! My explanation of this is, that fears comes from a variety of factors, but the very worst is actually fear of criticism – This sets up a illusion that the world is a place filled with dangerous beings – Living in this paradigm is absolutely detrimental – Unfortunately the truth of the matter is, for a person to be psychologically healthy, they must have a "Jewish mother"; it is the unconditional love that internalizes the said supposition ("I am unconditionally o.k.") – so to begin with many people are lacking an unconditional love (they think that only if they serve another in whatever way the other wishes for, they have value! – not a strong positive foundation!) and then there is (as studies show, to practically everyone) the phenomena of bullying – bullying effectively is a jealousy (for the person whose self-esteem has taken a nosedive becomes jealous of those whose self esteem is good; for jealousy is the desire to remove the offending factor to my ego – and there can be no greater "offense", then jealousy over positive self-regard (this by the way is the essence of antisemistism and current anti-Americanism.) It is for this reason (I believe) that empathy is the magic bullet, for it reconstructs the person’s core identity