What kind of fear lives in the Ajna
The Ajna grew out of the Spleen and inherited its fears, but translated them into the language of thought. The Spleen fears a real threat in the moment. The Ajna worries about what it doesn't understand, doesn't know, can't explain. Its frequency spans all of time at once: the mind pulls out something that happened fifteen years ago and lays it over tomorrow.
The emotional center fears differently: its nervousness moves in a wave, now there, now gone. The Ajna's anxiety doesn't go anywhere as long as the mind keeps feeding it.
The main problem is that the mind imagines itself to be a center of safety. It says, “I know better what's safe for you. Don't listen to those feelings.” Yet it has no way to protect the body. It's built to look, compare and analyze. When anxiety becomes a reason to act, people move where they shouldn't go.
Six gates, six anxieties
Three gates look up toward the Head center and absorb its pressure: doubts, questions, the search for meaning. The other three look down toward the Throat and look for a way to express.
Gate 47: anxiety of futility. The anxiety that none of it can be made sense of, that there's no meaning in what you've lived through. It was never meant to push you into action. Its real job is to see which thoughts are futile to untangle, because many concepts simply make no sense.
Gate 24: anxiety of ignorance. The anxiety that you'll never know anything for certain, or won't be able to explain what you know. The thought goes in circles, and it seems there will be no breakthrough. But insight comes when it comes; pressure only gets in the way. Driven by anxiety, people try to push the process and “invent” an answer that isn't there yet.
Gate 4: anxiety of chaos. This gate looks for a formula, and anything that doesn't fit frightens it. The healthy version is to look for a better, more precise answer. The unhealthy one is to grab the first answer at hand just to make the tension stop, and to turn chaos in your thoughts into chaos in your actions.
Gate 17: anxiety of challenge. The anxiety that your opinion will be questioned. When it's in charge, a discussion of ideas turns into “I'll prove I'm right.” That's why it helps people with this gate to share their view when they're asked for it.
Gate 11: anxiety of darkness. A gate that wants to see and shed light fears not seeing: that there's no light in past experience, that the idea that would light someone's way won't come.
Gate 43: anxiety of rejection. The anxiety that your insight will be seen as strange, misunderstood and rejected. It eases when you learn to explain: not just “I know,” but “I know, and here's why.”
Defined and open Ajna
In a defined Ajna, the anxieties of its gates are constant: the mind keeps circling the same themes. An open Ajna takes in other people's thoughts and anxieties and amplifies them. People with an open Ajna often learn early on to fake certainty about things that don't really matter to them, just so they won't seem “empty-headed.” The anxiety of an open Ajna often sounds like “I have to figure this out,” “I have to get my life in order,” “I'd better keep quiet, or they'll think it's weird.”
It's also worth remembering that the mind feeds on the open centers. The Ajna's anxieties readily pick up themes from an open Spleen or an open emotional center and turn them into an endless inner dialogue.
Interestingly, the healthy anxiety of the Ajna isn't about survival at all. It's about whether you'll be able to get your idea across so that it truly helps others. Yet hardly anyone worries about that: the mind is busy with money, housing and safety, themes it took from the open centers.
How to live with these anxieties
Anxiety can't be switched off: the mind won't stop thinking and worrying. But it can stop being torture. It helps to treat your thoughts like a radio playing in the kitchen while you're in the other room. Interesting to listen to, but not instructions for action.
Decisions are made not by the mind but by your strategy and inner authority. Then the mind gets its real job: being an outer authority, sharing its view, ideas and explanations with those who ask for them. The Ajna's anxieties are intellectual tasks to think through and put into words, not to act out in life.
Whatever is going on in your head, it isn't a reason to act.
If anxiety is constant and gets in the way of living, it's worth talking it through with a specialist. Human Design is a way to know yourself better, not a substitute for help.
A question to ask yourself
Which anxious thought became the reason for my last decision?