#vulnerabilities were so evident in s3+4 like it was just so visible and it suuucks :((

[artswaps]

I'm sorry you had a rough day... what types of things do you think Keith feels the most anxiety over? Is he usually unable to recover from it quickly?

It’s all good, nonnie, just had a bit of an embarrassing misunderstanding with a coworker, haha… my awful communication skills strike again ;__;

I kinda rambled a lot more than I meant to so I’ll pop this under a cut?

Boop:

Hmm Keith and anxiety…. I’m currently wading through brain fog so apologies if this is less than coherent lmao. Keith doesn’t exactly experience anxiety in the same way someone like Hunk does, does he? He doesn’t get caught up in his head and start imagining every way a situation can go wrong, not in the sense that he lets it get in the way of getting the job done.

However he personally feels about a situation, if there’s something that needs doing, then he’ll power through.

We have someone like Hunk, a character who canonically is shown to have anxiety that sometimes he needs help calming down from in order to get back on task… and then we have Keith, who deliberately puts his own feelings on the backburner, considering them unimportant in comparison to the mission.

First of all I imagine there’s something to be said about his instincts here? Like, if Keith’s in a situation where he knows something is wrong, he feels unsettled or anxious but doesn’t know why, it’s just an instinctual nagging that there’s danger. I think that’s something he wouldn’t need to recover from to think clearly, but rather he’d use that foreboding feeling as an indicator to keep his guard up and stay alert. It’s help him focus on what’s amiss rather than scatter his thoughts, maybe.

tbh Keith is actually very confident in his own abilities and limitations, (at least… pre-season 3 keith lol) so (and gosh sorry i really am too low on energy to know how to word this properly) more tactile or physically demanding situations that might make other people anxious- eg. going into the gross Weblum stomach or launching himself out of an airlock or driving his hoverbike straight off a cliff (everyone screaming in fear while Keith just smirks and delivers that self-assured “yup :)” always makes me laugh a little, lol)- though uncomfortable and maybe sometimes confronting for him, aren’t something that would cause anxiety. 

Things that make Keith anxious are more interpersonal things, I reckon; he has trauma from his past that causes not exactly a fear of rejection, but an expectation that he will eventually be rejected/abandoned. I imagine there’s a certain feeling of anxiety he carries with him that’s just… him waiting for the ball to drop, sometimes. Telling him not to get too close, because it won’t last and that’s just how things are.

There’s the fear over losing Shiro, someone who he loves and trusts implicitly because Shiro has earned that love and trust from Keith, but even then Keith’s still anxious about Shiro disappearing again (maybe because Shiro unintentionally kept putting that fear in the poor guy’s head by pushing that whole “hey Keith if anything ever happens to me” spiel, oh shiro…. shiro, buddy…..)

I think he’s anxious to a certain degree about letting Shiro down, because Shiro is Keith’s favourite person who has apparently changed Keith’s life in such a MASSIVE way and has so much faith in Keith. And though Shiro doesn’t consider that as a debt that needs repaying, there’s a good chance Keith does. Maybe that puts a bit of pressure on him to succeed, and causes him anxiety when he feels he’s messed up in Shiro’s eyes. 

So, those are some things that Keith maybe feels anxious about. But the thing is, like I said, Keith doesn’t give his own personal feelings about things the priority, pretty much ever. If there’s a job to be done, then no matter what he’ll power through. 

Eg. When Allura was still giving him the cold shoulder while she was coming to terms with the fact that he was part Galra, Keith (imo, anyway) hadn’t even considered the possibility that all she needed was time- he’d already accepted the fact that she had rejected him. He was undeniably hurting because in his eyes, it meant he’d lost a friend- he was Galran and she was Altean and it wasn’t either of their faults, it’s just how it was. 

But he didn’t let it hold him back from getting the job done, he focused on the mission and directed all his attention to the task at hand.

What I’m trying to say (and I hope I’m making at least a lil bit of sense) is that Keith definitely feels anxiety about certain things, but he never allows himself to address it. He ignores his own feelings, sometimes to the point where he believes them to be selfish because they distract from the mission and the mission is priority. So he doesn’t necessarily “recover” from fits of anxiety because he forces it so far back into his mind and already accepts his fears as truths. He’ll just accept that that’s how things are, and it’s something he has to power through because there’s things to be done that are more important. 

Which actually brings up another possibility, that he feels anxiety over being selfish, making what he thinks are selfish choices, wanting to persue his own goals eg. making choices for himself like wanting to know about his Blade in 2.08 and investigating his heritage but worrying about how self-serving those choices are and how they detract from what he’s contributing to the war effort…

hmm. Lots to think about. Maybe when I’m feeling more coherent. If anyone has thoughts though come talk to me!!

Oh, also??? Snakes. Kid lived in a desert and he knows the drill with how to live around snakes so he’s prepared and informed for what to do if you’re bitten but like…… c’mon. Snakes are snakes and no one *wants* to be bitten….. ya gotta be wary around those guys…..