When someone is overwhelmed by anxiety, they can become difficult to reach. Such a person is completely in the grip of attachment and thus in a place of enormous suffering. To attempt to escape from their suffering, they will do anything they possibly can.
One thing they will try is to adopt beliefs that make them feel safe from the objects of their anxiety. To an outsider not under their spell, these beliefs look like delusions. Strictly speaking, any belief is a delusion if it is taken to be absolutely true, as it simply cannot possess that degree of certainty. We tend not to notice most of our delusions because we share them with the people around us. It's because we share them that it's also easy for us to talk to each other.
When someone adopts beliefs far outside our usual territory, it can become almost impossible to communicate with them. For us, the challenge seems to be to make particular facts known to the other, while for them, their security seems to depend on holding onto their existing beliefs. We want to undermine what we see as false, but the other refuses any such attempt because they cannot allow the protection supplied by their beliefs to be lost.
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