Autoaffection as an activity in the service of self, as constitutive of self is a kind of whistling the dark, making a noise to prove to yourself that you are still there. Terror at the image of abandonment is one of the last veils separating the self from its groundless nothingness and so is preferred to its admission. If you are frightened or anxious then you must have or exist as something it is natural to be terrified for, the last resort of care. The nothing does not threaten anything, it is simply nothing, indifferent to life or death. It is not the removal of a guardrail but the realisation that there isn't one, and never was.