Learning a Language and Anxiety

In many of the articles I have read on Second Language Learning and anxiety, I have come across the premise that most second language learners may feel afraid to make mistakes with others when using a new language, and this is quite visceral to them. According to this common view, the more we tend to anticipate making mistakes or even feeling embarrassed about those mistakes, the more inhibited one will be with practicing the language. And this kind of thing would prevent a person from practicing language itself.
    I sometimes wonder if perhaps a deeper or more subtle anxiety might relate to the fear of  'starting over', perhaps even akin to being born again. I am again thinking 'archetypically', trying to understand what parts of the collective psyche really speak to second language learners. And I do have a sense, from my own very minor exposure to Mandarin and French (my two 'second languages') that there is an anxiety related to having to start a new language from 'scratch'. In fact, it's not quite true to say that any second language is learned from scratch, because there is actually an entire grammar that one learns from one's first language whose principles could (at least in theory) apply to second language learning. But again, the starting over theme---that is quite hard to take for those who have developed through many experiences and forms of education in one language, only to have to transition to another. There is something bewildering about it, and it might even put a person in a vulnerable position of having to ask fellow adults for help. And on the positive side, there is a sense that this very vulnerability could be a way of opening up to other beings, similar to the path of the bodhisattva.
    This comes to another question that I had. That is, is the bodhisattva always someone who 'has something to give' or teach others, or are there some bodhisattvas whose journey is in receiving others? I believe that a second language learner might be temporarily in that latter category, because a person who is exposed to a language for the first time might feel that they have to reach out to everyone around them for help in a language. And this 'asking for help' can also be a way of allowing others to show their own skills while doing something compassionate toward another.