मा ते व्यथा मा च विमूढभावो दृष्ट्वा रूपं घोरमीदृङ्ममेदम्।व्यपेतभीः प्रीतमनाः पुनस्त्वं तदेव मे रूपमिदं प्रपश्य॥
mā te vyathā mā ca vimūḍha-bhāvodṛṣṭvā rūpaṃ ghoram īdṛṅ mamedamvyapeta-bhīḥ prīta-manāḥ punas tvaṃtad eva me rūpam idaṃ prapaśya
Word by word
The verse says
Do not be shaken, and do not be bewildered, at having seen this fearful form of mine. Let your fear go. With a glad mind, look at this form of mine again.
In plain words
He calls it fearful himself. Ghoram — horrifying.
No correction of Arjuna's reaction, no suggestion that he should have coped better.
And then the instruction, which is gentle: let the fear go, and look again, this time with a glad mind.
Where you've felt this · in parenting
A child wakes the house at two in the morning after a nightmare. Nobody says there was nothing to be afraid of, because there was, for them. Somebody sits on the edge of the bed until the room goes back to being a room, and then everybody goes back to sleep.
Going deeper
Naming the thing as genuinely frightening before telling somebody not to be frightened is what makes the reassurance work.
Krishna uses the strongest available word for it. He does not say Arjuna misunderstood, or overreacted, or should have been more prepared. The form was horrifying. Having established that, he tells him to let the fear go — which is a request that can only be made once the fear has been acknowledged as reasonable.
The order matters more than the content. Reassurance offered before acknowledgement is not reassurance; it is dismissal, and everybody can tell the difference.
That is worth borrowing, and it costs nothing. Most attempts to steady a frightened person fail at exactly this point, by starting with there is nothing to worry about. The verse does the opposite, and the next line reports that it worked.