Anxious
Feeling anxious means your mind and body are bracing for something that might go wrong but hasn't yet. The thoughts loop, the chest or stomach tightens, and settling down gets hard, sometimes over something you can't even name.
- On the wheel: Scared, then anxious
- More exact words: Worried, nervous, uneasy
- Nearby: On edge, overwhelmed, calm
- Often points to: A possible threat that hasn't happened yet
Before I knew it had a name
Thirteen years ago I had a severe anxiety crisis, and at the time I didn't know what anxiety was. I only knew I felt like I was losing control of my mind and body. Learning that it had a name came later, with a professional's help.
Most anxious days are smaller than that one.
The three closer words each catch a different version. Worried is the same "what if" playing on repeat, nervous is the jitter before a call or a date that matters, and uneasy is a vague sense that something isn't right with no cause you can point to.
"It's 11 p.m. and I'm replaying the meeting, then planning what I'll say if my boss brings it up tomorrow. Then replaying it again."
A forecast your body believes
The psychiatry manual DSM-5 draws the line in time: fear responds to a threat that is here, and anxiety anticipates a threat in the future.1
That makes anxiety a forecast. Your body reacts as if it were news.
Forecasts can be checked. In one study, when 29 people with generalized anxiety disorder logged their worries for 10 days and looked later at what happened, about 91 percent hadn't come true.2 The worry time page has the rest of that study and the method built on it.
Which tense is the threat in?
| Feeling | Points at | Sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| Scared | A threat now | "Get out of here." |
| Anxious | A threat that might come | "What if it goes wrong?" |
| Overwhelmed | Too much right now | "I can't do all of this." |
If the weight is the size of today's load, the overwhelmed page fits better. If it's one known event ahead, read dread.
Put a date on the worry
- Write the worry as one sentence, with a date. "I'll be let go after the review on Friday." On Friday, check what happened. That's the check from the study above.2
- Name the feeling itself. "I'm anxious" is a different sentence from "this is going to go wrong", and the list of emotions page covers the lab work on why naming a feeling helps.
- Slow your breathing for a minute. It won't settle every worry. It gives your body a different job, and the box breathing pacer counts it out for you.
- Look at the thought behind it. A thought record has a separate path for worries about the future.
What is the worry, in one sentence, and on what date will you know how it turned out?
Answer this with JoyWhen worry runs most of your days
The National Institute of Mental Health lists excessive worry, feeling on edge, trouble relaxing and poor sleep among the signs of generalized anxiety disorder.3 The line between a hard week and something worth a professional's eyes is whether the worry is hard to control, shows up most days and gets in the way of your life.
Questions people ask about feeling anxious
Why do I feel anxious for no reason?
Often there's a reason you haven't named yet: poor sleep, a coming change, too much caffeine, or a worry you've pushed down. Sometimes there isn't one you can find. Jotting down the time and place it starts, for a week, can turn up a pattern you'd never spot from inside one bad afternoon.
Is it anxiety or just stress?
Stress is usually tied to a demand in front of you and eases when the demand passes. Anxiety can keep going after the demand is gone, or show up without one. They often feed each other.
Related
- Overwhelmed: when there's too much right now.
- Dread: fear of one known thing ahead.
- Insecure: the worry that you aren't enough.