Fear of Anxiety: When You Become Anxious About Feeling Anxious
Why Am I Anxious About Becoming Anxious?
Why Am I Anxious About Becoming Anxious?
Sometimes the hardest part of anxiety isn’t the original anxiety. It’s the fear of it happening again.
You notice your heart beating faster. A strange feeling in your chest. Dizziness. Nausea. A sense that something isn’t quite right. And almost immediately, another thought arrives:
What if this gets worse? What if I panic? What if I can’t stop it?
This is anxiety about anxiety — when the sensations of anxiety themselves begin to feel threatening.
What Is Anxiety About Anxiety?
After a frightening panic attack, a period of intense anxiety or months of feeling on edge, the nervous system can become highly alert to any sign that anxiety may be returning.
You may start monitoring your body, checking your breathing, noticing your heartbeat or scanning for changes in how you feel.
The problem is that this constant monitoring can create more anxiety.
How Fear of Anxiety Creates an Anxiety Loop
A small sensation appears. You notice it. Your brain interprets it as danger. Your body releases more stress hormones. The sensation becomes stronger — and now it seems to confirm that something really is wrong.
This can create a self-reinforcing cycle:
Sensation → Fear → Monitoring → More Anxiety → Stronger Sensation
Over time, you may begin avoiding places, situations or experiences where you fear anxiety could happen.
By Diana Joy
Anxiety Specialist in Balmain, Sydney.
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Why Logic Doesn’t Always Stop the Anxiety
CycleYou may know perfectly well that you’re safe. You may have told yourself a hundred times to calm down. But anxiety is not always driven by conscious thought.When the nervous system has learned to treat certain sensations as danger, logic alone may not be enough to switch off the response.
How Do You Break the Fear-of-Anxiety Cycle?
The aim isn’t simply to force anxiety away. It’s to help the brain and body stop interpreting anxiety itself as a threat.Therapy can help reduce fear around physical sensations, interrupt hypervigilance and work with the deeper patterns keeping the cycle active.You don’t need to become better at fighting anxiety. Fighting anxiety makes it worse. When you can watch it come in – then watch it leave and know that it’s a temporary state, that’s when you are making true progress.