The Achoo! Excuse My Anxiety Series
Imagine sitting at the kitchen table.
Nothing particularly unusual is happening.
Maybe you’re drinking coffee. Checking your phone. Thinking about your day.
Then you notice something.
Your heart is beating a little faster than usual.
Your shoulders feel tight.
Your mind keeps returning to a conversation you had yesterday.
You begin wondering whether you said something wrong.
Perhaps someone is upset with you.
Maybe you should send a text.
Or maybe sending a text would make things worse.
Now you’re wondering whether the fact that you’re wondering means something really is wrong.
And suddenly, you’ve managed to turn an otherwise ordinary Tuesday morning into a full-blown investigation.
Welcome to anxiety.
Or at least one version of it.
Anxiety Doesn’t Always Look Like Worry
When we think about anxiety, we often imagine someone who is nervous, fearful, or visibly worried.
And sometimes that’s exactly what anxiety looks like.
But not always.
Anxiety can also look like anger.
Irritability.
Perfectionism.
Control.
Withdrawal.
People-pleasing.
Staying busy.
Overthinking.
Or becoming unusually quiet.
Some people experience anxiety and immediately begin talking.
Others stop talking altogether.
Some become highly productive.
Others struggle to accomplish even the simplest tasks.
Some want everyone close.
Others want everyone to leave them alone.
And sometimes the same person can respond in completely different ways depending on the situation.
Human beings are complicated.
Anxiety doesn’t arrive with a name tag explaining what it is or what we’re supposed to do about it.
Sometimes we have to become curious.
What Happens in Your Body?
Let’s begin with something relatively easy to notice.
Our bodies.
For some of us, anxiety begins with a racing heart.
Our hearts start beating as though we’re competing in a Formula 1 championship, even though we’re just sitting at the kitchen table.
Perhaps our stomachs feel like they’re hosting a butterfly convention.
Our shoulders tighten.
Our jaws clench.
Our breathing becomes shallow.
Maybe our hands become sweaty, our muscles feel tense, or we experience that strange sensation of being unable to sit still.
Sometimes we feel exhausted.
Other times, we feel unusually energized.
And sometimes our bodies seem to know we’re anxious before our minds have figured out what’s happening.
That’s worth paying attention to.
Not every racing heart, stomachache, or uncomfortable physical sensation is caused by anxiety, of course. Physical symptoms can have many explanations, and new or concerning symptoms deserve appropriate medical attention.
But when anxiety is involved, our bodies may offer some of the earliest clues.
What Happens Emotionally?
Now let’s consider our emotions.
Some people experience anxiety as fear.
Others experience it as dread, insecurity, frustration, impatience, or feeling overwhelmed.
Perhaps we become unusually sensitive.
Something that normally wouldn’t bother us suddenly feels enormous.
Someone makes a harmless comment, and we feel criticized.
Our child asks the same question for the seventh time, and we become irritated.
Our romantic partner forgets something, and we react as though the entire relationship has suddenly become a problem.
Maybe we aren’t actually angry about the forgotten item.
Maybe we’re anxious about something else entirely.
Or perhaps we’re experiencing several emotions at once.
Anxiety and frustration.
Anxiety and sadness.
Anxiety and excitement.
Anxiety and love.
That last combination can be particularly interesting.
We can love someone deeply and feel anxious in our relationship with them.
Both things can be true.
What Happens in Your Mind?
For some of us, anxiety becomes particularly creative once it reaches our thoughts.
Our brains begin producing Oscar-worthy worst-case scenarios.
We replay conversations from three Tuesdays ago.
We imagine things that haven’t happened.
We analyze facial expressions.
We try to determine what someone meant by a particular word.
We become detectives investigating evidence that may not actually exist.
And sometimes we become remarkably convinced by our own conclusions.
“They didn’t respond to my text.”
“They must be upset.”
“Maybe I said something wrong.”
“What if they don’t like me anymore?”
“What if something terrible happened?”
Meanwhile, the other person may simply be taking a shower.
Or sleeping.
Or living their life without realizing they’ve become the main character in our imaginary investigation.
Anxiety can make uncertainty feel particularly uncomfortable.
And when uncertainty becomes uncomfortable, we may begin trying to solve things that haven’t actually become problems.
Yet.
Or perhaps ever.
What Happens in Your Behavior?
Our behavior can offer another set of clues.
Some of us procrastinate like it’s an Olympic sport.
Others become incredibly productive, organizing closets, answering emails, cleaning the house, or finding seventeen things that absolutely must be accomplished before bedtime.
Some people avoid uncomfortable conversations.
Others insist on having them immediately.
Some withdraw.
Others seek reassurance.
Some become defensive.
Others apologize excessively.
And some begin trying to control everything.
Including things that were never theirs to control.
That’s an especially interesting one because much of what we believe we control may be little more than an illusion of control.
We can influence another person.
We can communicate.
We can make requests.
We can establish boundaries.
But we cannot ultimately control another person’s thoughts, feelings, choices, or reactions.
And sometimes anxiety makes that reality particularly difficult to accept.
What Happens in Your Relationships?
This is where things can become especially interesting.
Anxiety rarely stays neatly contained inside one person.
Sometimes it changes the way we interpret the people around us.
Our romantic partner becomes quiet.
We assume they’re upset.
Our child becomes frustrated.
We feel responsible for immediately fixing the frustration.
Someone disagrees with us.
We experience the disagreement as rejection.
A family member seems distant.
We begin wondering whether we’ve done something wrong.
Or perhaps we respond in the opposite direction.
We become distant ourselves.
We stop sharing.
We avoid vulnerability.
We convince ourselves that we don’t need anyone.
All of these responses can make sense in different circumstances.
The important question isn’t necessarily whether a response is good or bad.
It’s whether we understand what may be happening.
And whether the response is helping us create the relationships we actually want.
Anxiety Has a Vocabulary
Sometimes anxiety sounds like this:
“What if everything goes wrong?”
“What if they don’t like me?”
“What if I fail?”
“What if I disappoint someone?”
“What if something happens to my family?”
“What if I can’t handle it?”
And then, almost immediately:
“I NEED TO FIGURE THIS OUT RIGHT NOW!”
Other times, anxiety sounds more subtle.
“I should probably check again.”
“I need to make sure.”
“I can’t relax until this is finished.”
“I just want everyone to be okay.”
“Maybe I should keep my thoughts to myself.”
“I don’t want to make things worse.”
And sometimes anxiety doesn’t use words at all.
It simply shows up as tension, restlessness, irritability, or an uncomfortable feeling that something isn’t quite right.
Becoming Curious About Your Own Anxiety
So here’s an exercise.
Not a test.
Not an assignment you have to complete perfectly.
Just a few questions worth considering.
When you experience anxiety, what happens to you physically, emotionally, mentally (in your thoughts), behaviorally (in what you do), and relationally (in how you interact with others)?
And perhaps we can become even more curious.
When are you most likely to experience anxiety?
Is there a particular time of day?
Certain situations?
Certain conversations?
Certain humans?
Perhaps you feel relatively calm throughout your workday, but something changes when you walk through the front door.
Maybe you become anxious when your romantic partner seems unusually quiet.
Perhaps you notice anxiety when your children aren’t listening, when plans change unexpectedly, or when someone asks you a question you don’t know how to answer.
Or maybe anxiety shows up when everything is going wonderfully.
And suddenly your mind starts wondering how long that will last.
You don’t have to answer every question.
Perhaps one or two stand out.
That’s enough to begin.
Awareness Is Information
There’s something important I want us to remember.
Recognizing anxiety doesn’t mean we’ve discovered something wrong with ourselves.
Anxiety is part of being human.
And the ways we’ve learned to respond to it may have developed for perfectly understandable reasons.
Perhaps worrying helped us prepare.
Perhaps avoiding conflict helped us maintain peace in a difficult environment.
Perhaps being highly attentive to other people’s emotions helped us navigate relationships that felt unpredictable.
Some of those strategies may have served us remarkably well.
Some may still serve us today.
Others may have become a little more expensive than they used to be.
But before we decide what to change, perhaps we can become curious about what we’ve learned to do.
That curiosity matters.
Because once we begin recognizing anxiety, we have a better opportunity to decide how we want to respond.
And sometimes the next step isn’t to think harder.
Sometimes it’s to help ourselves settle down.
That’s where we’re going next.
We’ll explore a few ways to self-soothe, including one small change in language that I learned from my own psychologist nearly two decades ago.
Two simple questions.
“What if?”
And “What is?”
You might be surprised by how different they can feel.