Bleeding Before We Are Cut: What is Anticipatory Anxiety?
Anticipatory anxiety builds before events and can lead to avoidance. The goal isn’t to eliminate it, but to not let it make your decisions.
Ever catch yourself dreading that concert or happy hour you were sooooo excited about RSVP’ing? You start noticing that pit in your stomach growing the closer you get to the event in the weeks, days, or hours leading up to it. You start thinking about all the ways it might go wrong, or become too overwhelming. Maybe you even begin brainstorming excuses to cancel, despite the logical part of your brain screaming,
“Hey this is stupid, you WANT to go to this!”
Anticipatory anxiety overlaps with generalized anxiety, but it’s more focused on what’s coming next.
Generalized anxiety tends to be more persistent, like an annoying background hum that sticks around regardless of what’s happening. Anticipatory anxiety builds around a specific event, and often peaks just before. That “peak” of anxiety can often lead to avoidant behavior like having a sudden desire to cancel.
We can also think of anticipatory anxiety as different layers of fear.
- First, there’s the fear itself. In the case of a concert, maybe it’s a crowd of people.
- Then, there’s the fear of feeling afraid. “If there’s a crowd, I might get overwhelmed”
- And sometimes, even the fear that the feeling won’t stop. “If I get overwhelmed, I might lose control, have a panic attack, and I won’t even enjoy the concert. I should probably just sell my tickets and not risk it.”
At that point, it’s not really about the event anymore. It’s about not wanting to feel anxious.
Anticipatory anxiety can make us believe we are bleeding out before we even get cut. It leaves us feeling disappointed in the energy and time we lost worrying about the event, and frustrated at our nervous system for just trying to do it’s job and protect us. While we can’t always eliminate the feeling completely, we can work on not letting it make our decisions for us.
This week, I want to challenge you to pick one thing you’d normally overthink and go for it anyway. It doesn’t have to be anything big, but something just uncomfortable enough to feel through your emotions. Instead of fighting the anxiety, see if you can make a little room for it and still move forward. Maybe it’s a dance class you’ve always wanted to try, or happy hour with friends.
What would it look like to go anyway, and let yourself be surprised?
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