What anxiety actually feels like

Often much less dramatic than people expect. For a lot of people it’s not a panic attack in a supermarket. It’s a loop that starts quietly after something has gone well, gets louder, and eventually turns physical. Tight chest, short breath, and complete conviction that you’ve damaged something, when nothing has happened. The absence of a real threat is the defining feature, not evidence that you’re imagining it.

I want to tell you about a panic attack I had a few years ago.

Not because it was dramatic. It wasn’t, particularly. It started, as most of mine do, with a good evening.

Dinner with close friends. Alive conversation. I was fully engaged, asking questions, sharing ideas, probably talking more than was necessary. By the time I got home I felt energised and glad to have been there.

Then I lay down. And the loop started.

“Was that too much?” “Did I push too hard?” “Was I too intense?” “Did I say something that landed wrong?”

The questions arrived quietly at first. Then less quietly. Within about an hour, the mental noise had become physical. Chest tight. Breath short. Lying in the dark with the absolute conviction that I had, in some irreversible way, damaged the relationships I valued most.

Nothing bad had happened. The dinner was fine.

That’s what anxiety can look like. Not always dramatic. Often just a loop that starts quietly and doesn’t stop.

I’m a Registered Counsellor. I work with anxiety in my practice regularly, individual clients, group work, corporate settings. I understand the clinical picture reasonably well.

I also know what it feels like from the inside. Because I still experience it.

This particular pattern, the post-event social audit, the hypervigilance about how I came across, the physical symptoms that arrive when the adrenaline fades, has roots in something specific to me. A fear of abandonment that goes a long way back, and that tends to activate most forcefully in the moments when I care most about getting it right.

Knowing that doesn’t make the alarm stop going off. It does make it possible to respond differently.

There’s a technique I use in these moments that I find effective.

When the loop starts, when I notice I’m being pulled back into old patterns, old fears, old stories, I say to myself, quietly: Not this. Not this.

It’s not a denial of what I’m feeling. It’s a recognition. I’m saying: I know what this is. I know what’s happening. This is an old alarm going off in response to something that isn’t actually a threat right now.

The practice is to name it rather than feed it. To step out of the loop rather than argue with it. Not to fight the thoughts, but to acknowledge what they’re and let them pass.

Some nights it takes a few minutes. Some nights it takes longer. But it works. And with practice, the gap between the trigger and the recognition gets shorter.

Because there’s a persistent and damaging idea that people in the mental health profession are somehow exempt from the things they treat. That training equals immunity. That insight means you don’t carry your own stuff.

None of that’s true.

What’s true is that the work, done properly, over time, gives you a different relationship with your own experience. The alarm still fires. You just stop believing every threat it announces.

If you find yourself in that post-conversation loop, the replay, the second-guessing, the 2am certainty that you’ve got it wrong, you’re not broken. You’re not weak. You’re someone who cares deeply and whose nervous system has learned to be hypervigilant about protecting the things that matter.

That vigilance once served a purpose. The work is figuring out when to listen to it and when to say, as gently and firmly as you can manage: not this. Not this.

14.*

• Name the loop while it is running. Not to argue with it. Just to establish that what is happening is a familiar pattern rather than accurate information about the evening.

• Check the timing. Post-event rumination usually starts after the adrenaline drops, which is why it lands at night and why the timing has nothing to do with the seriousness of what you are worrying about.

• Try “not this, not this.” Quietly, when the loop begins. It is recognition rather than denial. You are saying you know what this is.

• Write the thought down and read it in the morning. The 2am version and the 7am version of the same thought are rarely the same size, and you cannot learn that without the evidence.

• Look for what it is protecting. Hypervigilance is almost always guarding something you care about. Naming what usually reduces the volume more than arguing with the content does.

This week: the next time the loop starts, write the thought down instead of following it. Read it back the next morning.

For many people it’s a loop rather than an event. Repetitive questioning of something that has already happened, escalating quietly, then arriving physically as a tight chest, shallow breathing or restlessness. It frequently turns up after something has gone well rather than badly.

Because the adrenaline that carried you through the event drops afterwards, and the nervous system goes back over the ground looking for anything it might have missed. It tends to happen when you care most about how something went, not when you’ve done something wrong.

Yes. Anxiety is an alarm system, and alarm systems are calibrated to be wrong in the safe direction. Firing in the absence of a real threat is what they’re built to do. It becomes a problem when it fires often enough to shape how you live.

Yes. Training isn’t immunity. What the work changes over time is the relationship with the experience rather than the presence of it. The alarm still goes off. You stop believing every threat it announces.

Naming it moves you from inside the loop to looking at it, and those are two different positions. It doesn’t stop the feeling. It reliably shortens the gap between the trigger and the recognition, and that gap is where the choice lives.

If it’s affecting your sleep, your work or your relationships, or if it has been constant for weeks rather than turning up occasionally, that’s worth a conversation. A GP is a reasonable first call and costs you one appointment.

Solid Foundations Counselling is not a crisis service. If you or someone you know needs immediate help, contact one of the following.

• Emergency: Triple Zero (000)
• Lifeline: 13 11 14, or text 0477 13 11 14, 24 hours
• Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467
• Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636
• MensLine Australia: 1300 78 99 78
• 13YARN: 13 92 76

If you recognise the loop and you’re ready to look at it with somebody, I offer a free introductory call. No cost, no pressure, no obligation. Click the banner above or get in touch on 0422967392.

• Clarity: when the work starts working
• The illusion of perfection
• What detachment actually means
• Will getting help cost you your licence?
• Still living with scars
• The darkness: what depression actually looks like