Anxious for no reason means you think your body is triggering physical anxiety for no reason, reasons you can’t explain, or reasons you aren’t aware of.
Recognize that we (humans) get immediately anxious when we’re faced with what we genuinely think is a life-or-death situation. Doesn’t that show that we have the machinery to experience fear/anxiety at “the flip of a switch?”
Does it then not sound plausible that this machinery could be used for non-life-or-death situations that we think are dangerous–to us–in some way? For example, if you think looking stupid or weak is unacceptable and therefore dangerous to us in some way, why wouldn’t your body trigger the fear response when considering or doing something where you’d look stupid? Note: Stupid is a loaded term.
The below psychologists weigh in to explain that although it feels like we get anxious for no reason, we almost always get anxious for a reason. These reasons can often be found in the thoughts we had at the time of the physical anxiety. They (us included) suggest that with enough time to reflect, you can uncover these reasons.
I sometimes ask people what they were thinking when they experienced a disturbed mood. Some people will say “my mind was blank,” or “I wasn’t thinking anything,” which is consistent with the aforementioned (though debated) definition of a mood. From a learning perspective, this makes sense. Over time, beliefs may become so strongly associated with specific triggers that they are elicited automatically and relatively unconsciously by the brain. Even though the beliefs may be inaccessible to consciousness, they affect us nonetheless (much like subliminal presentations) because of older pathways in the brain that have evolved to prepare us immediately for action. Malek Mneime, Ph.D.Tweet
Check out our “How to Eliminate Anxiety Triggers” solution to learn how to find and eliminate your physical anxiety triggers.
Another breakdown for why it feels like we (humans) get anxious for no reason is here.
