Why Do I Feel Anxious For No Reason? Understanding Hidden Triggers

In my Worthing hypnotherapy practice, I see a lot of people whose lives are ticking along nicely enough, but they feel excessively anxious. There is nothing specific that we can point a finger at. They just feel on edge, unable to be in the moment, in a constant state of high alert, stuck in fight or flight, or wake up every morning feeling dread.

It is not that they feel anxious for no reason; there is always a reason, but that reason does not mean that the anxiety is necessary.

It's natural and healthy to experience anxious thoughts and feelings that come and go, but sometimes these experiences take up residence and start to feel like they are a part of you, and the anxious experience itself starts to cause anxiety.

If you know the reason, then you can take steps to deal with it so the experience calms down or becomes obsolete, but if you do not know the reason, then it can leave you somewhat high and dry with no clues as to how to deal with it.

Based on my experience with clients in practice, here are some suggestions as to what might be causing that unknown anxiety:

Past Trauma That Triggers Anxiety

Trauma is not what happened; it is the meaning that you make of it. I am not saying what happened was not important, of course it was important at the time, but whatever happened is not happening any more.

If you grow up in a dangerous house, then you develop a natural state of high alert to survive, and this can remain with you into adulthood, even after life has become safer. Emotional or psychological patterns learned in one part of your life can remain active in later life, and when something here is associated with that time, those old emotions can come very much alive.

Hypnosis can be a great tool for learning when my clients first learned to feel this feeling that they are feeling now for no known reason. I can hypnotise someone, focus them on the unwanted feeling and trace it back to their first experience that taught them to feel that way.

I remember a client who came to see me because she felt scared of everything. We traced this feeling back to a memory when she was about six, hiding under a kitchen table while her parents attacked each other. My favourite way to do this is to use the mind's ability to experience the imagined as real and send her adult self into the memory to rescue the child, comfort the child and bring the child back to live here and now – when life is safe. If the child is no longer afraid, then the adult is no longer afraid. This can work wonders with a lot of people, like years of therapy in one session.

Habits that trigger anxiety

Sometimes we can get stuck in unhelpful feedback loops. You smoke and get anxious about your health, and because you are anxious, you smoke more. Like a snake eating its own tail. There is no reason for the anxiety apart from the behaviour that the anxiety is causing.

I saw a client for procrastination some time ago. Her life was ticking along fine, but she was just not getting on with things that had to be done, and had begun snacking compulsively to distract herself from what needed doing. We had a couple of sessions, and nothing specific came up, so we did some work on the snacking and changing habits. Things improved, but something was still there. In the third session, we did some work that revealed a deep fear that she was going to mess up her lovely life, and so she had developed this subconscious strategy to avoid all tasks that reminded her of that fear. Once she was aware of this consciously, I was able to help her feel more comfortable with the fear, so her subconscious stopped distracting her from it, and she could get on with the jobs that would ensure she did not mess up her life.

Invisible Stories That Trigger Anxiety

When you feel anxious for no reason, it can often be driven by a story that is invisible to the conscious mind.

Your life is a story that you tell yourself. Some of that story is conscious, and some of it is subconscious. Now, the thing about the subconscious is that it does not live in the same world as the conscious mind. There is no difference between reality and imagination in your inner world. The subconscious languages are emotion and imagination, and when those two things come together, anything can happen.

You can read a bit more about the difference between conscious and subconscious here.

One of the more unusual invisible stories I have come across was a client who came to me for alcoholism. It seemed that he drank to escape powerful feelings of anxiety and depression, but he had done twenty years of therapy to try to shift these feelings without any progress.

I used a technique called THE SWAN to elicit answers straight from his subconscious mind, and I spoke to a part of his mind that claimed to be someone who had followed him from a previous life. My client had done this person great wrong in a previous life, and so they were here to return the favour. No therapy had worked for him until now because the problem was not his. I offered to give this 'person' therapy, and they accepted. I helped them let go of the anger they felt towards him so they could move on, which we achieved as all his anxiety and depression disappeared.

Was this real or was it just a story that his subconscious imagined as an explanation for anxiety and depression it did not understand? With hypnosis, it does not matter – we change the story and experience changes.

Thoughts That Trigger Anxiety

Life is a minefield. We do not live in a simple world. A degree of risk assessment is necessary every day to ensure we budget appropriately and do not take unnecessary risks. This is something we all need to do without feeling unnecessary stress or anxiety.

Someone can develop severe anxiety when they start to mistake thoughts of a worst-case scenario for reality. That thought of what might happen becomes a thought of what is going to happen. When the thought is mistaken for reality, the body starts responding to the thought as if it is an actual event. The imagination is experienced as reality.

I really enjoy working with my clients in a way that helps them see the illusionary nature of the thought. When you can see the difference between thought and reality, risk assessment is easy. When you know the thoughts are not reality, there is no strong emotional response.

Feelings That Trigger Anxiety

Fear and anxiety are patterns of thoughts and feelings, and it is important to our survival. They feel horrible, but experience fear in order to feel safe, and anxiety in order to avoid problems. The thing is, sometimes you will feel afraid when there is nothing to fear. Sometimes anxiety will warn you of something when there is no threat. Your feelings are not always right.

Koumpounophobia is a fear of buttons. It is quite common, but buttons do not merit fear – they are not dangerous. The feeling is wrong.

Some of these fearful or anxious feelings can be intense, and as soon as you start fearing the feeling, you start feeling anxious about getting anxious and off you go, stuck in another fear loop. If you fear the feeling, you cannot spend some time with it in order to decide if it is telling you something useful or not, and so it will likely keep happening (for no reason).

I spend a lot of time with clients helping them focus in on a feeling and experience it for what it is – a sensation – without being overwhelmed by it,so that we can teach the brain that the feeling is safe. This stops the anxiety spiralling out of control until it is just a feeling that comes and goes without a fear response. Sometimes useful and sometimes not.

If you are ready to explore your own mysterious anxiety, then please contact me through one of the methods detailed here.