Anxiety is a common mental health condition that can cause excessive worrying, feelings of nervousness, panic, and trouble concentrating. For many people, anxiety also leads to unhelpful thinking patterns and thought spirals that can be distressing and overwhelming.
Anxious Thoughts Related to Fear and Danger
One of the most common thought patterns associated with anxiety involves an exaggerated sense of fear and perceived danger. Even when there is little or no true reason to be afraid, anxious thoughts can convince you that you are at immediate risk of something terrible happening.
Some examples of anxious thoughts related to fear include:
- Worrying excessively about your safety or the safety of loved ones
- Fearing that something catastrophic is about to occur, like having a heart attack or getting into a car accident
- Imagining worst-case scenarios, like the plane crashing or your house getting broken into
- Feeling like you need to be hypervigilant in order to stay safe
When anxiety causes excessive fear-based thoughts, you may avoid situations that trigger anxiety, even when the fear is unreasonable. For example, someone afraid of having a panic attack may avoid going to public places.
Worrying Thoughts
Anxiety can cause persistent worrying thoughts that are difficult to control or turn off. These anxious thoughts often focus on “what if” scenarios. Some examples include:
- What if I fail this test?
- What if I don’t get the job?
- What if my partner leaves me?
- What if I get sick?
This type of anxious thinking keeps your mind focused on all the things that could go wrong in any situation. Worrying thoughts may also zero in on minor concerns or potential problems that haven’t even happened.
Obsessive Thoughts
Obsessive thoughts are unwanted, intrusive thoughts or mental images that keep repeating in your mind. While obsessions are a key symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), they can also occur with anxiety disorders. Some examples of anxious obsessive thoughts include:
- Repeatedly doubting yourself or your actions
- Intrusive thoughts about germs, contamination or illness
- Fixating on thoughts of safety, order, symmetry or perfectionism
- Intrusive sexual, violent or blasphemous thoughts
Trying to control or get rid of obsessive thoughts often makes them worse. Avoidance, mental rituals, and compulsions offer only temporary relief from the anxiety these thoughts cause.
Racing Thoughts
Anxiety can speed up your thoughts, causing them to race uncontrollably. Racing thoughts may dart quickly from topic to topic or jump between multiple worries or fears. This type of anxious thinking can make it hard to focus or concentrate on anything else.
Racing thoughts may also involve thinking up worst case scenarios or imagining how past conversations or events could have gone differently. Or the stream of thoughts may be so rapid that the content feels jumbled or disorganized.
Thoughts About Losing Control
Anxiety frequently involves thoughts about losing control. You may fear that anxiety or panic will cause you to lose control of your actions, thoughts, emotions or mental state in some way, such as:
- Worrying that you could go crazy or lose your mind
- Fearing that you will be unable to control your panic
- Worrying that anxiety will cause you to act foolishly or erratically
- Fearing that you will blurt out something embarrassing
- Worrying that anxiety will harm your physical or mental health
Thoughts about losing control can perpetuate feelings of anxiety. You may avoid situations where such loss of control seems more likely, causing greater anxiety.
Perfectionistic Thoughts
Perfectionism and anxiety have a complex relationship, with each potentially feeding into the other. Anxiety may spur perfectionistic thoughts like:
- Needing to do things perfectly or else you will fail or be rejected
- Judging yourself harshly for even minor mistakes
- Excessive concern over small flaws and imperfections
- Harsh self-criticism when you do not meet your standards
Trying to live up to unrealistic perfectionistic standards can fuel anxiety. At the same time, anxiety may drive you to set impossible goals in hopes of reducing anxious feelings.
Overanalyzing Thoughts
Anxiety can lead to chronic overthinking and overanalyzing in situations where your thoughts go into overdrive. You may replay past conversations again and again, analyzing what you or others said. Or you may pick apart your own behavior, appearance or performance after an event.
Overanalysis thoughts may involve:
- Reviewing events to figure out what could have gone differently
- Scrutinizing your motives or intentions
- Ruminating on a stressful situation without reaching resolution
- Trying to determine the exact cause or meaning of another person’s behavior
While mild overanalyzing can sometimes help make sense of problems, excessive rumination tends to perpetuate anxiety.
Second-Guessing Thoughts
Anxiety can lead to increased self-doubt and difficulty making decisions. You may replay decisions over and over, second-guessing yourself. Or you may become paralyzed with indecision, unable to trust your judgment. Examples include:
- Changing your mind multiple times before committing to a choice
- Repeatedly questioning past decisions
- Mulling over even small choices, like what to order at a restaurant
- Asking for repeated reassurance from others after making minor decisions
Chronic self-doubt and difficulty trusting your own judgment is both a symptom of anxiety as well as a perpetuating factor. The inability to trust yourself and constant second-guessing can further exacerbate anxious thoughts and feelings.
Hopeless Thoughts
When anxiety is severe, it can contribute to thoughts of helplessness, hopelessness and pessimism. You may start to believe that things will never get better or that you cannot cope with challenges. Hopeless thoughts can include:
- Feeling like your anxiety will never go away or nothing will make it better
- Believing you cannot handle or cope with your anxiety or panic
- Thinking your worries and fears will eventually be confirmed
- Assuming any setback or difficulty is permanent and inescapable
Hopelessness is often linked to higher anxiety as well as an increased risk for depression in some individuals.
Thoughts About Health Worries
Many people with anxiety experience intrusive thoughts focused on health, illness and bodily symptoms. You may become hyperfocused on normal body sensations, interpreting them as signs of disease or catastrophic medical problems. Examples of anxious health-related thoughts include:
- Intently scanning your body for any unusual feelings or sensations
- Assuming that common physical symptoms, like a headache or stomachache, indicate serious illness
- Fearing that you have an undiagnosed major health condition or life-threatening disease
- Worrying that anxiety itself will have severe physical health consequences
These anxious thoughts can drive increased anxiety about your health as well as excessive checking and reassurance seeking behaviors.
Negative Thoughts About Yourself
Anxiety often involves increased negative thoughts about yourself, your perceived flaws, failures and shortcomings. Self-critical anxious thoughts may include:
- Believing that you are incompetent or incapable
- Worrying that you are unlikeable or unlovable
- Feeling that you are flawed, defective or a failure
- Judging yourself as awkward, unattractive or uncool
This type of negative self-talk both reflects anxiety and makes symptoms worse. It can lower self-esteem and fuel additional anxious thoughts and avoidance.
Anxious Thoughts About Food
Anxiety disorders like anorexia often involve thought distortions related to food, eating, weight and body image. Anxious thoughts may include preoccupation with:
- Calories, nutritional content, ingredients in food
- Body weight and shape
- Feeling fat or overweight
- Fear of gaining weight
- Appearance flaws and imperfections
These anxious thoughts perpetuate restricted or disordered eating habits and harmful efforts to control weight, such as fasting, purging or excessive exercise.
Thoughts About Social Judgment
Many anxious individuals suffer from fear of negative social evaluation. Your mind may generate anxious thoughts about how you appear to others or what others may think or say about you. Examples include:
- Worrying that people notice your anxiety
- Fearing that people judge you negatively or find you unlikable
- Overestimating the chances that you will embarrass yourself
- Assuming that people are critical or disapproving of you
These thoughts fuel anxiety about social situations and interactions with others. You may avoid feared social events where such judgments seem more likely.
Thoughts About Rejection
Fear of rejection is common in those with social anxiety or increased social avoidance. Your mind may generate anxious thoughts about rejection such as:
- Worrying that others do not want to talk to or interact with you
- Fearing that a romantic partner will leave you
- Believing that people exclude or avoid you
- Feeling that your friends or family do not support you
These thoughts cause increased anxiety about interacting socially. You may distance yourself from relationships to avoid the possibility of rejection.
Thoughts of Guilt and Responsibility
Anxiety can cause excessive feelings of guilt, blame and inflated responsibility. You may have intrusive thoughts like:
- Feeling responsible or to blame when anything goes wrong
- Worrying that you have let people down
- Ruminating on regrets, mistakes or actions you wish you could undo
- Believing that your thoughts or actions will cause bad things to happen
This type of anxious thinking causes intense guilt. You may take on too much responsibility in hopes of preventing bad outcomes or making up for perceived mistakes.
Thoughts About Life Regrets
Looking back on the past with regret is common when struggling with anxiety and depression. anxious thoughts focused on regret may involve:
- Ruminating on past choices you wish you could change
- Imagining how life would be different if you had made different decisions
- Blaming yourself for not pursuing goals or opportunities
- Feeling like anxiety or fear held you back from living the life you wanted
These types of thoughts can make anxiety feel even more overwhelming. However, research shows that regrets about inaction due to anxiety are often exaggerated.
Thoughts About Self-Medicating
People suffering from severe or chronic anxiety may have thoughts about self-medicating with drugs, alcohol or other unhealthy coping mechanisms, like gambling. Examples include:
- Fantasizing about how alcohol or drugs relieve anxiety
- Wanting to drink or use drugs to deal with stress
- Thinking substances are the only way to cope with anxiety
- Believing anxiety is impossible to handle without self-medicating
These thoughts reflect substance abuse issues that may co-occur with anxiety. Getting control over anxious thinking can help reduce the urge to self-medicate.
Suicidal Thoughts
In severe cases, anxiety may contribute to suicidal ideation and thoughts of death or suicide. Possible suicidal thoughts include:
- Thinking you cannot bear to live with anxiety any longer
- Wishing your life would end or thinking you’d be better off dead
- Imagining dying by suicide and ways you could kill yourself
- Planning out a suicide attempt
Severe or persistent suicidal thoughts require immediate intervention. Getting help through counseling, medication, or inpatient treatment can help overcome these thoughts when anxiety becomes unbearable or life-threatening.
Conclusion
Anxiety can lead to many types of unhelpful thinking patterns that fuel stress and panic. Learning to identify and counteract anxious thoughts takes practice but is an essential anxiety management skill. Cognitive-behavioral therapy provides structured techniques to reduce anxiety by changing thought distortions and intrusive thoughts.
While anxious thoughts feel uncontrollable in the moment, evidence-based strategies can help calm your mind and make space between thoughts. This allows you to view them more objectively. Over time, reducing anxious thoughts decreases associated avoidance and anxious feelings. Treatment also equips you with healthy ways of coping when anxiety strikes.