“Sometimes it gets better, but I never know
when it will next flare up.”
This is a word-for-word sentence from the form on this site. And I get similar ones all the time: “I tend to analyse things a lot, think about them and then doubt them a lot too.” “I replay situations that happened over and over in my head, or I work out what could happen. Mainly so I’m prepared.” They’re written by people nobody can tell anything about from the outside. That’s exactly why it’s so exhausting: calm on the outside, a non-stop shift inside.
Your head isn’t broken. It’s keeping watch.
Picture a night watchman in an empty warehouse. He got a single task: walk the rounds and shout when something’s wrong. And he does it honestly. His torch is charged, his ears are pricked, he checks every creak. Because a long time ago something really did happen there, and he’s taken it seriously ever since. The trouble isn’t that he watches badly. The trouble is that nobody told him when his shift ends. So he keeps walking. On Sunday evening, on holiday, at three in the morning while you sleep.
This is anxiety. It’s not a disorder or a weak character, it’s a function that runs even where there’s nothing to watch. Thinking ahead is the watchman doing one more round of the storeroom to be sure. Replaying backwards is the same watchman checking whether he missed anything. Panic is the moment he hits the alarm: heart up, breath shallow, body ready to run from something that isn’t in the building. And because security also runs the body, it can’t be talked round with arguments. The sentence “nothing is happening” has never helped you, because you’re not talking to reason. You’re talking to the watchman. He’s dealt with differently: he gets a job description, clear boundaries and the information about when he’s off duty.
Three reasons I see in people most often
1. The watchman never got a job description
On his own he can’t tell the difference between an unopened message from your boss and real trouble. Both get the same alarm. If you never draw a line between what is a genuine threat and what is merely unpleasant, your brain will do it for you. And it will play safe, because it’s set to sound off ten times for nothing rather than once too late. From the outside it looks like oversensitivity. From the inside it’s honest work with no brief. That’s why so many people describe anxiety as something that comes “out of nowhere”: the trigger was there, nobody just named it.
2. You mistake thinking for solving
Overthinking is sticky mainly because it looks useful. When you run through ten scenarios in advance, you feel like you’re preparing, like you’re buying a piece of certainty. For a moment the relief is real. But the relief lasts a few minutes and your head takes one thing away from it: circling worked, so next time we’ll do more of it. It’s the same with replaying backwards, when you’re up until midnight working out what you should have said differently. The giveaway is easy: after an hour of thinking you don’t have a single decision more than you had at the start. One client summed it up in a sentence I still remember: “My thinking has looped so much that I’ve been treading water for a long time.”
3. He watches loudest where you care most
“When it comes to the crunch, my head betrays me.” I hear it from athletes, from people about to give a presentation, from someone who trades calmly on a demo account and is flooded by panic with real money. It isn’t betrayal. It’s the watchman who knows something is at stake here, so he turns the volume up. So stage fright isn’t proof you don’t have it in you. It’s proof that you care, the volume just came at a bad moment. Anger that flies out over a trifle belongs here too. When the alarm has been on all day, a small thing is enough and security swings first. Not because you’re hot-tempered, but because he’s drained and overworked.
What you can do about it now
Write the whole sentence out
Not “I have anxiety”. Write down exactly what the watchman is reporting: “I’m afraid that at Monday’s meeting they’ll find out I’m behind.” Vague anxiety is strong precisely because it’s vague. As soon as you turn it into one concrete sentence on paper, you can work with it. Sometimes it turns out there’s nothing to deal with tonight, because that sentence is about Monday.
Split it into mine and not mine
Make two columns: what I can affect by tomorrow evening and what I can’t. Do one thing from the first column today, the smallest one is fine. Write an e-mail, make a call, find out a date. Do nothing with the second column. The watchman quietens down when he sees something is happening, not when you shout at him to be quiet.
Give your worries a fixed window
Twenty minutes a day, at the same time every day, better not right before sleep. In that window you’re allowed to think at full volume and write it all down on paper. When it speaks up at another time, note it in one line and push it into the window. This isn’t about banning thinking. It’s about giving it a time and a place so it doesn’t take the whole day.
Tell your body it’s over
The watchman keeps the body on standby and the body answers before reason does. For two minutes breathe so that the out-breath is longer than the in-breath: in for four, out for eight. Or go for fifteen minutes of brisk walking, no headphones and no phone. It isn’t a trick to calm you down. It’s a language security understands, because it doesn’t use words.
Map the last three waves
Take the three most recent moments when it flared up and write down what came before them: how much you slept, how much coffee there was, who you’d been talking to, what day of the week it was. Most people are convinced it comes with no cause. After three entries they usually see a pattern that was there the whole time.
Does this sound familiar?
Tick what fits you:
Three or more ticks means your watchman is working full time, and it’s worth dealing with. If panic attacks or long weeks with no change come with it, start with what’s in the white box above.
If your head won’t leave you alone
A session lasts two hours, so there’s time to get further than “try breathing”. We’ll go through when exactly your watchman sets off the alarm, what he actually wants from you and where it takes your performance. I use personality typology for that, not as a box, but as a language, so we can tell what’s your wiring and what’s just a habit that can be reset. Feel free to come with nothing more than “I don’t know what to do with it”. The intro session lasts 20–30 minutes, it’s online, free and commits you to nothing.
Free intro session →