What lies beneath anxiety

Anxiety often feels like a warning. It convinces us that something is about to go wrong, that disappointment, failure, or danger is waiting somewhere just ahead.

For some people, this expectation becomes so deeply rooted that it begins to shape the way they move through everyday life. Instead of responding to what is happening in the present, the mind becomes absorbed in what might happen next.

Living this way is exhausting. Persistent mental tension often comes with fatigue, restless sleep, difficulty concentrating, and a growing sense of disconnection from everyday life. Over time, anxiety begins to diminish the capacity to experience satisfaction, curiosity, or even moments of ease.

When thinking replaces feeling

From a psychoanalytic perspective, anxiety is not simply an emotion. It is better understood as a state in which thinking overwhelms feeling (Bolognini, 2024). Rather than being in touch with emotional experience, the anxious person becomes caught in an endless stream of intrusive thoughts. The mind races from one threatening possibility to another, leaving little room for reflection.

When anxiety takes hold, time can seem to stand still. The person may feel trapped, unable to imagine that what they are experiencing will eventually pass. As familiar themes of danger return again and again, an individual may gradually become disconnected. Not only from other people, but also from themselves.

What is anxiety pulling us away from?

This raises an important question. If anxiety pulls us away from the present by filling our minds with fearful thoughts, what exactly is it pulling us away from?

Psychoanalytic thinking suggests that anxiety often creates distance from emotions that are much harder to bear. Feelings such as fear, inadequacy, shame, guilt, or anger do not simply disappear because we are no longer aware of them. They continue to exist outside conscious awareness and often return in disguised form, as stories about what could happen tomorrow rather than as feelings about what has already happened.

Looking beneath the surface

Looking beneath the surface of anxiety shifts our attention away from the future and toward the past. The emotions that give rise to anxiety may be rooted in earlier experiences that have never been fully understood or emotionally processed.

Understanding anxiety in relation to these earlier experiences offers something anxious thinking can't: the possibility of moving forward. Experiences that once felt overwhelming, together with the emotions they carried and the needs that remained unmet, often become more manageable when they can finally be reflected upon in the present.

When the threat comes from within

In this sense, the danger may not lie outside us at all. It may belong to something carried within: an experience that emerged at a stage of life when we simply did not have the emotional resources to make sense of it or bear it (Winnicott, 1974). Because it could not be expressed in words, it remained psychologically unprocessed, continuing to generate tension beneath awareness. Rather than remaining in the past, experiences that once felt too overwhelming to be understood may return as anxiety, making future threats feel immediate and real (Freud, 1920). External circumstances can intensify this process, making the resulting distress even harder to endure.

Living with anxiety

Of course, anxiety is part of being human. Life confronts us with uncertainty, change, loss, and new beginnings, making some degree of anxiety unavoidable. At times, it also serves an important psychological function. A certain level of anxiety can help us prepare, take responsibility, and respond to the demands of life. Without it, we might never feel compelled to act.

But when the same anxieties return repeatedly and begin to leave us feeling stuck rather than engaged with life, a different question becomes worth asking. Instead of focusing only on what we are afraid might happen next, we might ask what these recurring anxieties have been trying to communicate all along.

Sometimes, becoming curious about the meaning of our anxiety is the first step toward loosening the cycle of repetition.

References: Bolognini, S. (2024). An integrative analytic functioning: Therapeutic factors for the ego and the self [Seminar presentation]. Psychoanalytic Function in a Changing World, Istanbul Psychoanalytic Association. · Freud, S. (1955). Beyond the pleasure principle. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 18, pp. 1–64). Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1920.) · Winnicott, D. W. (1974). Fear of breakdown. International Review of Psychoanalysis, 1, 103–107.

Written by Ezgi Firat Buyukbas, Psychologist and Psychotherapist at IASO Wellbeing Centre.