Feeling Anxious: When Waking Up, at Night, and More

By Angela Saulsbery, M.A.
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
Does anxiety hold you back in life? Even when you cope well, anxiety can be painful and tiring. Below, learn what causes anxiety and what strategies can reduce it.
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On Thanksgiving, I found my cat nestled among the groceries, chewing contemplatively on the yellow netting that surrounded a quintet of lemons. I shooed her off the counter while my partner transferred the lemons to a bowl and threw away the netting. Even so, I felt a twist in my stomach as I imagined the plastic doing something medically unfortunate to her feline digestive tract. Even as I dug into a slice of fudgy chocolate cake after dinner, these mental pictures distracted me. I wondered whether I should pop back to the house to check on my cat. 
Although my cat seems healthy as I write, I still worry about her. The worries I described above are an example of anxiety–dread and fear in anticipation of a potential threat. Anxiety is distinct from fear, which is intense physiological arousal that prepares us to deal with a present threat. The (typically unpleasant) emotion of anxiety can be accompanied by physical sensations, patterns of thought, and behaviors aimed at reducing the threat or minimizing the anxiety.
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What Does Feeling Anxious Feel Like? (A Definition)

Anxiety manifests differently for different people. Physical symptoms include sweaty palms, shaking or trembling, fast heartbeat, indigestion, headaches, insomnia, loss of appetite, and many more (Konkel, 2021). These symptoms can be linked to your body’s physiological arousal as it prepares to ward off a threat. (If you’re experiencing any of these symptoms, especially for the first time, it’s worth seeing a doctor to rule out other causes.)

Anxiety can also manifest cognitively with symptoms such as worries, racing thoughts, rumination, and loss of concentration. For example, the worries about my cat’s health that made it hard for me to present for parts of Thanksgiving dinner. Anxiety might also appear as seemingly endless trains of “what if?” questions.

I’ve summed up anxiety to friends as “basically the conflict of, ‘I can’t, but I must’—but usually at least one of those assumptions is wrong.” Anxiety is linked to our fight-or-flight response and can help us prepare for real threats. For example, if you feel anxious before an important exam, you might study more and earn a higher score than you otherwise would have. If anxiety becomes chronic and disruptive, however, it can be part of a psychological disorder such as generalized anxiety disorder or panic disorder. In the video below, Dr. Jen Gunter explains the difference between normal anxiety and anxiety disorders.

Video: What's Normal Anxiety–And What's an Anxiety Disorder?

Opposite of Feeling Anxious

Conditions of uncertainty and potential threat tend to inspire anxiety. If you don’t know what will happen next and don’t trust yourself to cope with the possibilities, you might feel anxious. If you feel confident to handle whatever comes, though, you’ll probably feel less anxious. Confidence is one of anxiety’s opposites.

Anxiety usually happens when you care about the outcome of a situation, so apathy can also be considered the opposite of anxiety. If you genuinely stop caring about test grades, for example, you might not feel anxious as you walk into a midterm.

Examples of Feeling Anxious

  • Noticing your hands shaking the morning leading up to a professional licensing exam.
  • Imagining all the ways a first date could go wrong.
  • Checking that your stove is off and your front door is locked—twelve times.
  • Repeatedly asking your doctor for reassurance that you don’t have a fatal disease.
  • Refusing to go outside because there might be a spider out there.
  • Snapping at your friends because you’re anxious about an upcoming meeting with your boss.

Causes of Feeling Anxious

Anxiety can be a normal response to life events (Konkel, 2021). If uncertainty and chaos are major features of your environment (e.g., an abusive home or a competitive career field with little job security), it makes sense to feel anxious. Even after moving to a safer environment, this anxiety may persist. Anxiety can also be a normal response to short-term stressors like an upcoming exam, a first date, or a dental appointment. 

Anxiety can also have physiological causes. For example, sleep deprivation or excessive caffeine intake can cause or exacerbate anxiety. It’s also possible that some people inherit a predisposition to experience more frequent or intense anxiety than average. Even if you’re especially anxiety-prone or have a family history of anxiety, there’s nothing wrong with you. But you might find strategies to manage your anxiety helpful.

How to Stop Feeling Anxious

In some cases, anxiety can be a normal and even appropriate response to life events. Occasional situational anxiety, such as jitters before a final exam, might push you to perform better (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018). If you experience only occasional anxiety that seems to benefit you, you might not need to stop the anxiety–instead, consider harnessing it to get closer to your goals. 

If you’re in an abusive, chaotic, and/or unpredictable environment, such as a particularly intense job, your best bet may be to leave for a better environment. Of course, leaving is not always (immediately) possible and may not be your preferred solution. If you’re a member of a marginalized group, racist, homophobic, misogynistic, classist, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory environments may (understandably) contribute to your anxiety, but it’s probably not feasible to move beyond the reach of systemic oppression. Pockets of safety (like a good support group) might be the best remedy.

When anxiety becomes a problem, self-help, seeking professional help, or a mix of both approaches might resolve or reduce your symptoms. Numerous workbooks, articles, podcasts, online communities, etcetera exist to support people with anxiety. If you prefer to work with a professional (or if self-help approaches don’t work well for you), many therapists specialize in anxiety treatment. You can also talk with a psychiatrist or general practitioner about medication options. 

If money is a barrier to seeking treatment, you might be able to find free, low-cost, or sliding-scale services in your area–for example, local universities may run free or low-cost clinics staffed by counseling and/or clinical psychology students. Non-profit hospital systems may also offer financial aid for medically necessary services, which can include outpatient behavioral health services. (When my finances were at their worst, I applied for financial aid from my local hospital system to help with a roughly $500 bill, and I received a 100% discount. So I recommend getting in touch with the financial aid or billing departments of your healthcare providers to see whether you can work out discounts, sliding scales, or payment plans.)

Feeling Anxious When Waking Up

Morning increases in cortisol release (the cortisol awakening response) may contribute to anxiety when waking up. The cortisol awakening response might prepare your body for the stress and challenges of the day. If you’re prone to anxiety, you may experience a weaker cortisol awakening response (Walker et al., 2011). This weaker response could contribute to anxiety, be caused by it, both, or neither. Further, research has produced mixed findings as to the relationship between CAR and psychological disorders.

You can test your cortisol levels with this home kit.

If you experience morning anxiety, you can try tracking its patterns to see if there’s a trigger in your life. For example, do you wake up feeling anxious on days when you’re planning to see a certain friend? Do you feel more anxious on workdays than on days off? On days when you sleep in? On rainy days? My cat usually curls up in bed next to me, but when she decides to do her own thing, I often wake up feeling more anxious than usual. I also feel more morning anxiety when I travel, or when my partner travels. 

If you can identify a trigger (or triggers), you can brainstorm ways to address them. If plans with that one friend are making you anxious, maybe it’s time to distance yourself from that friend or talk to them about the negative aspects of your relationship. If work is fuelling your morning anxiety, you can consider whether to switch jobs, change careers, or adjust the way you work to mitigate the anxiety. You may not be able to influence cats or the weather, but you might be able to balance them with stress-relieving additions like a weighted blanket, a noise machine, or stuffed animals.

Feeling Anxious at Night

If you’re stressed, but work, family time, hobbies, or other activities keep you occupied during the day, you might notice an uptick in anxiety and worries at bedtime (which, for most of us, is at night). Once you’re relaxing and no one is asking anything of you, your mind is free to wander. If you think problem-solving could be helpful, you can try daily journaling. You can also try diverting your mind with relaxing but engrossing activities, such as reading a book, doing a crossword puzzle, or listening to music. ​

Feeling Anxious After Eating

Anxiety after eating can be a symptom of an eating disorder or digestive issue. If you’re experiencing symptoms of an eating disorder, I recommend seeking the help of a therapist who specializes in their treatment. If left untreated, eating disorders can cause long-term or permanent damage to your physical health.

If your anxiety after eating isn’t related to an eating disorder, it might be worth tracking patterns to see whether your anxiety could be linked to a food sensitivity (or conflict with your dining companions). As a teenager, I suffered from chronic gastrointestinal issues that often caused pain. I felt anxious after eating while I waited to find out how my system would react to my meal. In my case, identifying, learning about, and treating my conditions restored my trust in my body and relieved my anxiety.

Feeling Anxious in a Relationship

In any relationship, you’ll likely feel anxious at least occasionally. If you have an anxious or disorganized attachment style, anxiety will probably crop up more frequently than if you have a secure or avoidant attachment style. Fortunately, it is possible to move toward greater attachment security (particularly with the help of a therapist). You can learn about attachment styles through many books, websites, and podcasts. The book Attached (Levine & Heller, 2010) is a great place to start. You can also visit attachedthebook.com for more information (including a brief quiz to help you home in on your attachment style).

Feeling Anxious at Work

Most of us rely on our jobs for financial security–we need them to pay for food, housing, and (in some countries) healthcare. So it’s no surprise that work worries are one of the more common anxiety themes. It’s worth assessing what characteristics of your workplace may promote anxiety–is your workload too heavy? Do your supervisors and colleagues frown on time off? Are you doing work that goes against your personal ethics? If so, can you tackle any of these issues directly? In my experience, even when it seems impossible and terrifying to take these steps, doing so usually swiftly decreases anxiety. Anxiety can also arise from a conflict between your personality and the demands of your job–for example, maybe evaluations trigger you, but your job requires frequent evaluation. If this scenario sounds familiar, you can reduce anxiety either by increasing your comfort with evaluation or by switching to a role that requires less evaluation.

Depending on employee and anxiety characteristics, anxiety can either improve or worsen work performance (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018). Chronic anxiety can interfere with work by draining employees’ emotional resources (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018). Employees who are emotionally intelligent, motivated, and good at their jobs may perform better with anxiety, however (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018). Even though anxiety need not be a career-killer, I don’t recommend it as a career-booster (unless it’s temporary anxiety that helps your thinking, rather than derailing it).

Feeling Anxious Before A Period

​Many people experience anxiety associated with their menstrual cycles. If you already have an anxiety disorder (including OCD and PTSD), your symptoms might get worse the week before and the week during your period (Green & Graham, 2021; Nillni et al., 2021). Again, tracking your anxiety symptoms might be your best first step–this way, you can find out whether and how fluctuations in your anxiety map onto your menstrual cycle. The ability to predict your anxiety symptoms can help you prepare for them. You can also bring your observations to a doctor or therapist, who may be able to offer additional medical or psychotherapeutic support during the most anxious times of your cycle.

Feeling Anxious After Drinking

Hangover anxiety, or “hangxiety,” might happen because of alcohol’s effects on GABA, the brain’s main inhibitory neurotransmitter (Moyer, 2022). Because alcohol simulates the effects of GABA, after a night of drinking, the brain may try to reestablish equilibrium in neurotransmitter signaling by reducing GABA and increasing signaling of an excitatory neurotransmitter called glutamate (Moyer, 2022). Drinking might also increase next-day anxiety by disrupting quality sleep (Moyer, 2022).

Feeling Anxious for No Reason

PTSD is a possible (though by no means the only) explanation for feeling anxious “for no reason.” In her memoir What My Bones Know, Stephanie Foo discusses the “dread” that is her near-constant companion (2022). She explains that this initially inexplicable dread is probably the product of a multiplicity of triggers–with hundreds of traumatic events in her past, she likely has thousands of triggers, most of which she may not consciously recognize. ​

Quotes on Feeling Anxious

  • “To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self…. And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one’s self.” — Søren Kierkegaard
  • “A brain scan may reveal the neural signs of anxiety, but a Kokoschka painting, or a Schiele self-portrait, reveals what an anxiety state really feels like. Both perspectives are necessary if we are to fully grasp the nature of the mind, yet they are rarely brought together.” – Eric Kandel
  • “Anxiety is part of creativity, the need to get something out, the need to be rid of something or to get in touch with something within.” – David Duchovny
  • “A mistake in judgment isn't fatal, but too much anxiety about judgment is.” – Pauline Kael
  • “I think anxiety is dangerous, but it makes you think it's your friend.” – Noah Baumbach
  • “The best therapists can do with sadness, anger, and anxiety is to help patients live in the more comfortable part of their set range.” – Martin Seligman

Articles Related to Feeling Anxious

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:​​​​

Books Related to Feeling Anxious​

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Feeling Anxious

Although anxiety is a normal part of the human experience, and it can motivate us to prepare and perform well, it can also cause pain and hold us back. Anxiety can be associated with any number of potential biological, psychological, and social causes: Examples include sleep deprivation, alcohol consumption, work-related stressors, relationship tension, trauma, and certain times of day. Anxiety can rise to the level of a disorder if it causes you distress and interferes with your daily life (e.g., it causes problems for your work, keeps you from making friends, or gets in the way of your romantic relationship). If you think you might be suffering from an anxiety disorder, a therapist or other mental health professional may be able to help you with therapy and/or medication. Self-help approaches such as lifestyle changes, workbooks, and support group participation may also help keep anxiety in check.

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