01/09/2025
Anxiety can have lots of different symptoms.
The worrying, racing thoughts, fears, obsessions and so on are all obvious signs that go with anxiety, but there are some big ones that hit a lot of life. These 10 are ones I see repeatedly when helping people overcome anxiety.
1 Poor Sleep
Lying awake with the mind racing, feeling the frustration build as sleep seems further and further away. Trying to stay up until exhausted in the hopes of dropping off, distracting on the phone or reading until the early hours, maybe dreading going to bed knowing what awaits.
The misery of anxiety keeping us awake is a huge factor. That constant tiredness which comes with it adds to how horrible everything feels when we are so exhausted.
For some people when they do get to sleep that’s not the end of it, waking during the night and being unable to fall back to sleep is a nasty aspect of anxiety. Some people wake in a sweat and with fear or panic, others just find they are awake and can’t settle again.
Other’s find that they can’t sleep until there is light coming into the sky at dawn and then even if the alarm is close to going, they suddenly can sleep – briefly.
Sleep cycles are nearly always hit by anxiety and related stress issues.
2 Stomach Issues
Bloating and diarrhoea are the obvious ones, but sometimes it can be slowing of gut function and constipation that occur.
The quick knot of pain in the stomach can be a different thing – just a simple stress response in many cases, but when it drags out and links in to trapped wind etc it’d probably part of this problem.
Too many people plan their day by where the toilets are. Knowing which streets have toilets available, avoiding busses, and so on.
Needing to go to the toilet before a meeting, class, presentation every time is a very familiar part of life for people where stress reactive Irritable Bowel Syndrome comes with anxiety. As is the embarrassment of trying to hide the fart or make excuses for why the bathroom is needed again or why the car must stop at a services again!
3 Rerunning the past
This is bedrock anxiety stuff. The mind is on alert, and the anxiety response says something is wrong. But it’s activating at the wrong time. No real danger is here, so the mind goes looking for where to put that feeling. Eventually it exhausts the day-to-day stuff as being OK and moves on to looking at memories that match the stress feeling.
Those things that make us cringe or still hurt are dredged up, and hey-presto the worry makes sense to the system now. We found something to put that energy into and the mind mistakes this as useful.
While trying to keep us on alert to possible danger the mind torments us with old and irrelevant stuff that in most cases no one else even remembers.
4 Playing out future conversations
That same system of fear on alert means everything is run through a filter of “something is wrong!” and life must be examined to find what is wrong.
In reality often it’s just the fear centres being switched on that is the problem. Yet again, when the system is running the feeling is real.
Now the rest of the mind must scramble to analyse things and find where that feeling belongs. Just as it can do so with the past, it can also make the future into a source of misery.
Imagining every word to be said and the reply to it in detail, playing it over and over again, and then in the end either the conversation never really happens or goes nothing like what we imagined.
A huge waste of time and energy, but it lets the mind use up that anxiety response and runs automatically unless we notice it and do something to divert it.
5 Avoiding trying
This destroys so many lives. While some people are driven to succeed by their anxiety, unable to sit still, so torn up by any failure that they drive on harder each time, the opposite is way more common. Success is great, but when we can’t relax, we eventually burn out.
Knowing exactly what to do and simply not doing it is huge with anxiety and more common than success.
Feeling we can’t succeed, there’s no point, I’ll mess it up anyhow are natural aspects of most anxiety.
For decades I held back from most of life. I was sure I was lazy, not good enough, that I’d fail regardless. The feeling was real, and it devoured my life.
Lazy doesn’t exist, feelings that stop us from acting are real but easy to dismiss as laziness. There is a feeling driving us or stopping us. Finding and resolving any unhelpful feeling is where success lies.
6 Avoiding people & social situations
Another massively common part of anxiety. Being all stressed before meeting people, knot in stomach, imagining how we’ll be judged, assuming we’ll do or say something stupid is just the fear system analysing he situation for danger.
When the fear system is running the feeling is real, even when the danger is not. One of the things that’s easy for the mind to latch onto as a possible danger when we are safe is other people and their judgement.
It’s possibly the most common thing for anxiety to hijack to put fear into. (Health is the other big contender).
Often if we make it in the door of the social thing it’s not as bad as the anticipation, but sometimes the anxiety can build to panic.
Sitting at home watching the social media posts from friends as they are out enjoying life as we hide at home is misery.
7 Expecting the worst outcome / On edge, always waiting for a problem
When that anxiety system is running everything is examined to find what will go wrong. As a side effect we always find lots of ways for a problem to occur before we see how something could succeed.
This is related to several symptoms already mentioned, but it has its own direct impact day to day. We take longer to make decisions, over thinking them, second guessing them, deciding and then going back on it again.
Things get kicked into the future and we can find ourselves always thinking of doing the big things, learn a language, go for the promotion, do that course etc., but the constant flood of feelings that we won’t succeed make us push things down the road time and time again.
We can be on edge constantly, always expecting a problem, even worrying about not worrying if we get any peace.
8 Irritability and nit-picking
When we’re on edge, analysing things for the bad and feeling stressed when things aren’t perfect, we can accidently reflect that outwards at the people around us.
The two main ways are being easily triggered to anger and only noticing the problems in what people do and pointing them out while ignoring the good.
Anger simply comes from areas of the brain that are more active when we’re stressed and anxious. It makes sense that anger is something we use when under attack for example – so it’s wired in around self-preservation in the brain.
The nit-picking is a disaster that also makes sense around anxiety. “Find the problem” is the role of anxiety. If we’re very anxious a lot of energy and focus goes into this. We don’t mean to miss the good, but the mind highlights anything that’s not good enough, a problem, less good – it all stands out and before we know it, we’re commenting on that part and not seeing the good.
This is natural with stress of any kind, and it can harm relationships so badly.
We don’t mean to be putting people or their efforts down but before we know it, we’ve pointed out the not perfect part.
Often, we’ll have experienced this as kids if an anxious parent couldn’t help but point out the negative. A feeling of no matter what we do we can’t win; can’t get it right, can be so damaging in life.
This early conditioning may even play a part in passing anxiety from one generation to the next.
9 Can’t sit still or relax
The idea that time off is torture will seem odd to many, but to the anxious it’s very relatable.
Rushing through the week to get to the weekend but then obsessing about the next week and not able to enjoy the days off is very common.
For example, the number of anxious teachers who dread the long summer and Christmas holidays is large.
Not being able to sit and watch a movie or read a book without getting antsy and distracted is a very usual part of anxiety.
If we were in real danger, it makes sense getting absorbed in something and ignoring the world around us would be a bad idea. The problem is that when we’re home and safe but that feeling is running then we can’t relax.
The mind is on high alert and that energy needs to get used up. We do something physical like tidy and clean, or we are on our phone while watching TV to use up that stress push.
Being unable to sit still and relax is hugely damaging to us over time and a real sign it’s time to address the anxiety or stress driving it.
10 People pleasing
When we expect to make mistakes, or blame ourselves needlessly, or worry about being judged it’s very easy to become a doormat.
Always saying yes, getting a reputation as being helpful and that getting taken advantage of can occur so easily.
We can hate volunteering but still end up on every committee and helping at every event and coming to resent it.
Being helpful is fine, being taken advantage of is not. Making a difference is great, but burning out from stress is not.
This can also keep us in abusive relationships etc. but that deserves a different post of its own I think.
If I was to add one as number 11 it would be how it hits our physical health, but that deserves an article of its own too, so I’ll write that one soon and post it.
Of course, there are sadly many other signs of anxiety, but these are among the more common I see in clinic every week.
My advice is look at the whole picture, it’s too easy to get dragged into thinking it’s one issue or one problem and then focussing on that so much we miss the whole. I was diagnosed with ME and Fibromyalgia among other things when the anxiety was missed as those symptoms stood out. Both disappeared when my anxiety was treated and went away. Had the whole been seen it would have been a much easier journey.
It's amazing how all of this can be running for years, and we just accept it. I never noticed the individual parts and realised what was happening until I was decades deep into anxiety.
Hope this helps understand some of what’s going on with anxiety and helps people spot it and act on it if needed.
Thanks for all the enquiries. Currently I’m pretty much booked out in clinic in Athlone and have only a handful of online spaces available. However, I’m always happy to speak with people about how life can improve and can probably find people who can help nearby. So don’t hold back, I know a lot of good therapists and am happy to signpost to people who can help.
Change is easier than you think.
Have a great week,
John
info@JohnPrendergast
085 1313700
www.JohnPrendergast.ie
John Prendergast MA, MBACP, is an award-winning specialist in Anxiety and Psychological Trauma. His area of interest is the fear system of the human mind and body, and his work centres around reducing suffering for individuals one-on-one and in groups. He lived decades of severe anxiety in his own life before finding help and then studied with some of the world’s leaders in reducing anxiety, resolving PTSD, and living happier lives. He sees clients in clinic in Athlone, Westmeath/Roscommon, Ireland, and around the world via Zoom. He also delivers training to businesses and through seminars across the UK and Ireland.
