Low level anxiety

9 January 2026

I have been feeling anxious for a few weeks now. I would describe it as a tension in my body, a churning in my stomach, a never-ending restlessness and an inability to focus. I can still perform my day-to-day tasks, but the anxiety is still there, haunting me.

Most of the time, my anxiety is caused by worrying about something in the future that hasn't happened, and how I will cope with the situation if it does happen. I spend a lot of my mental energy anticipating scenarios in my head and how I can stop them from happening. At any given time, my short-term memory is full of a complex sequence of what-if situations and their pre-planned responses, because I subconsciously believe that if I anticipate something bad happening, then I can also stop it before it happens. This is what links obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety.

Occasionally, I am unable to understand why I feel anxious. It seems to be a hormonal response (my adrenal glands releasing adrenaline and cortisol) to something subconscious that is stressing me, rather than something I am consciously ruminating over. This subconscious anxiety is often worse because I don't know how to stop it.

The physical symptoms of anxiety, because they are so loud and intrusive, make it hard for me to focus and hard for me to sleep. It is in this way that low-level anxiety starts to impact your quality of life, one day at a time.

I find that exercise helps as a form of short-term relief. However, the anxiety always comes back until some unpredictable time in the future when my brain finally decides the threat is over. This can be hours, days, weeks or in some cases even months. It seems I haven't yet formed the neural pathways necessary for me to tolerate uncertainty and live in the moment. I will keep trying, and in the meantime, I will test my anxiety instead of letting it test me.