Anxiety disorders don’t suddenly appear. You may experience early warning signs that feel like everyday habits or personality traits before you even consider visiting a therapist.
“Subtler signs are often overlooked because they can appear functional or socially acceptable,” says Liz Ross, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist and the founder of the Coping Resource Center in Houston. Anxiety disorder symptoms are frequently misattributed to stress, personality traits, aging, or just “being busy,” Dr. Ross adds.
Everyone feels anxious sometimes. Anxiety disorders, however, involve frequent feelings of intense anxiety or panic that interfere with daily life, are difficult to manage, feel disproportionate to the risk at hand, and can last for a while. These symptoms also tend to come hand in hand with others, including persistent worry, sleep difficulties, difficulty concentrating, irritability or mood changes, physical problems like gastrointestinal discomfort, and increased fatigue. If you recognize these early signs of anxiety, speak to a mental health professional such as a psychiatrist (a medical doctor who diagnoses and treats mental health conditions) or a psychologist (who can diagnose anxiety and provide counseling), particularly if symptoms are interfering with your life or you’re turning to alcohol or drug use to cope. Anxiety is common and treatable through psychotherapy, medication, or a combination of the two.
1. Excessive Worrying
Worrying is a part of life, but excessive worry about everyday issues or repeated feelings of panic may signal an anxiety disorder.
Stress may be shifting into a diagnosable anxiety disorder when you notice certain factors, says Debra Kissen, PhD, a clinical psychologist and the founder of Light On Anxiety Treatment Centers in Chicago. These may include the following signs:
- Anxiety shows up frequently throughout the day, rather than just once in a while.
- The intensity feels harder to manage or more uncomfortable than before.
- Distress lingers even after the stressor has passed and continues over time.
- Daily life starts to feel harder, impacting factors like sleep, focus, work, and relationships.
- You spend a meaningful amount of energy thinking about anxiety, monitoring it, or trying to avoid triggers.
“Excessive worrying is very common across most anxiety disorders, and is especially central in generalized anxiety disorder,” Ross says. “It can also be present in social anxiety, health anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.”
2. Sleep Difficulties
Over two-thirds of Americans report losing sleep due to anxiety.
Sleep and anxiety can be part of a vicious cycle in which anxiety makes it harder to sleep, and lack of sleep worsens anxiety.
“Racing thoughts and accumulated physical tension prevent the brain from settling into restorative sleep,” Dr. Kissen says. “Like driving 100 miles an hour and slamming on the brakes, the system struggles to slow down smoothly.”
Difficulty falling or staying asleep for three nights per week or more for three or more months, along with feeling sleepy during the day, may indicate clinical insomnia and warrants a conversation with a healthcare provider.
3. Difficulty Concentrating
Anxiety disorders are linked to negative effects on cognition, including attention and memory.
“An anxious brain is preoccupied with monitoring threats,” Dr. Ross says. “This can impair focus, memory, and task completion and is frequently mistaken for attention or motivation problems.”
Similarly, you may have difficulty making even low-stakes decisions, Kissen adds. Decision paralysis — when anxiety stops you from making choices due to feeling overwhelmed or fear of negative outcomes — can occur in everyday situations. For instance, you may feel overwhelmed facing too many options at the grocery store or a packed to-do list, or avoid conversations in your relationship. In moments like this, anxiety can actually change your brain chemistry by triggering the release of stress hormones such as cortisol and epinephrine (adrenaline). This, in turn, activates the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), the brain’s fight-or-flight response, redirecting blood flow from the prefrontal cortex (responsible for rational decision-making) to the amygdala (responsible for emotional processing and threat detection).
The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) does the opposite of the SNS, managing the body’s rest-and-digest response. For those with anxiety and chronic stress, the SNS can become overactive and strained.
Difficulty concentrating may be a sign of anxiety when it’s associated with excessive worry more days than not for six or more months, plus other symptoms like irritability and disturbed sleep.
4. Irritability or Mood Changes
Anxiety doesn’t always feel like fear. “Chronic [sympathetic] nervous system activation can lower frustration tolerance, leading to irritability, impatience, or emotional reactivity,” Ross says.
Anxiety commonly causes hyperarousal, which is when your SNS is “on” more often than it should be. That means you’re often in fight-or-flight mode, despite not being in danger.
“This leaves little room for joy, patience, or positive emotional engagement,” Kissen says.
Similar to difficulty concentrating, mood changes may be a sign of an anxiety disorder when associated with excessive worry more days than not for six or more months, plus other symptoms like fatigue and disturbed sleep.