Anxiety as a Feedback Loop

Most of us were taught to think of anxiety as a thing that happens to us: a trait, a diagnosis, a stuck state. That’s true in some cases. But there’s another way to look at it that’s quite freeing: anxiety often behaves like a habit loop. A learned sequence of triggers and automatic reactions that gets rehearsed until it feels inevitable.

So, because habits can be changed, anxiety can be shifted.

This perspective matters for highly sensitive people because sensitivity amplifies the signal (our sensations). What would be a faint flicker for someone else becomes loud and insistent for an HSP.

The good news is that the very depth of perception that makes you prone to anxiety can also become the tool that dissolves it.

Anxiety as a pattern (not a verdict!)

Think of how a habit forms: something happens (the trigger), a meaning or story runs in your mind, your body responds, you take an action that briefly relieves the discomfort, and the feedback circuit tightens. Over time that loop runs faster and with less conscious oversight.

For example:

• Trigger: a vague email marked URGENT.

• Thought loop: “I’ll fail / I’m not good enough.”

• Body: tight chest, fluttering, difficulty breathing.

• Short-term fix: checking, obsessing, avoiding a hard reply.

• Result: momentary relief that reinforces the loop.

Jud Brewer and other habit researchers frame worry and anxiety as conditioned responses. Tom Borkovec called worry “cognitive avoidance”: an attempt to feel in control by staying mentally busy. These are not moral failures. They’re patterns: built, maintained, and therefore changeable.

The energetic dimension: why it feels so physical

For energy-aware sensitive people, anxiety doesn’t feel like a thought alone, but a bodily and energetic state. You might wake with a tight diaphragm, a hollow in your throat, and a sense of heavy energy closing in on you. Those sensations are not incidental; they carry information.

From my own experience, the pattern wasn’t only about worry. Waking with a tight diaphragm taught me two things: some of that tension was old emotions (very old, even from childhood) that hadn’t been expressed. And some of it was other people’s energies that had attached to mine and to me felt like it tried to steer my responses. In other words, part of the loop was personal memory, and part of it was relational. 

As long I allowed my automatic responses to take over, I simply felt "anxious" or "bad" from the moment I woke up. Imagine living like that. That's why I highly recommend giving yourself the opportunity to stop the patterns.

Seeing anxiety like this changes what you do next. Instead of blaming the feeling, you can begin to ask useful questions: Is this my unresolved feeling? Is it a reaction to someone else’s pressure? Or is it both? That small reframe creates distance and invites practical action.

Three practical shifts to test

These are quick, evidence-aligned and energy-aware practices you can start using today.

1. Notice the loop
   The first and most powerful step is awareness. When the pattern begins, label it silently: “That’s the habit looping.” Don’t judge. Just label. Awareness interrupts automaticity and opens a tiny space where choice can enter the game.

2. Name what you're sensing
   Bring attention down into sensation: where do you feel this? Is it tightness at the diaphragm, energy around or near you? Naming the sensation (even in a single word) reduces its intensity and stops the story from escalating.

3. Replace the automatic with a short ritual
   Swap the old action (checking, scrolling, arguing with yourself) for a reliable, 30–60 second reset. It becomes the new habit reward.

A simple ritual I suggest:

• Pause for 6 slow breaths (inhale 4, hold 1, exhale 6).

• Choose to allow the anxiety to exist, but focus your awareness on A) gratitude AND b) relief. It may feel like a leap of faith, because in a way it is, when your system is signalling anxiety (=possible danger) and you choose gratitude and relief instead. Take that leap. 

• (I recommend gratitude combined with relief because I've seen it often works better than gratitude alone. No research on this combination, to my knowledge, but try it out for yourself)

• Move: stand up, shift your weight, shake your arms, and continue with your day.

This tiny sequence is enough to unstick the loop and give your nervous system a new pattern to practise.

Extra: what to do when the feeling is partly relational

If a sense of tightness or anxiety regularly follows certain people or situations, treat it like useful data. It’s not always about you. Other people’s energy is about them, their urgency, neediness, criticism. It can attach to yours if your boundaries are not able to filter that out (I'll write more about this in a blog post coming in October).

Use your intuition to find out if that is the case, but do it when you're not feeling anxious. This is because intuition works better when you're feeling neutral or positive. Check out my Intuition-to-Solution Cheatsheet for a quick reference on reliable intuition. 

Here are two tools for those situations:

• Before you engage, intentionally establish your energetic space: breathe, and make the choice to take up all the space you need to feel secure, and notice where your attention settles in your body.

• After a difficult interaction, do a “clear and reset” (60–90 seconds): shake out the arms and hands, breathe in clean energy and/or support from the ground (as if you were breathing through the soles of your feet).

This isn’t magical protection; it’s practical recalibration. Over time it trains you to recognise what is yours and what isn’t. My two courses that will become available in October, Respect Reset and What You're Feeling is Real, expand on these themes.

Turning sensitivity into an asset

Here’s the paradox: the same depth that makes you vulnerable to looping anxiety also gives you access to early signals. Once you learn to notice without immediately reacting, those signals become early-warning systems. You stop being surprised and start being strategic.

Anxiety as habit is an approach that brings curiosity and agency. It invites you to practise small, repeatable moves rather than wage a constant internal battle. For HSPs, that's especially useful.

You don’t need to become less sensitive or aware, you just need the right tools to work with what your high awareness offers.

References and further reading for the curious:

Black, B. A., & Kern, M. L. (2020). A qualitative exploration of individual differences in wellbeing for highly sensitive individuals.
Boggiss, A. L., et al. (2020). A systematic review of gratitude interventions: Effects on physical health and health behaviours.
Brewer, J. (2021). Unwinding Anxiety: New science shows how to break the cycle of worry and fear that drives addiction, depression and anxiety.
Carver, C. S. (2003). Pleasure as a sign you can attend to something else: Placing positive feelings within a general model of affect.
Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life.
Eubanks, D. L., Murphy, S. T., & Mumford, M. D. (2010). Intuition as an influence on creative problem-solving: The effects of intuition, positive affect, and training.
Graham, A. J., et al. (2022). Relief in everyday life.
Gulla, B., & Golonka, K. (2021). Exploring protective factors in wellbeing: How sensory processing sensitivity and attention awareness interact with resilience.
Wood, A. M., Froh, J. J., & Geraghty, A. W. A. (2010). Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical integration.