Is It "Just Anxiety"? Understanding Anxiety Sensitivity
Your heart is racing, pounding like it might beat out of your chest. Your mouth is dry. There's a lump in your throat. You feel shaky, sweaty, on edge. It's hard to breathe.
Your mind goes blank. Everything starts to feel strange or unreal. You feel dizzy, nauseous, can't focus.
And the thought hits: something is very wrong.
Maybe part of you knows these are common symptoms of anxiety. But it doesn't feel like "just anxiety," does it? In fact, the more you think about it, the more anxious you feel.
If this sounds familiar, you may be dealing with anxiety sensitivity.
What Is Anxiety Sensitivity?
Anxiety sensitivity is the tendency to interpret normal anxiety sensations as dangerous, and to fear that those sensations will cause serious harm, physically, mentally, or socially. Put simply, it's the fear of anxiety itself.
It's not a diagnosis, but a trait, and one that doesn't tend to go away on its own.
Importantly, anxiety sensitivity doesn't mean you're a generally more anxious person. It means you have a stronger, more reactive relationship to the sensations of anxiety. People with high anxiety sensitivity have an increased risk of developing:
• Panic attacks
• Agoraphobia
• Generalized anxiety
• Health anxiety
• Social anxiety
• OCD
It can also keep anxiety going once it starts. The encouraging news is that anxiety sensitivity is highly treatable.
Why Anxiety Feels So Intense: The Anxiety Sensitivity Cycle
Anxiety expert Dr. Claire Weekes described anxiety in two layers. First fear involves the physical sensations of anxiety. They happen almost automatically and pass quickly if we don't react to them. Second fear is where our thoughts and interpretations take over, where we begin to fear the sensations themselves.
First Fear vs. Second Fear
When you interpret a sensation as dangerous, your body releases more adrenaline, which creates more physical sensations, which feel like more evidence that something is wrong. The cycle becomes:
Sensation → Fear → More Sensations → More Fear
The more you fight the sensations or try to make them stop, the more intense and long-lasting they become. The sensations themselves are not the problem. What drives the cycle is the interpretation.
How Avoidance Makes Anxiety Worse
Naturally, you may start avoiding anything that triggers these sensations. That might look like:
• Avoiding exercise because an increased heart rate feels dangerous
• Constantly checking your body for signs of illness
• Worrying about every physical sensation
• Feeling afraid you're "going crazy" when things feel unreal
• Avoiding social situations where you might feel anxious or visible
• Limiting where you go or what you do to stay out of anxious situations
• Feeling dread or becoming overwhelmed when anxiety shows up
While avoidance can feel helpful in the moment, it actually reinforces the belief that these sensations are dangerous. When it comes to anxiety, our actions speak louder than our words. The more we treat something as dangerous, the more dangerous we believe it to be, even if we tell ourselves it isn't. Over time, the world can start to shrink.
How to Treat Anxiety Sensitivity
You can learn to stop fearing your anxiety. When that shift happens, the cycle begins to break, and anxiety becomes much more manageable. Effective treatment typically involves four steps.
1. Understanding Anxiety Symptoms in the Body
The first step is learning how anxiety actually works in the body. Symptoms like a racing heart, sweating, shaking, nausea, dizziness, a tight chest, a lump in your throat, shortness of breath, brain fog, depersonalization, and derealization are uncomfortable, but they are not dangerous. When they are not fueled by fear, they pass much more quickly than most people expect.
Understanding what is actually happening is often the first meaningful shift. Anxiety is not just in your head. It is very much in your body. But that doesn't mean something is wrong.
2. Changing Catastrophic Thoughts
Anxiety sensitivity is driven by thoughts like:
• "I'm having a heart attack"
• "I'm going to pass out"
• "I'm going crazy"
• "I can't handle this"
In therapy, you'll learn to recognize these thoughts in real time, understand what is actually happening in your body, and replace catastrophic interpretations with more accurate ones. For example:
"This is anxiety. It's uncomfortable, but it's not dangerous. It will pass on its own if I don't feed it with fear. I can handle this."
3. Interoceptive Exposure: Facing the Sensations
One of the most effective treatments for anxiety sensitivity is interoceptive exposure, which means intentionally bringing on the physical sensations you fear in a safe, controlled way. This might include exercises that briefly increase your heart rate, create mild dizziness, or produce a feeling of breathlessness.
With guidance, you learn that the sensations are not harmful, that you can tolerate them, and that your thoughts, not the sensations themselves, are what drive the fear. This step is often where the biggest breakthroughs happen.
4. Returning to Your Life
The final step is applying what you've learned in real life, gradually returning to situations you had been avoiding. As your confidence builds, anxiety loses its grip. The goal isn't to eliminate anxiety entirely. It's to stop letting it make decisions for you.
You Don't Have to Keep Living This Way
If anxiety sensitivity is driving your symptoms, or your child's, it's important to address it directly. Treating it can reduce panic symptoms, make anxiety feel more manageable, and improve the effectiveness of other anxiety treatments.
I work with adults, children, and teens in Houston and virtually throughout Texas and New York to treat anxiety at its root, including the anxiety sensitivity patterns that keep people stuck.
Ready to take the next step? Learn more about anxiety treatment, or reach out to schedule a free consultation.