When good days feel dangerous: what is anxiety bracing you for?

Some people tell me their anxiety gets worse when things are going well. The exam went fine, the friendship group is getting on, work is steady, the new relationship is easy, and the holidays are booked. Instead of relaxing, they feel sure something is about to go wrong. They start looking for the catch. You might call it waiting for the other shoe to drop. Plenty of people feel silly about it, as if they ought to be able to enjoy a good week.

Researchers have a name for an explanation. Michelle Newman and Sandra Llera at Penn State suggested that some people who worry a lot are especially thrown by a sudden drop from feeling good to feeling bad. So they worry on purpose, staying a little bit uneasy all the time. If something does go wrong, the fall isn't as far. That makes worry a kind of insurance, paid every day. The cost is that you lose the enjoyment, sleep badly and keep good things at a distance. Your worry may not feel silly at all. Bad things do happen out of nowhere, and for some people they have. If you've had a sudden loss or a shock, bracing yourself makes sense when you never want to be caught out again. What I'd ask is whether the bracing helps; some would argue that it does, whilst others find it doesn’t. When something hard does happen, people who spent months dreading it don't usually say the dread made it easier. What seems to help is having people around you, trusting that you can cope, and giving yourself time to recover.

Where you grew up matters too. If calm spells at home were usually followed by a row or a crisis, your body learned that feeling happy meant trouble was coming. While that was true then. It may not be true now, but your system may not yet have caught up.

In therapy we slow down the moment when a good feeling turns into alarm. What do you notice in your body? What do you start telling yourself? What do you find yourself doing: tidying your room, picking a fight, or starting to plan for disaster? Once you can see the pattern, you have a chance of doing something about it. In between sessions you can try noticing when it occurs and saying to yourself, "there it is." We also practise letting a good moment be good, for a few minutes at a time. If you've relied on worry for years, that can feel risky, so it's easier with someone alongside you.

If you're a parent, you may see this in a teenager who gets a good result and immediately starts dreading the next one. Telling them to relax rarely works. It helps more to say, "That sounds really uncomfortable," and let them talk. I won't tell you the anxiety will vanish. Some of it is normal and useful. But it usually reduces once you understand what it has been trying to protect you from.

If this sounds like you, or like someone in your family, you can book a free consultation here. I see individuals aged 12 and over and couples, in person and online. If you're the parent of a 12 to 15-year-old, you're welcome to get in touch first to ask how it works.

Sources: Newman and Llera (2011), Clinical Psychology Review, https://pure.psu.edu/en/publications/a-novel-theory-of-experiential-avoidance-in-generalized-anxiety-d/