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Overestimating Risk and Underestimating Resources: This is Anxiety.
- JuandriB
- Sep 30, 2020
- 7 min read
Updated: 12 hours ago
"You're feeling anxious?"
"But I'm not really sure why."
I hear this all the time from clients who struggle with anxiety. Many people describe anxiety as something that is "just there." They can't point to a particular event, situation, or trigger. It feels as though the anxiety comes out of nowhere and has simply always been part of their life.
If this sounds familiar, I want to start by reassuring you that you're not alone. In fact, this is one of the most common experiences people describe in therapy. One of the things I try to do quite early on in sessions is identify potential triggers. I usually ask about situations, people, environments, thoughts, memories, bodily sensations, sounds, or experiences that may contribute to anxiety.
And more often than not, clients tell me the same thing:
"Nothing particularly stressful has happened."
"There hasn't been any major trauma."
"I don't know why I feel anxious."
The important thing to understand is that having anxiety symptoms does not mean there aren't any triggers. It often means the triggers are happening so quickly and automatically that we simply don't notice them.
Anxiety often involves overestimating the likelihood or severity of a threat while simultaneously underestimating our ability to cope with it.Anxiety About Anxiety
One of the most frustrating parts of anxiety is that we often become anxious about being anxious. We worry about our worrying. We stress about our stress. We become frightened of our fear. And we feel anxious about our anxiety.
Instead of noticing the trigger, we become hyper-focused on the anxiety itself.
The anxiety becomes loud.
Very loud.
We notice the racing heart.
The sweating.
The tight chest.
The shakiness.
And because thinking happens so quickly and automatically, we often don't notice the stressful conversations or catastrophic stories running through our minds in the background. Our attention shifts entirely to the symptoms. Then we start wondering whether other people can see them too. And the cycle continues.
Anxiety Is Not The Enemy
Even low-level anxiety triggers a natural response in our bodies. Anxiety actually serves an important purpose. Physiologically, it gives us quick energy by releasing sugar and fats into the bloodstream, tightening muscles into a state of readiness, and focusing our attention on perceived danger. This all happens to help us react through our fight, flight, or freeze responses.
In healthy amounts, anxiety is useful. Most people experience anxiety and still feel capable of coping with it. The difficulty begins when we start overestimating danger and underestimating our ability to deal with it.
And this is where one of my favourite explanations of anxiety comes in:
Anxiety involves overestimating risk and underestimating resources.
More specifically, anxiety involves overestimating the likelihood or severity of a threat while simultaneously underestimating our ability to cope with it. In many ways, that is the essence of anxiety.
Why Anxiety Persists
Other factors that often contribute to anxiety include:
Self-focused attention
Over-attention to threats
Misperceiving or incorrectly assessing threats
Anxiety about anxiety
Using avoidance and safety behaviours as coping strategies
It Is Not The Situation, It Is The Interpretation
One of the most important things I explain to clients is that it is not necessarily the situation itself that creates anxiety, but rather our interpretation of the situation. When anxiety increases, our attention changes. We become hypervigilant.
Our brains become focused on spotting risks and potential dangers. The problem is that we often stop seeing the full picture.
For example, imagine Tom is giving a presentation to his employees. He is already feeling slightly nervous, which naturally increases his vigilance. While speaking, he notices one employee repeatedly checking their watch and looking bored. His brain immediately zooms in on this as evidence that the presentation is going badly. Meanwhile, he completely misses the fact that everyone else appears engaged, interested, and attentive. Anxiety often causes us to focus on the evidence that supports our fears while ignoring evidence that contradicts them.
Self-Focused Attention
Another common feature of anxiety is becoming hyper-aware of ourselves. The more attention we pay to our anxious thoughts and physical symptoms, the stronger they often become.
Let's go back to Tom. Now he notices his anxiety increasing.
He starts thinking:
"What if people notice how nervous I am?"
"What if they see me sweating?"
"What if I start stuttering?"
The more attention he pays to these fears, the more intense his symptoms become.
And before long, the anxiety itself becomes the thing he fears most.
This creates a cycle:
Situation → Anxiety Symptoms → Beliefs About Anxiety → Increased Focus On Symptoms → More Anxiety
Sound familiar?
Avoidance Feels Good, But Costs Us
There are not many clients I have worked with who haven't, at some point, developed anxiety about their anxiety. When we begin to overestimate risk and underestimate our resources, we often start avoiding situations that make us uncomfortable. This makes sense. Avoidance feels good in the short term. The problem is that it prevents us from testing our fears. And if we never test our fears, we never discover whether our predictions were actually true.
One question I often ask clients is:
"What do you do to feel less anxious?"
The answer usually reveals what we call safety behaviours. Safety behaviours are things we do to reduce anxiety and make ourselves feel safer. The catch is that they often keep anxiety alive.
For example, imagine someone who is worried about disappointing their boss. To prevent that from happening, they become perfectionistic. Every piece of work must be flawless. Every detail must be checked multiple times. Perfectionism becomes a safety behaviour. The problem is that they never get to discover what would happen if they made a normal human mistake. Their boss probably wouldn't fire them. The world probably wouldn't end. And they would probably cope far better than they imagine.
Seeing The Pattern
I always find it helpful to see how beliefs form and maintain themselves. One of the things I often share with clients is a visual representation of how anxiety develops and how our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours interact with one another.
The diagram below is a simplified example, but it gives a good sense of how anxiety can become self-perpetuating if we don't challenge the cycle.
What Can We Do About It?
The first step in overcoming anxiety is identifying our automatic thoughts. Once we become aware of them, we can begin challenging them. We look for evidence for and against the thought. We test our predictions. We start doing what psychologists call cognitive restructuring.
If anxiety is something you struggle with, I highly recommend working with a therapist. In the meantime, here are some practical strategies you can try yourself.
1. Identify Your Triggers
Ask yourself:
When or where is my anxiety most intense?
Are there situations I avoid because of anxiety?
Are there bodily sensations that make my anxiety worse once I notice them?
Are there recurring thoughts, images, or fears that seem connected to my anxiety?
2. Slow Down Your Breathing
Try breathing slowly through your nose for 4–6 seconds.
Hold for 1–2 seconds.
Then breathe out slowly through your mouth for 4–6 seconds.
I also highly recommend guided breathing exercises online. There are some excellent resources available.
3. Practise A Grounding Technique
When feeling overwhelmed, try identifying:
Five things you can see
Four things you can touch
Three things you can hear
Two things you can smell
One thing you can taste
This helps bring your attention back to the present moment and away from the anxiety spiral.
4. Face Your Fears (Preferably With Support)
Avoidance strengthens anxiety. Research consistently shows that avoiding situations, thoughts, or emotions often makes them more powerful over time.
Exposure (whether through gradual behavioural experiments or therapeutic support) can be incredibly effective in helping people discover that they are more capable than they thought.
Final Thoughts
One of the most important things I want people to understand about anxiety is that it is not random. It may feel random. It may feel as though it appears out of nowhere. But anxiety almost always follows a pattern.
The challenge is that the pattern often happens so quickly that we don't notice it.
The more we can identify our triggers, challenge our automatic thoughts, and test our predictions, the more we begin to realise something important:
We are often far more capable than our anxiety would have us believe.
In therapy, we aren't trying to eliminate anxiety completely.
We're trying to change our relationship with it.
We're learning to recognise when we are overestimating risk, underestimating our resources, and allowing anxiety to tell us a story that may not actually be true.
Further Reading
Recommended Books
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone – Lori Gottlieb
A warm, honest, and often humorous exploration of therapy from both the therapist's and client's perspective. A wonderful reminder that struggling is part of being human and that we don't have to navigate life's challenges alone.
Don't Believe Everything You Think – Joseph Nguyen
A simple but powerful book exploring the relationship between thoughts, suffering, anxiety, and inner peace. Particularly helpful for those who find themselves caught in cycles of overthinking and worry.
Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? – Dr Julie Smith
A practical guide to understanding emotions, anxiety, confidence, self-criticism, and psychological wellbeing. Full of accessible tools and strategies for everyday life.
Mind Over Mood – Dennis Greenberger & Christine Padesky
A highly practical CBT workbook that helps readers identify patterns of thinking, challenge anxious beliefs, and develop healthier coping strategies. Many therapists use exercises from this book in their clinical work.
The School of Life
A collection of articles, videos, and resources exploring emotional wellbeing, relationships, self-awareness, meaning, and personal growth.
One of the things all of these books have in common is that they remind us of something important: anxiety is not a sign that you are broken. It is a normal human experience that sometimes becomes overprotective. The goal is not necessarily to eliminate anxiety, but to better understand it, respond to it differently, and recognise that we are often far more capable than our anxiety would have us believe.
A Final Thought
Sometimes anxiety appears to arrive "for no reason", but more often there are reasons we have not yet discovered. Our minds and bodies are constantly processing information, memories, emotions, stresses, and experiences, often outside of our conscious awareness.
Rather than asking, "What's wrong with me?", a more helpful question may be, "What might my anxiety be trying to tell me?" Curiosity, self-awareness, and self-compassion are often far more useful starting points than self-judgement.
You may also find my recommended reading list helpful.
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