Dr. Sally Winston is a clinical psychologist and co-director of the Anxiety and Stress Disorders Institute of Maryland. She is nationally recognized for her expertise in the treatment of anxiety disorders. Dr. Winston has been active with ADAA for over 30 years. She has served as chair of the ADAA Clinical Advisory Board and was the first recipient of the ADAA Jerilyn Ross Clinician Advocate Award.
Article3 min read
How to Stop Letting Anticipatory Anxiety Run Your Life
- Sally Winston PsyD
- Martin N Seif PhD
- Oct 1, 2025
- 3
Often called the third layer of fear, anticipatory anxiety can be hard to understand and even harder to overcome. Fear itself is a simple concept to grasp; you might be afraid of bees, for example, and feel anxious about the fear you’ll experience if you see one. But anticipatory anxiety involves being afraid of being afraid of being afraid. It reaches far beyond its triggers, sometimes creeping in days, weeks, or even months before an event. This prolonged presence can make it feel like anticipatory anxiety is running your life by pulling the puppet strings on your thoughts and emotions.
What Is Anticipatory Anxiety?
Anticipatory anxiety is the anxiety you feel in anticipation of a difficult decision, action, or situation in the future. It can involve the fear that bad things might happen or that you might not successfully accomplish something. This differs from other types of anxiety in that the trigger is not actively present but lingering in the future.
This form of anxiety is also unique in that its symptoms are often greater than the anxiety experienced when actually confronting the feared situation. When you experience anticipatory anxiety, your mind tries to convince you of an impending catastrophe. It’s easy to mistake this feeling as proof that something bad will happen. However, when you finally face the situation in question, chances are you’ll find it far less distressing than expected.
What Causes Anticipatory Anxiety?
Anticipatory anxiety is caused by your brain predicting the possibility of distress caused by fear in the future and pushing you to avoid the trigger of that fear. It’s often the product of an overactive imagination; the creative part of your mind constructs and elaborates narratives about things that are remotely possible in which the ending is always negative.
Since people who battle anticipatory anxiety tend to steer clear of situations that might cause them distress, they rarely have the opportunity to face the root fear and disprove their imagined outcome. While avoiding a trigger may feel like relief in the moment, it actually does more harm than good by paving the way for future episodes of anticipatory anxiety.
Common Anticipatory Anxiety Symptoms
There are many different ways anticipatory anxiety can manifest. It might even mimic or mingle with other types of anxiety disorders at times. Some common symptoms to look for include:
- Phobic avoidance
- Fear of being alone
- Performance anxiety
- Insomnia
- Elaborate planning
- Compulsive behavior
How to Overcome Anticipatory Anxiety
The key to overcoming anticipatory anxiety is to make a firm commitment to the event causing it. Deciding that you’ll do something you want to avoid prevents mental back-and-forth and helps shift your focus from dwelling in an imagined future to living in the present moment. This forces your mind to engage with what’s actually happening instead of being consumed by hypothetical thoughts. Once you ground yourself and stop the cycle of excessive overthinking, the whispers of anxious preoccupation will slowly fade to the background.
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