“The other shoe is about to drop,” they say—and I often feel. As you get older, it seems that life’s burdens accumulate, building up toward a critical mass, crossing a threshold into a state-of-being that becomes your everyday.
Is this you?
Here, I explain how anxiety operates in my own life, shaped largely by uncertainty and anticipation.
As a bona fide overthinker—which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and a common refrain for anyone whose spin is to consider every situation outside-the-box—I have come to the conclusion that anxiety is an opportunity for me. Truly, a gift—something that the length of wisdom gained from obstacles, even deathly ones, can hone into discernment, restraint, and a clearer sense of what actually matters.
Here’s what I mean. Of course, before I dive into my thoughts, let me be precise about what anxiety is—and what it isn’t.
Anxiety About an Uncertain Future
In clinical psychology, anxiety is typically defined as a future-oriented state of apprehension, characterized by heightened vigilance, anticipation of potential threat, and physiological arousal. Unlike fear, which is a response to an immediate and identifiable danger, anxiety is oriented toward what might happen rather than what is happening.
A widely cited review in Nature Reviews Neuroscience describes anxiety as a state driven by uncertainty, where the brain allocates attention toward possible negative outcomes in order to prepare and protect (Grupe and Nitschke, 2013). In other words, anxiety is a predictive process.
Anxiety is your thoughts entrenched in an uncertain future.
Why My Mind Keeps Looking Ahead
Highly-creative people tend to be vulnerable to states of anxiety (read more about the link between creativity and anxiety). To break it down—people who are “hard-wired” with creative tendencies are often more adept at imagining possible scenarios because they instinctively recognize patterns in the world around them—and, in doing so, generate coherent possibilities that may not yet exist, and sometimes never will.
For me, this tends to show up as constant mental movement. I can’t sit still. I can’t stand up or go anywhere—unless I get something done. Maybe this means jotting a note down in my journal, or doodling some idea.
A part of this is fear I will forget to take care of something; likened to making sure I didn’t turn off the stove before leaving my home. But, that’s not it. Not really.
It’s an unnamed feeling that I’ve left something undone. And yet, I know, the awareness of how irrational that is.
Ultimately, I’m usually several steps ahead of where I am—and it’s unnecessary! It’s exhausting…So, I write the possible outcomes, the replayed possibilities, and map what could come next. I do just enough and then urge “to do” goes away.
It’s a habit I’ve carried for a long time, and it shapes how I think, plan, and move through the day. I’m aware of it, often enough.
But, the Anxiety Helps.
I know it’s called anxiety now. It’s taken years to understand that my entire life has been driven by a need, a compulsion to keep moving to meet the future moment.
And it—the future positioning of my mind—has served me well. My career, my vocation, the performance in complex forward looking tasks—A job in the academic sciences requires supra-planning through grants, funding cycles, or projecting possible changes in policy and Federal regulations.
(I’ve moved on from that, but the disciplines are the same where I am).
Yes, that is the crux; curses and blessings of a pantheon of tendencies toward wanting more; doing more—you become both sides of the same coin, flipping constantly, with my face on either side just with different shaped motives and emotives.
And, this is the system I’ve built….
Brake Check: “Slowing Down” is the System
“Patience, patience, patience.” This is the new refrain
Slowing down, in my case, was a practical adjustment to how I already moved.
My mind naturally stays ahead of the present moment, tracking what’s coming next. Over time, I learned that without deliberate pauses, that forward motion simply carried on unchecked. A disaster. A constant frustration by things, events…people.
I understood the need for spacing—like the line breaks between paragraphs. The full stops. Periods. Between words. Small, intentional interruptions that kept momentum intact while preventing it from overrunning meaningful thought, before it could drive me into the ground.
Anxiety, The Tool — Opportunity to Adjust
There is perfectionism. That, too, fails. “Good enough” is a phrase I’ve always struggled to accept. But good enough often means doing one thing well in the precise moment you’re present. Just be present, and do that thing deliberately.
As I became more attentive to anxious moments as they arose, they grew more legible. They became readouts where I had the opportunity to choose to spend energy. Oh, my energy reserves are so precious nowadays.
Each instance carried information about timing, load, and attention. Over time, anxiety came to function as feedback within my internal system, signaling when something required adjustment.
This is the system: Anxiety is a tool. When noticed and interpreted, it provides information about where my attention belongs and how energy should be allocated. The value is not in the anxiety itself, but in the system that makes it usable.
Identify the feeling, pause, then decide deliberately, not reflexively.
Conclusion: Why Anxiety Is Bright
Uncertainty is the reality. The pace of change, the volume of information, and the number of futures I tend to hold in mind always wants to grow. In that environment, my mind—any mind— that looks ahead is responding to the conditions it encounters.
Anxiety reflects how attention organizes itself around that fear of the future.
For me, it sits at the edge of awareness like a horizon—present, distant, and defining what I can actually see. It highlights where care is needed, where effort belongs, and where discernment matters most. Attention gathers.
Anxiety registers for me as a moment of information. It invites interpretation. It sharpens awareness and helps me orient myself within what is unfolding. But, reacting to what is beyond my sight line is never something I’ve been designed to do.
Seen this way, anxiety is shaped by uncertainty and directed toward what lies ahead. When approached with attention and intention, it helps me remain oriented rather than untethered. For me, that orientation rests on the belief that what unfolds is guided by an order beyond my sight, even when the path forward remains unfinished. In that sense, anxiety becomes a position of hope, grounded in continued engagement with what lies ahead.
And in that orientation, anxiety points me toward hope.