Hidden anxiety is killing your joy—or at minimum, diminishing your ability to feel at peace.

Humans are exceptional habituators. Our species brain is unique in its ability to filter out over 99.99% of the sensory input it receives, allowing us to focus on what is most relevant and important for survival.

This means we stick to what we know. And if what we know is anxiety, whether conscious or subconscious, we filter out stimuli that would lead to freeing ourselves naturally.

In other words, we have to work to drop anxiety as our conditioned habit.

I've noticed over the years that despite the gross episodes of overwhelming anxiety being absent in my life, the subtle residue of anxiety still permeates my experience at times. I've come to call this "hidden anxiety" and think it affects most people unknowingly.

The idea of hidden anxiety isn't new.

The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, thought along similar lines when describing his quintessential structure of personality—breaking down parts of the human psyche into 3 categories.

• id: representing instincts and base urges including sexual drives and repressed memories.
• Ego: rational mind that oscillates between desires of the id and realities of the external world.
• Superego: representing the moral standards and ideals acquired from conditioning.

To balance the id and superego, our minds tend to employ defense mechanisms which lead to emotional issues. If left unchecked, we become stuck in a downward spiral of negativity, confusion, and ultimately fear.

By repressing, denying, redirecting, or projecting our confusing inner experience, we ultimately become a slave to our id—our repressed unconscious emotions.

If anxiety happens to be what we're repressing, either from childhood, bad genes, a traumatic experience, or all three, it gets installed as our baseline operating system right beneath our nose.

Why is this bad?

Because when you're conditioned by a fear based emotion like anxiety, your entire life feels the effect—even the so-called “good experiences.”

How can we tell if what we experience is hidden anxiety?

Examine your everyday life and notice how you feel in various situations.

If you approach a stranger on a sidewalk, do you recoil ever so slightly? Perhaps you move further away from them or close off your body.

This exhibits an uncomfortability with strangers and possibly hidden anxiety that someone will hurt you.

Our id wants to run away from them. Our superego logically talks us off the ledge and we continue walking, albeit slightly uncomfortably.

The subtlety is important here. You may not even notice if you aren't paying attention. But there's a difference between being 100% open with a natural smile, and 15% closed with a slightly elevated heart rate, forcing a smile when a stranger passes you.

Another example:

Imagine a wedding celebration for someone you're close to. Do you fully enjoy the party or are you self conscious about what you're saying, how it might look if you aren't talking to someone, or what you're wearing?

Someone with hidden anxiety may experience 75% of the celebratory joy, while someone not affected is fully present and enjoying every moment, unencumbered by hidden anxiety.

The bottom line?

Hidden anxiety colors our experience and influences the choices we make—full stop.

As I've written about before, anxiety is related to worst case scenario thinking, often coupled with bodily reactions.

But worst case scenario thinking doesn't always make itself obvious.

Here are some ways in which you might notice hidden anxiety influencing your life, followed by the root "worst case scenario" thought that fuels the feeling, followed by the typical behavior demonstrating you might be affected by hidden anxiety:

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Fear: Fear of social situations

Thought: "I will be ostracized from the tribe."

Behaviors: avoiding public speaking, trying to blend in and not be noticed

Fear: Fear of not being prepared

Thought: "I won't be able to handle a situation."

Behaviors: micromanaging, trying to control everything, constantly stressed

Fear: Fear of losing someone

Thought: "I can't survive without this relationship."

Behaviors: placing your own well being on the wellbeing of others, people pleasing

Fear: Fear of making a mistake or failing

Thought: "I will be judged and no one will love me."

Behaviors: procrastinating, making excuses, never finishing anything

Fear: Fear of not being good enough

Thought: "I won't be accepted for who I am or be outcast."

Behaviors: striving for achievement, obsessed with money

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These, of course, are just a few examples of how hidden anxiety could be pulling the strings of your life behind the scenes.

But none are universally true and hidden anxiety is unique for each individual.

Personally, I deal with a strong sense of lack and tend to perceive neutral things as threats.

I've gotten incredibly good over the years at identifying my tendency when it surfaces and then course correcting. In my experience, bringing the experience into the light of awareness sends the cockroach-like hidden anxiety running for cover.

If I'm ever feeling disturbed in some way or just "off", I can always trace it back to some form of hidden anxiety. At the root it's ultimately fear showing up in varying ways, diminishing my ability to enjoy present moment peace.

Most fears have to do with how other people perceive us and whether or not we're accepted. Much of this is biological, yet it's not programmed into us by biology to be as anxious as we've become.

In my view, most of the anxiety people end up feeling as panic attacks, bodily breakdowns, digestive issues, hyperventilation, or other intense ways, leaps off the platform of hidden anxiety.

It goes something like this:

People are subtly conditioned by fear in every aspect of life (hidden anxiety), which in turn means they don't fully experience any part of their life (even the "good stuff"), and then crumble when an intense anxiety trigger arises because the neural pathway of fear is so well traveled.

If instead, over time, you reprogram from whatever part of the hidden anxiety scale you are on, to being open, confident, brave, gracious, and accepting, then when more intense anxiety triggers come you won't succumb to fear and start believing you have the capacity to handle the triggers.

In other words, managing fear and acting through it rather than allowing ourselves to be rendered useless by it.

This is the only way we can overcome hidden anxiety and start to fully experience the joy of life.
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