Understanding why trying to fix your anxiety can make it worse begins with recognising the way urgency, pressure, and self-criticism influence the nervous system. When anxiety appears, most people instinctively try to make it stop, to solve it, rationalise it, control it, or push it away. While that reaction is understandable, it often intensifies anxiety rather than reducing it. In fact, the impulse to “fix” anxiety can keep you stuck in the very patterns that maintain distress. Below are the most common reasons why fixing backfires, and what actually helps instead.
1. Treating Anxiety Like an Emergency Activates Your Threat System
When anxiety shows up and your immediate instinct is “I need this gone right now,” your body interprets that urgency as confirmation that something is wrong. Even if the original trigger wasn’t dangerous, your reaction suggests danger and your nervous system responds accordingly. The body shifts into a state of heightened alertness: faster heartbeat, shallow breathing, tension, hypervigilance. This physiological activation makes the anxiety feel even more intense, reinforcing the belief that there is a crisis happening internally.
This is one of the central reasons why trying to fix your anxiety can make it worse : the urgency increases activation rather than allowing the system to settle.
2. Fixing Pulls You Into Analysis Instead of Regulation
When anxiety appears, many people move straight into mental analysis. You might try to figure out where it came from, what it means, or how to stop it immediately. The problem is that analysis engages the thinking mind, but anxiety is primarily a body-based experience.
This creates a disconnect: your mind is busy problem-solving, while your body is still activated. Overthinking rarely leads to relief. Instead, it spirals into more worry, more monitoring, and more internal pressure. Insight is helpful, but insight without regulation doesn’t allow the nervous system to calm. This dynamic becomes another layer of why trying to fix your anxiety can make it worse : you remain in your head rather than connecting with the body where the anxiety is actually happening.
3. Fixing Often Leads to Suppression Instead of Understanding
Trying to eliminate anxiety usually means trying not to feel it. This leads to subtle forms of suppression: distracting yourself, minimising the feeling, pushing it away, or avoiding situations that bring it up. But suppressed emotions don’t resolve, they accumulate.
Over time, suppressed anxiety becomes stored tension, chronic worry, irritability, emotional numbness, or burnout. You can only push feelings down for so long before they reappear in more intense ways. Suppression blocks access to the information anxiety is trying to communicate, and this is a fundamental reason why trying to fix your anxiety can make it worse: the underlying message is never addressed.
4. Fixing Creates Self-Criticism That Intensifies Stress
When your attempts to fix anxiety don’t work, frustration often turns inward. You might start thinking:
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“Why can’t I get a grip?”
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“Why isn’t this gone yet?”
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“Other people handle life better than I do.”
This self-criticism adds a second layer of stress on top of the anxiety itself. Your nervous system doesn’t distinguish between external judgment and internal judgment, both feel like threat. So instead of calming down, the body becomes even more activated. This contributes significantly to why trying to fix your anxiety can make it worse: you are fighting yourself rather than supporting yourself.
5. Fixing Trains Your Brain to Fear the Sensation Itself
When you treat anxiety as something that must be eliminated immediately, your brain learns that the feeling itself is dangerous. Over time, you don’t just fear the trigger : you fear the experience of anxiety. This creates “anxiety about anxiety,” which intensifies symptoms and makes them return more frequently. This is a major reason why trying to fix your anxiety can make it worse: you’re accidentally reinforcing fear of the internal sensation.
So What Helps Instead of Fixing?
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Slow down before reacting. Pausing interrupts the urgency that keeps the threat system activated.
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Notice what feels threatened. Anxiety always connects to something meaningful, even if the link isn’t obvious.
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Come back into your body. Regulation happens through sensation and grounding, not analysis.
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Move toward curiosity, not self-judgment. Understanding your reaction supports the nervous system far more than pressure or criticism.
And if you find yourself stuck in the same patterns, looping, overwhelmed, or unsure how to respond differently, therapy can help you build the skills, insight, and emotional safety needed to approach anxiety in a more supportive way. It offers structure, guidance, and a relationship where your internal world can be explored at a pace that feels manageable.
About the Author
Dr. Pauline Chiarizia is a Counselling Psychologist specialising in trauma. She offers online therapy and EMDR for individuals who are ready to explore themselves more deeply, break free from unhelpful patterns, and address challenges like anxiety, depression, trauma, low self-esteem, and burnout.
Dr. Chiarizia helps you develop resilience, strengthen self-trust, and build the confidence to navigate life’s challenges: personally and professionally. Her approach empowers clients to cope with adversity while also being fully present for moments of joy, love, and connection.