Why You Feel Anxious Even When Life Is “Good”

On paper your life looks AMAZING. You have a doting husband, a successful career, a beautiful house, and wonderful kids–yet you still have this pit in your stomach. You often think to yourself: if life is so good why do I still feel anxious? You might even start to feel guilty for feeling anxious because life is so good. You have that nagging question in the back of your head: what’s wrong with me?

I just want to let you know that this experience is so normal and a lot of women feel this way. They have this intangible feeling of dread or anxiety even when life is going well. 

Anxiety Isn’t Just About What’s Happening Now

You may think you have anxiety “for no reason” but in reality this anxiety is telling you something important. It may not be about what’s going on in your daily life that’s making you anxious. It could be something unresolved from your past that keeps creeping in unknowingly.

Your body has learned to use anxiety to signal that something’s wrong—which may be about current circumstances, or may not be. Our bodies and emotions flare when there’s a perceived threat—not necessarily because there is actual danger. 

Whether it’s past stress, unpredictability, or emotional unsafety, any of these things can keep your system on high alert making you feel like there’s something wrong when in the present moment nothing is going “wrong”.

Your Nervous System Might Not Feel Safe Yet

So why do any of us feel anxious for seemingly no reason? It’s because stability isn’t the same thing as safety. Your life could be completely stable and predictable and at the same time your body and nervous system are so dysregulated that you can’t seem to “calm down” or rest.

Your nervous system might have learned to be in fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode for so long that it doesn’t know how to come down off of that feeling. Fight/flight/freeze/fawn are protective strategies that our bodies learn to keep us safe. 

• Fight: your body tends to want to confront or “fight” the perceived danger head-on

• Flight: your body tends to run away from the danger

• Freeze: your body doesn’t know what to do in the face of danger so it “plays dead”

• Fawn: your body thinks it’s best chance at survival is to endear the danger to you so it won’t want to hurt you

Whatever mode your body might be stuck in–it’s saying that a good life isn’t the same as feeling safe.

When You’ve Been Through Stress, Calm Can Feel Unfamiliar

For a lot of people I work with, they have been through some hard and even traumatic things that keep them in fight/flight mode. And even when we work to calm the stresses of life down, their bodies still don’t trust the calm because it feels unfamiliar and even unsafe.

People who live high-stress lives tend to:

• Be uncomfortable with a slower paced life or moments of rest because they learned somewhere in their life that feeling anxious is helpful for staying safe

• Think (unconsciously) “this anxiety keeps me safe because without it, I won’t know what danger is coming next”

What they don’t realize is that their body doesn’t need to be on high alert all the time anymore.

This is so common in people who are high functioning, people-pleasers, or are in caregiver roles because they’re used to juggling a lot of different things at once in order to do their job, keep people close to them, or take care of others.

The Role of People-Pleasing and Hyper-Responsibility

Another aspect of calm feeling unfamiliar is when people-pleasers take on too much responsibility. People-pleasers tend to take on other people’s emotions or needs in order to care for them, keep them close, and keep “danger” at bay. 

So when they aren’t doing something for other people they often feel anxious because they feel their worth is tied to what they do for others. So, not doing something for others=lower worth and people might want to leave me. They can often think “if I’m not managing others’ emotions, something bad might happen”.

Anxiety Is Often a Protective Response—Not a Problem

Now you may be thinking, “well I’d rather be anxious and do something about it than sit around and wait to see if something bad is going to happen”. Fair enough! Healing doesn’t mean getting rid of anxiety—it means helping your body learn when it no longer has to work so hard.

Anxiety once protected you and now is costing you more than it’s helping.

There’s a difference between helpful anxiety and chronic anxiety:

• Helpful anxiety: when there is actual danger and your body needs the adrenaline to move you to safety. It’s usually time-limited and there is real danger

• Chronic anxiety: when your body perceives constant danger when there might not be danger, and your body can’t move out of fight/flight mode

Anxiety itself isn’t the problem—it’s when your body stays in protection mode even when you’re no longer in danger.

Why Telling Yourself to “Be Grateful” Doesn’t Work

I know a lot of people often look at their anxiety when life is good and tell themselves the solution is to be grateful. And then they try that and inevitably their anxiety still comes back. What’s going on here?

Being grateful is a useful tool, however, it can’t create safety when your body doesn’t feel safe. 

This is why so many well meaning people say to just be grateful or pray about it or remind yourself of how good you have it. They want you to feel better but they don’t know how to get you there either. Those tools can be helpful at times and at times they can lead you to dismiss your experience of unsafety and lead to further anxiety.

What Actually Helps When Anxiety Shows Up in “Good” Seasons

Let’s talk about what IS helpful! What people often need is to find the root of the anxiety and help their body process what it hasn’t had space to process and meet unmet needs, so their body can finally experience safety.

In therapy, that will look like: 

• Learning to listen to your body instead of overriding it

• Learning to slow down safely and in a way your body will respond well to

• Learning how to build internal safety

You’re Allowed to Get Support Even When Life Looks Fine

You don’t have to wait to come to therapy or get support until life feels unmanageable or that it’s “falling apart”. Anxiety in good seasons is just as worthy of care as anxiety in hard seasons. Also, seeking help for anxiety doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. It just means you want a little extra support and that’s exactly what I’m here for.

You don’t need a crisis to deserve support—just a desire to feel more at ease in your own body.

If you feel like life is good but anxiety still takes over and you would like more support, I’d be honored to walk alongside you.