Why Anxiety Keeps Coming Back
You’ve cut down caffeine.
You’re exercising.
You’re meditating.
You’ve read the books.
You’re trying to be reasonable with yourself.
And still, it returns.
That can feel demoralising, because it quietly implies something harsh: if the anxiety is back, I must be failing. But anxiety doesn’t work like a school report.
Often, it comes back because you’re trying, because the way you’re trying has become part of the system that keeps it going.
Not because you’re doing it “wrong”.
But because anxiety is rarely just a glitch. It has a logic.
“Doing everything right” is sometimes part of the problem
There’s a particular kind of suffering in anxiety that looks like good behaviour.
You become efficient. You manage yourself. You stay on top of things. You don’t burden anyone. You keep going.
From the outside it can look like resilience. On the inside it can feel like living under a rule system: don’t slip. And the more you try not to slip, the more you can feel the pressure.
In psychoanalytic terms, symptoms exist because they’re functioning. Anxiety can be unpleasant – but it functions for a reason.
It keeps you vigilant, it keeps you moving. It keeps you “good”. It stops you from taking risks you don’t feel entitled to take. It prevents you from wanting too much, or wanting the “wrong” thing.
So when you finally start doing things differently – resting more, slowing down, thinking of yourself differently – anxiety may appear. Not as punishment, but as a kind of border patrol.
Anxiety doesn’t always mean danger. Sometimes it means proximity.
Fear points at something very defined. Anxiety involves something shapeless.
Anxiety can show up when you’re too close to something that hasn’t been psychologically elaborated.
A decision, a feeling, a truth, a desire, a change in how you see yourself. Lacan has a useful line here: anxiety can appear when the usual distance you rely on collapses – when you’re not sure where you stand.
You might notice this in very ordinary moments:
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You get a bit of praise, and feel oddly unsettled after.
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A relationship gets warmer, and you feel like panic.
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Work eases off, and you suddenly can’t sleep.
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You’re finally “fine”, and your mind starts scanning for what you’ve missed.
It’s not that your mind wants misery. It’s that your mind wants the familiar. Even if the familiar hurts.
The loop: relief teaches the anxiety how to return
Commonly anxiety is maintained by a simple pattern:
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Anxiety rises
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You do something to bring it down (scrolling, reassurance, googling symptoms, checking, planning, over-explaining, avoiding, fixing)
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Relief comes
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Your mind concludes: that worked – do it again next time
The relief becomes the teacher, but the cycle repeats.
Unfortunately, simply relieving anxiety in the moment is not the same as treating it’s roots. This is anxiety can come back even when you’re “doing everything right”. Because sometimes “right” means: I can’t tolerate feeling this, so I have to neutralise it immediately.
What if anxiety is not the enemy, but the message?
This doesn’t mean anxiety is “good”. It’s very difficult, it produces a lot of suffering, and it can take over your body and hijack your day.
But if we stop treating it like a malfunction and start treating it like a signal, different questions become possible:
What does anxiety stop me from admitting?
When it rises, what is it trying to prevent?
What becomes possible if I don’t neutralise it immediately?
What would I do if I wasn’t living to prove I’m okay?
Often, the thing underneath anxiety isn’t some dramatic secret. It’s more human than that:
A grief you’ve been outrunning. A resentment you don’t allow yourself. A wish that doesn’t fit your self-image. A relationship dynamic you keep tolerating. A life choice you keep postponing.
Anxiety involves a truth that is close enough to be felt – but not yet spoken.
A more useful goal than “getting rid of it”
If your only goal is to eliminate anxiety, you’ll end up fighting your own body and mind all day.
A more realistic goal is: Can I learn what keeps re-triggering it, and shift my relationship to that?
You start noticing it earlier. You stop panicking about the fact that it’s there. You become less obedient to the rituals that promise certainty. You get more interested in what it’s pointing toward.
And that curiosity and working through is often what loosens the pattern.
Further Reading:
How Counselling Helps When You Don’t Know What’s Wrong
What Actually Happens in Therapy?
Clinical Reading:
- Jacques Lacan: Seminar X: Anxiety
Counselling
Eating Disorders & Body Dysmorphia