Mind, Body, and Anxiety
Anxiety’s Way of Mistaking Excitement for Stress
When I was a child, I was a dancer. I remember my first encounter with stage fright. Shaking in the wings, rehearsing steps over and over again, even though I knew I had them memorized.
“You’re not scared, you’re excited!” said my dance teacher, crouching down to meet my eyes. “You’ve been preparing for weeks, and now you can’t wait to get on stage to show everyone what you’ve learned.”This advice somehow worked. Yes, I was still scared, but something about reframing it softened the edge. She was right—part of performance anxiety is excitement. After all, we choose to perform because we love it. So maybe, just maybe, those butterflies were a little bit excited too.
Now that I’ve long retired my ballet slippers and swapped recitals for presentations, trips, interviews, and new adventures, I’ve had to repurpose that advice in my everyday life. But I’ll be honest: sometimes it’s easier said than done.
I still lie awake the night before big events—new cities, first days, even dinner plans I do want to go to. It’s not that I’m dreading the experience; in fact, I often feel good about it. But anxiety doesn’t always get the memo. It has a funny way of distorting excitement into dread. The same racing heart that danced backstage is now tangled up in what-ifs. The feeling of anxiousness often has a negative connotation, but is also defined as the feeling of wanting. When we’re excited for something, we want it to come sooner. As someone with an anxiety disorder, however, that can leave us feeling uneasy and cause us to cancel plans even when we wanted to attend.
The problem is our brains—especially anxious ones—don’t always differentiate between excitement and fear. Both make your chest feel tight. Both make your thoughts run in circles. Both can keep you awake at 3 a.m., staring at the ceiling, wondering why you feel so uneasy when nothing is actually wrong.
A big factor in my adult life has been overcoming this feeling by simply convincing my brain I am excited, not afraid. I struggle the most with this at nighttime while alone with my thoughts and fears. Sometimes I become afraid and begin to worry about my excitements when I think too long. For a long time, I let that feeling ruin things I was genuinely looking forward to. I would cancel plans last minute or dread experiences I knew I’d enjoy once I was there. It’s the before that gets me—the mental ramp-up, the imagined scenarios, the little voice that whispers, “What if you mess it up?”
The best way I have combated this is by simply looking for the best. I think about only the potential good of my upcoming plans and write them down. I start every sentence with I am excited for… And sometimes that’s all it takes.
It sounds simple, but it really helps. I remind myself what I’m looking forward to: a new coffee shop, a chance to wear a cute outfit, seeing someone I love, trying something I’ve never done before. I write it all out, no matter how small. It shifts my mindset from fear to curiosity. From dread to anticipation.
I don’t have a perfect fix, but I’ve learned that naming the feeling—saying “this is anxiety pretending to be fear”—helps me feel a little more in control. I drink a glass of water. I journal. Sometimes, I just let myself spiral for a minute and then move on. If you’re reading this and nodding along, just know you’re not weird or broken. You’re not alone in your mind, even when it feels like it. And sometimes, the most healing thing you can do is share the feeling, whether it’s with a friend, a journal, or a little corner of the internet like this.
Anxiety doesn’t always mean something bad is coming. Sometimes it’s just your body reacting to something big, something new, something important. And that doesn’t always have to be scary.
