What are your anxiety triggers?
Anxiety can often feel like this thing that comes out of nowhere and swallows you up. And while sometimes it can be completely random, usually there are triggers that once pushed, let the anxiety in.
If you aren’t aware of these triggers, it can be next to impossible to figure out how to cope with anxiety, and especially difficult to prevent it.
But learning to identify your anxiety triggers can prepare you to better deal with anxiety when it arises, and recognize when it’s about to happen so you can adapt and possibly even take action before the anxiety hits.
Identifying your anxiety triggers can seem overwhelming, but it is totally possible. Let me show you how.
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All the tips in the post are for education purposes only and are not intended to replace medical advice from a medical professional.
Why should you identify your anxiety triggers?
Just like treating a physical illness, treating the symptoms will only provide temporary relief. If you get anxious, then employing coping strategies and doing some self-care is an amazing way to get through it and begin to feel better.
But there’s one problem with this- it doesn’t prevent the anxiety from coming back again.
It’s important to have a multiple-attack approach. Being able to treat the anxiety when it arises is super important. But it’s equally important to work on treating the root causes of your anxiety.
Identifying your triggers is how you learn what those root causes are. It’s how you uncover the deeper things within you that are causing you to feel overwhelmed or anxious or depressed or panicked.
Something to note: Anxiety triggers can be something as simple as having too much caffeine, or something deeper like being around certain people who bring up traumatic memories from your childhood.
Be open-minded to any and all triggers that you may identify.
How to Identify your Anxiety Triggers
1. Keep a log
If someone is struggling with stomach issues and there is an unknown cause, doctors will often recommend that the patient keep a food journal. This can help them see things like “every time I eat yogurt for breakfast, my stomach hurts later in the day”.
This can help both the doctor and the patient be able to simply identify what is causing the health issue.
Mental health can work the same way.
Keeping a log of your anxiety/depression symptoms can be one of the most straightforward ways to pinpoint the cause of those symptoms.
And it can be simple. Just grab a journal (here is one I love), or even use to Notes app on your phone, and start writing down anytime you start to feel anxious.
If you can, when the anxiety hits, try to rewind your brain a bit and think about what happened before you started to feel anxious, and write that down too.
The more detailed you can be about your time leading up to that moment of anxiety, the better.
Over time, you might start to see a pattern develop. You might notice that every time you skip breakfast, or have a work meeting, or see a certain person’s Instagram post, you start to feel anxious.
Once you see a pattern, you can figure out how to fix it. Fixing it will look different depending on what the trigger is.
If skipping breakfast tends to lead to anxiety for you, then starting to eat breakfast can be a simple fix.
But if your trigger is having a work meeting, that’s not really avoidable. So then your fix can just be preparing yourself for the anxiety that comes with that. This could mean extra self-care during those times, or giving yourself something to look forward to for when the meeting is over.
2. Phone a friend
The people in your life may know more about you than you realize.
They might even recognize things that tend to make you anxious that you yourself aren’t aware of.
There have been several times that I have brought to my husband’s attention something that I’ve noticed seems to trigger him, and vice versa.
A simple way to gain some insight about your anxiety triggers is to ask someone close to you. Ask a partner or parent or BFF or someone that is around you often if they’ve noticed anything that seems to trigger your anxiety or big feelings.
3. Make a list of your big stressors
Another way to identify your anxiety stressors is by starting with the things you are feeling now, and backtrack.
To do this, grab a notebook and just write out all of the things you feel stress about, or tend to feel stress about on a normal basis. Whether it’s finances, or an upcoming project, a social situation, your career, the house being a mess, or a relationship, etc.
While we do have the occasional stressor that is a one-time situation (example: waiting for a medical test result), majority of stressors for most people are things that keep happening over and over throughout our lives.
So for example, if you feel like you’re often stressed about your house not being perfectly tidy, then that could potentially be something that triggers anxiety for you. Try to pay attention to how your anxiety levels differ when your space is tidy vs when it’s messy.
Once you identify things like this, you’re one step closer to eliminating or at least lessening that stressor altogether.
Finances tend to make you anxious? Make it a goal to give yourself a little more breathing room in your budget, or think of things you can do to improve your financial outlook.
Get anxiety from social situations? Anticipate that anxiety by giving yourself some extra love and make changes where you can. Aim to have smaller gatherings with a few friends at home rather than going out in busy settings, for example.
Common Anxiety Triggers & Fixes
There are countless things that could be triggering your anxiety, and those things will likely be different than what triggers anxiety for me, or your best friend, or your neighbor.
Everyone’s mental health journey is unique. But I did want to outline a few common anxiety triggers that might help you start to get an idea of what kinds of things could be sending you into anxiety’s grip.
If you have an anxiety trigger you’ve identified that you think others might benefit from being aware of, please let me know in the comments!
Trigger #1: Caffeine consumption can make many people feel more jittery and anxious, and definitely affects the nervous system.
Action step: Reduce either the amount or the type of caffeine you consume. Not all sources of caffeine are the same. Options like matcha and tea affect your brain much differently than coffee. I recently switched to matcha and the change has been very obvious (no more afternoon jitters).
Trigger #2: Financial insecurity, or even just the fear of financial insecurity, can cause HUGE amounts of anxiety.
Action step: Take a look at your finances to see where you are. Make it a goal to make your situation at least 1% better each day. Not everyone can just get a better paying job or save more money. When money is tight, find what you can do. One hack I love is to use cash to buy things like groceries and set back every $5 bill you get. It’s not a huge amount each time, but the savings can add up quickly. Making small choices in the right direction will greatly reduce your anxiety in the future.
Trigger #3: Social situations can cause social anxiety and leave you feeling overwhelmed, overstimulated, and lonely.
Action step: Figure out what it is that you don’t like about certain social situations. Is it busy places? The pressure to act a certain way? Or even a friend group you aren’t comfortable with? Once you figure that out, find ways you can compromise with yourself to feel a little more comfortable. Suggest more comfortable settings, or set boundaries with your friends if needed.
Trigger #4: Careers and jobs can trigger anxiety, whether it’s from high-stress work, poor hours, or even just having a job you don’t enjoy.
Action step: Figure out what it is about your job that causes you anxiety, and figure out how to make the situation more enjoyable. Do you need to search for a new job? Is there a way you can improve your time while you’re at work? Giving yourself something to look forward to at work, for example, can make a huge difference in how your day goes.
Trigger #5: Being unprepared, in a variety of situations, can cause so much stress and anxiety for so many people. But this kind of stress is also highly avoidable if you take the right steps.
Action step: Think about the situations in your life that you have to do each day or week, like get dressed, cook meals, grocery shop, do chores, etc. Think about how you can be better prepared for each of those moments. Those little frequent tasks can be such a big part of anxiety. Doing things like laying out your outfit each night before bed, or having a rotating grocery list, or meal prepping every Sunday can take so much stress off of us throughout the days/weeks.
Once you identify your anxiety triggers, your journey to healing will be so much easier.
You will be better prepared to address the root of your anxiety, instead of just the symptoms.
I hope this post helped you and that your mental health journey will benefit from it <3
To help you on your healing journey, I’ve created the FREE 7-day anti-depression challenge. For 7 days, you’ll get simple but actionable steps sent straight to you. ↓
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