People with anxiety disorders often report a loss of control because anxiety is fundamentally about the mind’s and body’s systems going “off script” in ways that feel ungovernable, unpredictable, or alien to the person experiencing them. This can be broken down into a few dimensions:
1. Loss of control over thoughts
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Racing mind: Intrusive or repetitive thoughts loop endlessly, often catastrophizing worst-case scenarios.
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Involuntary attention: The mind latches onto threats or fears even when the person wants to focus elsewhere.
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First-person feel: “I know these thoughts are irrational, but I can’t stop them. It feels like my own mind has turned against me.”
2. Loss of control over the body
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Physiological takeover: Heart races, palms sweat, muscles tense, breathing shortens.
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Fight-or-flight mismatch: The body responds to imagined dangers as though they’re real and immediate.
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First-person feel: “My chest tightens, my throat closes. I tell myself to relax, but my body doesn’t listen. It’s like being trapped inside a malfunctioning machine.”
3. Loss of control over behavior
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Compulsions and avoidance: People feel compelled to perform certain rituals, avoid places, or escape situations to reduce anxiety.
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Social inhibition: Words may stumble, voices may shake, or they may freeze entirely.
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First-person feel: “I wanted to act normal, but I panicked and bolted. It was as if someone else grabbed the steering wheel of my life.”
4. Loss of control over time and anticipation
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Hypervigilance: Constant scanning of the environment for threats.
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Time dilation: Moments of panic feel endless, minutes stretch into hours.
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First-person feel: “It’s like being suspended in dread, waiting for something terrible to happen, with no way to escape.”
5. Loss of control over identity/self
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Depersonalization and derealization: Some people feel detached from themselves or reality during intense anxiety.
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Erosion of agency: They begin to doubt their competence or reliability because anxiety seems to dictate their choices.
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First-person feel: “I don’t feel like myself anymore. I’m watching my life play out from a distance, powerless to intervene.”
So, from the inside, anxiety doesn’t just feel like “being worried”—it’s the sense that the very systems that are supposed to serve one’s will (thoughts, body, actions, sense of reality) are hijacked. That dissonance—knowing you should be in control, but feeling that you’re not—is central to the suffering.
Do you want me to expand more on the existential side of this loss of control—how it can feel like a fundamental breakdown of one’s relationship to self and world—or would you prefer a strictly clinical/psychological angle?
You said:
ChatGPT said:
Good—these three capture the experiential texture of anxiety’s loss of control in especially vivid ways. Let’s deepen into them:
1. Social inhibition: the breakdown of expression
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What happens: In anxiety, speech can falter—words come out broken, voices quiver, or the mind blanks altogether. It’s not just shyness; it’s as though the act of expression (the bridge between inner life and outer world) buckles under pressure.
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First-person perspective:
“I know what I want to say, but when I open my mouth, the words scatter. My tongue feels heavy, my throat constricts, and my voice betrays me. I become hyper-aware of how I must look—awkward, weak, exposed. It’s like watching my ability to be with others collapse in real time.” -
Loss of control dimension: The self feels betrayed by its own instrument of communication, leaving the person alienated at the very moment they long for connection.
2. Time dilation: when dread thickens the moment
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What happens: During panic or heightened anxiety, time slows dramatically. A few minutes of dread can feel like an eternity, because the body and mind are locked in hyper-vigilant overdrive, processing every flicker of sensation and every possibility of danger.
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First-person perspective:
“The clock says only two minutes have passed, but it feels like I’ve been here for hours. My heart is pounding in slow motion. Each second is too long, too full. I can’t get to the end of it. The moment traps me—it won’t let me move forward.” -
Loss of control dimension: Time is one of the most basic structures of lived experience. When anxiety distorts it, the person feels cut off from the shared rhythm of the world, stranded in a private, oppressive temporality.
3. Doubting competence and reliability: anxiety as usurper of agency
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What happens: Because anxiety repeatedly hijacks thought, body, and behavior, the person may start to believe they can’t be trusted to act competently, reliably, or freely. Every plan is shadowed by doubt: Will I freeze? Will I fall apart?
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First-person perspective:
“I want to believe I can handle this, but I’ve seen myself unravel too many times. It’s like there’s another version of me—the anxious me—waiting to take over. I start doubting whether the steady, capable me even exists anymore.” -
Loss of control dimension: Anxiety doesn’t just disrupt isolated moments; it corrodes the person’s confidence in their own continuity and agency, making it feel like their life is co-authored or authored by an unpredictable, destabilizing force.
Taken together, these three (inhibited expression, warped temporality, eroded self-trust) point to why anxiety feels existentially devastating: it doesn’t just make one afraid of specific things—it undermines the very capacities (speech, time, agency) through which we normally inhabit the world.
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