Anxiety is one of the most common psychological experiences people bring to psychotherapy. Many individuals describe feeling constantly worried, restless, overwhelmed, fearful, tense, or unable to relax. Others experience anxiety through panic attacks, intrusive thoughts, chronic apprehension, physical symptoms, or a persistent sense that something is wrong.

Because anxiety is so familiar, it is often understood only in terms of what can be observed on the surface. People recognise the racing thoughts, rapid heartbeat, muscle tension, difficulty sleeping, or excessive worrying. However, from a psychodynamic perspective, these visible symptoms may represent only a small part of what is actually occurring.

Many psychodynamic theorists have argued that anxiety is not simply a symptom. Rather, it may function as a signal that deeper psychological processes are taking place beneath conscious awareness.

To understand anxiety more fully, it is necessary to look beneath the surface and consider the relationship between biology, instinctual drives, emotions, fantasies, unconscious processes, and the ways the mind attempts to manage them.

The Biological Origins of Anxiety

At its most fundamental level, anxiety has biological foundations.

Human beings evolved nervous systems capable of detecting danger and responding rapidly to potential threats. Long before complex psychological thought developed, survival depended upon the ability to recognise danger and react immediately.

This survival system remains active today.

When a threat is perceived, the body mobilises physiological responses designed to increase vigilance and prepare for action. Heart rate increases, muscles become tense, breathing changes, attention narrows, and the individual becomes more alert to possible danger.

These responses are not signs of weakness or pathology. They are part of the normal biological architecture of human survival.

However, human beings are not simply biological organisms reacting to external events. We are also psychological beings who assign meaning to our experiences. As a result, biological reactions become intertwined with memories, fantasies, expectations, relationships, and unconscious emotional life.

Instincts, Drives, and Emotional Life

Many psychodynamic theorists have argued that human beings possess powerful instinctual drives and emotional forces that exist beneath conscious awareness.

Freud’s early theories focused on instinctual drives and the conflicts that can emerge around them. Later theorists expanded these ideas, placing greater emphasis on relationships, aggression, attachment, dependency, love, envy, vulnerability, and emotional development.

Regardless of theoretical differences, many psychodynamic approaches share the assumption that human beings are motivated by forces that are not always fully conscious.

These forces do not remain purely biological. They become represented psychologically.

An instinct is experienced not only as bodily energy but also through wishes, fears, fantasies, emotions, images, expectations, and relationships. The mind develops representations of these internal forces and attempts to make sense of them.

It is often at this point that anxiety begins to emerge.

The Role of Unconscious Fantasy

One of the most important ideas within psychodynamic thinking is that people respond not only to reality but also to their internal fantasies about reality.

The word fantasy does not refer simply to daydreaming or imagination. In psychodynamic theory, unconscious fantasies are psychological representations through which instinctual drives, emotions, wishes, fears, and conflicts are experienced.

For example, a person may consciously know that a disagreement with a partner is relatively minor. Yet unconsciously, the disagreement may become associated with fantasies of abandonment, rejection, humiliation, retaliation, loss, or emotional destruction.

Similarly, feelings of anger may become associated with unconscious fears of damaging important relationships. Dependency needs may become linked to fantasies of helplessness or loss of autonomy. Success may become associated with unconscious fears of envy or attack from others.

The anxiety experienced consciously may therefore be less about the immediate situation and more about the unconscious meanings attached to it.

Why Anxiety Can Feel So Overwhelming

One reason anxiety can feel overwhelming is that the individual is often responding to multiple levels of experience simultaneously.

At one level, there may be a real situation occurring in the present.

At another level, there may be memories of previous experiences.

At yet another level, unconscious fantasies, fears, wishes, conflicts, and expectations may become activated.

The person experiences all of this as a single emotional state.

Consequently, the intensity of anxiety may sometimes appear disproportionate to the current situation. What seems like a relatively small event may trigger a much larger emotional response because deeper psychological meanings have become activated.

This does not mean the anxiety is irrational. Rather, it often reflects psychological realities that extend far beyond the immediate circumstances.

Anxiety as a Signal

Freud eventually came to view anxiety as a signal.

Rather than being caused directly by instinctual drives themselves, anxiety was understood as a warning that something psychologically significant was approaching awareness.

The mind may experience anxiety when impulses, wishes, feelings, memories, conflicts, or emotional realities threaten to emerge into consciousness.

From this perspective, anxiety serves a protective function.

It alerts the individual that something feels emotionally dangerous, even if the source of that danger is not fully understood.

Many psychodynamic theorists have continued to build upon this idea. Anxiety is often viewed as a signal that deeper emotional material is seeking expression while simultaneously being resisted.

Defences and the Management of Anxiety

Because anxiety can be painful, the mind develops ways of managing it.

These psychological strategies are often referred to as defence mechanisms.

Defences are not inherently unhealthy. They help individuals maintain emotional stability and psychological functioning.

However, difficulties can arise when defensive strategies become rigid or automatic.

Avoidance, denial, intellectualisation, emotional withdrawal, excessive reassurance-seeking, perfectionism, compulsive behaviours, self-criticism, and many other coping strategies can function as attempts to manage anxiety.

In the short term, these strategies may provide relief.

In the long term, they may prevent the underlying emotional conflict from being understood.

What Anxiety Often Hides

One of the most important psychodynamic insights is that anxiety frequently conceals other emotional experiences.

Beneath anxiety there may be grief, anger, guilt, shame, dependency needs, vulnerability, loneliness, envy, fear of loss, fear of rejection, fear of failure, or fear of success.

Sometimes people spend years trying to eliminate anxiety without fully exploring what the anxiety is protecting them from experiencing.

From a psychodynamic perspective, the question is often not simply:

“How do I get rid of my anxiety?”

but also:

“What emotional reality is my anxiety trying to help me avoid?”

How Anxiety Appears in Psychotherapy

Anxiety frequently becomes visible within the therapeutic relationship itself.

Clients may become anxious about being judged, misunderstood, criticised, dependent, vulnerable, angry, disappointed, or emotionally exposed.

These experiences are often valuable because they provide opportunities to observe anxiety as it occurs rather than simply discussing it in retrospect.

The therapeutic relationship can become a place where underlying fears, fantasies, expectations, and conflicts gradually become visible.

What initially appears to be general anxiety may reveal itself to be connected to specific emotional concerns, relational patterns, or unconscious expectations.

Moving Beyond Anxiety

Psychotherapy does not simply aim to eliminate anxiety.

Rather, therapy often attempts to help individuals understand what anxiety means within the context of their emotional lives.

As awareness develops, anxiety may begin to lose some of its overwhelming quality. The individual becomes more capable of recognising the fears, fantasies, conflicts, and emotional realities that contribute to the anxious experience.

The goal is not the complete absence of anxiety. Anxiety is a normal part of being human.

Instead, the aim is to develop a greater capacity to understand, tolerate, and think about emotional experience without becoming overwhelmed by it.

When this becomes possible, anxiety often becomes less of an enemy and more of a source of information about what is happening beneath the surface of the mind.

Discussion Points

Do you think anxiety is primarily a biological reaction, a psychological experience, or a combination of both?

Have you ever noticed anxiety becoming stronger than the situation itself seemed to justify?

What role do you think unconscious fears and fantasies play in everyday anxiety?

Do you think anxiety sometimes protects people from experiencing other emotions?

How do you think early experiences influence the way anxiety is experienced in adulthood?

In what ways can psychotherapy help people understand what lies beneath their anxiety?

If you would like to learn more about psychodynamic psychotherapy or arrange an appointment, please visit the main Avenue Psychotherapy Services website. Additional articles exploring psychotherapy, emotional wellbeing, relationships, anxiety, depression, neurodivergence, and psychological development are also available throughout this blog.