Why Anticipatory Anxiety Feel So Exhausting?

[Maya]

Sometimes the difficult part of an event is not the event itself but spending days imagining everything that could go wrong. This can happen before appointments, meetings, social events, or difficult conversations. Why does anticipatory anxiety become so exhausting, and what keeps the worrying cycle going?

 

[Ciri]

It’s exhausting because your mind can start dealing with a situation long before it actually happens. I’ve had moments where I kept replaying what might go wrong, even though nothing had happened yet. By the time the event arrived, I already felt mentally drained from worrying about it.