Why Anxiety Feels Like a Monster

If you live with anxiety, you’ll know what anxiety feels like, it can feel overwhelming, unpredictable and sometimes downright terrifying. Many people describe their anxiety as though it were a creature living inside them, a monster that shows up uninvited, takes over their body, and whispers fearful thoughts into their mind. It’s a vivid and strangely accurate metaphor. Anxiety can seem larger than life, even when you know logically that you’re safe.

But why does anxiety feel like a monster? In this article, we’ll explore the science, psychology and imagination behind that description. We’ll look at how anxiety affects the body, why it seems to take on a personality of its own, and what you can do to tame the beast.

Whether you’re new to managing anxiety or you’ve been living with it for years, understanding this metaphor can help you build resilience and develop practical coping strategies.

Why anxiety feels like a monster...

Anxiety and the Body’s Alarm System

At its core, anxiety is your body’s alarm system firing when it doesn’t really need to. Your brain is wired to detect threats and keep you safe. When you sense danger, your nervous system prepares you to either fight or run away. This is called the fight-or-flight response.

When this response is triggered, your heart beats faster, your muscles tense, and adrenaline rushes through your system. You might sweat, feel dizzy, or struggle to breathe steadily. From a biological perspective, this is perfectly normal; it’s your body getting you ready to handle a threat.

The problem is that anxiety often pulls that alarm when there’s no real danger. Imagine a smoke detector going off every time you toast bread. It’s irritating, exhausting, and after a while, it feels like the alarm is in control of your life. That’s why people say anxiety feels like a monster, because it hijacks your body, makes you feel out of control, and refuses to listen to reason.

The Imagination of Anxiety

Anxiety is not just physical. It also affects how we think. Racing thoughts, ‘what if’ scenarios and catastrophic images are common anxiety triggers.. The imagination gets caught in a loop of worst-case situations.

This is where the monster metaphor becomes powerful. When your brain keeps spinning frightening stories, it feels like there’s something bigger than you pulling the strings. Anxiety isn’t just a collection of sensations; it feels like a character, a monster that feeds on your fear.

Children often draw their anxiety as a shadow, a dragon or a monster under the bed. Adults do the same thing, but with words instead of crayons. Describing anxiety as a monster helps to externalise it. Instead of saying “I am anxious,” you can say “the anxiety monster is here.” That small shift separates you from the feeling and can give you back some control.

Separating anxiety from yourself is a huge step forward in recovery. Rather than saying "I am anxious", which makes the condition part of you, try saying "I have anxiety". That way, it becomes separate, like a monster sitting on your shoulder, so if it isn't "you", it can be pushed away or eliminated.

That's where the Discovery Journal comes in; it's designed as an anxiety journal, creating that separation by finding triggers and causes of anxiety. Once you know where they are, you can manage them or even eradicate them!

Find My Journal

Cultural Stories of Monsters and Fear

The idea of anxiety as a monster is deeply rooted in culture. From ancient myths to modern horror films, monsters are the embodiment of fears we can’t easily explain. They take shape when people need a way to talk about the unknown.

For example:

• Dragons in folklore often symbolise chaos and danger.

• Ghosts and spirits represent unresolved emotions or unfinished business.

• Modern movie monsters often reflect social anxieties, think of zombies symbolising loss of control or alien invaders representing fear of the unknown.

Anxiety fits right into this tradition. It’s intangible, it sneaks up when you least expect it, and it seems to have a mind of its own. Calling it a monster is not only poetic but also practical. It gives us a way to tell the story of what’s happening inside us.

Why Anxiety Feels So Overpowering

Part of what makes anxiety feel monstrous is the way it hijacks normal functioning. When you’re anxious, your prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for logic and rational decision-making, is less active. Meanwhile, your amygdala, the part responsible for detecting threats, is overactive.

This imbalance means anxiety often overrides logic. You may know in your head that you’re safe, but your body doesn’t get the memo. The “monster” of anxiety is essentially your brain’s survival instinct gone haywire.

This is why getting the prefrontal cortex to start functioning again during times of anxiety is so important. Beating the irrational with rationality, and sometimes the way to do that is to start getting logical.

Use the Discovery Journal to focus on data, build a picture of your day, the interactions, environments you've visited and the way you were feeling before, during and after those moments! That's how you find out where the monster is hiding!

Have a look, it really is that simple!...

The Discovery Journal

This is using logic at its best!

The Experience of Losing Control

Another reason anxiety feels monstrous is the sense of losing control. When your heart is racing, your thoughts are spiralling, and your body feels hijacked, it doesn’t feel like “you.” It feels like something else has taken over.

That sense of being possessed or invaded is scary, but again, it’s just your nervous system doing its job a little too well. Understanding this can help you step back and say, “Okay, this is my body’s alarm, not an actual monster.”

Discovery Journals Thought Tamer is a great way to gain back some control! You literally hijack your anxious thoughts before they can take over! It's worth a look!

How to Tame the Monster

While anxiety may feel like a monster, many coping strategies for anxiety can help. From breathing exercises to journaling, mindfulness, and therapy, these tools are proven ways of managing anxiety.

1. Breathing exercises. When anxiety spikes, your breath often becomes shallow. Deep breathing techniques like box breathing (inhale 4, hold 4, exhale 4, hold 4) can calm your nervous system quickly.

2. Journaling: Writing down your fears helps you separate yourself from the monster. Instead of swirling in your head, the worries are contained on the page. Prompts like “What would I say to a friend feeling this way?” or “What evidence do I have that this fear is true?” can be powerful.

3. Mindfulness: Staying in the present moment can stop the monster from growing. Grounding techniques, like naming five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell, and one you can taste, can pull you back into reality.

4. Talking it out. Sharing your experience with friends, family, or a therapist helps you remember you’re not alone. Sometimes simply saying “my anxiety monster is loud today” is enough to take away some of its power.

5. Professional support Therapy, whether online or in person, offers proven techniques like cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) that help people reframe anxious thoughts and build coping skills.

Creating Your Own Monster Metaphor

One creative approach is to actually draw or describe your anxiety monster. Give it a name, describe its habits, even make a cartoon version. Some people find that once their monster has a silly name or goofy face, it loses some of its bite.

This isn’t about trivialising anxiety. It’s about shifting perspective. The more you see anxiety as an external thing you can work with, the less it feels like an unstoppable force.

The Light in the Darkness

Every monster story has a hero. In the story of anxiety, you are the hero. Your tools, your support network, and your courage are the light that pushes back the shadows. The monster may not disappear completely, but it can shrink into something small, manageable, and even predictable.

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