My Favorite Anxiety Equation (+ Personal Update)

Episode 165: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube
View transcript on Buzzsprout

Of all the reframes I return to in client work, in the membership, and in my own life, this one comes up the most: anxiety is the result of overestimating a threat paired with underestimating your ability to manage it.

It’s simple enough to hold in your head and specific enough to actually use in real situations. This article breaks down how to apply both sides of that equation, with some personal examples from my own ongoing work with this.

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What We Cover in This Episode

• What the anxiety equation is and why it works as a practical tool, not just a concept
• How your nervous system state changes the story you tell about a threat
• How to work both sides of the equation when anxiety is running high
• What building genuine self-trust actually looks like, beyond just telling yourself you’ll be fine

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The Anxiety Equation

Anxiety = overestimation of a threat + underestimation of your ability to handle it.

When anxiety is activated, your nervous system shifts into a sympathetic state that narrows focus, creates urgency, and drives hyper-vigilance. It feels like you need to anticipate every possible bad outcome because that preparation is the only thing giving you any sense of control. And in that state, you lose access to the broader perspective: the track record of hard things you’ve already survived, the evidence that you’ve gotten through things before and been okay.

This is the mechanics of the what-if spiral. What if this goes wrong? What if that happens? What if I can’t handle it? The equation gives you a way to interrupt that spiral and get curious about what’s actually driving it.

Working the First Half: Overestimation of Threat

This is often the harder side to work with, because when you’re anxious, you can make a very compelling case that you are not overestimating the threat. The threat feels real. The fear feels justified. And sometimes it genuinely is.

A useful exercise here: take the situation that’s activating for you and write out what your story sounds like from three different nervous system states. What does the situation look like when you’re in the yellow zone, activated and anxious? What does it look like from the red zone, when you’re shut down and overwhelmed? And what does it look like from your most regulated self, or from the lens of a calm, reasonable friend who cares about you?

The point of this exercise isn’t to convince yourself the threat isn’t real. It’s to help your nervous system see that your state changes your story. The situation doesn’t change. What changes is the meaning you assign to it based on where you are on the nervous system ladder. And if your regulated story is meaningfully different from your activated story, that gap is worth sitting with.

From personal experience: I once spent a therapy session mapping out exactly which hospital entrance my husband should use if my uterus ruptured before my scheduled C-section. I was already the 1% statistic for uterine rupture once, which made the threat feel entirely plausible. My therapist’s response was simple: Amanda, you call 911. That’s the step. You don’t need to anticipate seventeen variations of the scenario. It’s much simpler than your brain wants it to be. That was my regulated story. It was available to me, but I needed help accessing it.

Working the Second Half: Underestimation of Your Ability

Sometimes you can’t talk yourself out of the perceived threat, and that’s okay. The other lever is still available: turning up the volume on your belief in your capacity to handle it.

A few questions worth sitting with on this side of the equation:

• What is your actual track record with hard things? Have you survived one hundred percent of them so far?
• Who can you call when it gets hard? What resources are already available to you?
• What would you need to put in place to feel more prepared for the situation?
• Is there anything concrete you can do now to resource yourself before it happens?

For something like flight anxiety, this might look like a regulated morning routine before the flight, a specific playlist that grounds you, a crunchy snack or something cold in your bag for sensory grounding. The goal isn’t to make the experience comfortable. It’s to make it tolerable by going in feeling resourced rather than depleted.

And sometimes the work on this side of the equation isn’t tactical preparation. Sometimes it’s developing a calmer, more resolute trust in yourself: I don’t need to have all the answers now. However this plays out, I will figure it out. If I can’t figure it out alone, I trust myself to find the support that will help us through it. That shift from constant what-if planning to even-if steadiness is one of the most meaningful things I’ve worked on in my own therapy over the past couple of years.

The Difference Between Knowing You’re Resilient and Feeling It

Here’s something worth naming: you can identify as a resilient, capable person and still have a nervous system that’s quietly running the underestimation pattern underneath. If someone asked me point-blank whether I could handle hard things, I’d say yes without hesitation. And yet for months I was cognitively overfunctioning, catastrophizing, and planning for every possible worst-case scenario. That’s not what a system that genuinely trusts itself looks like.

The nervous system doesn’t respond to declarations. It responds to experience and evidence. Building real self-trust means accumulating actual experiences of getting through hard things and letting those land. It means interrupting the what-if spiral often enough that the nervous system starts to learn it doesn’t need to go there. That’s slower work than a reframe, and it’s the work underneath the reframe.

Putting It to Work

Take a situation in your life right now that’s activating. Something that’s generating a what-if spiral or keeping you up at night. Run it through the equation:

1. In what ways am I overestimating this threat? What does my story about this situation look like from an activated state versus a regulated one?
2. In what ways am I underestimating my ability to handle it? What would I need to feel more confident in my capacity here?
3. Can I move toward the even-if rather than the what-if? Even if this hard thing happens, I will figure it out to the best of my ability.

This is worth bringing to a therapist, a coach, or into a one-on-one session if you’re inside the Regulated Living Membership. Having someone help you explore which side of the equation is driving your anxiety, and what specifically would shift it, tends to move the needle faster than working through it alone.

Making This Realistic in Your Actual Life

What this looks like will be different for someone with young kids, a college student, and someone working a desk job. For early risers, this may already fit easily into the morning. For those with a chaotic household, or a job that pulls them straight to a screen, the more useful question is: what’s the smallest version that’s actually doable?

In a season or climate where getting outside is genuinely hard, can you step out just briefly? This might also be the moment to lean on a light box, a consistent wake time, or morning movement instead.

Could morning coffee move outside, even partially?

Could the first five minutes of a morning walk do double duty for a step goal and this practice at once?

If checking your phone first thing is non-negotiable, can you do it on the porch, or while walking to the corner and back? Your eyes still get the natural light even while you’re looking at a screen.

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Three Tangible Takeaways

1. Anxiety = overestimation of threat + underestimation of your ability to handle it. This equation gives you two concrete places to intervene rather than just trying to think your way out of an activated state.
2. Your nervous system state changes the story you tell about a threat. Writing out your story from an activated state versus a regulated state can show you how much of your anxiety is the situation itself and how much is the lens you’re reading it through.
3. When you can’t turn down the threat, turn up your belief in your capacity. Building toward the even-if rather than living in the what-if is the deeper work underneath this reframe, and it’s built through accumulated experience, not declarations.

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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or qualified mental health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.