My body starts panicking before my mind understands why

Dear Delyara, That’s one of the hardest things about anxiety. It often arrives before thought. Before logic. Before context. My chest tightens, my heart speeds up, my stomach changes, and only afterward does my mind begin trying to explain what the danger is supposed to be. Sometimes there isn’t one. Sometimes the feeling comes first and the story chases after it, trying to justify what the body has already decided. It makes ordinary life exhausting. Because by the time I’ve actually begun the day, part of me has already survived a crisis that never happened.