Excitement vs. Anxiety: Same Feeling, Different Story

The ride I would not get on

I have what I would describe as a healthy fear of heights. I had it as a child and, if I am honest, I still have it.

I remember being genuinely terrified by the idea of strapping into a roller coaster that was clearly going to launch me to my death. When my family rode the Star Wars ride at Disneyland, I was disturbed enough by the prospect that I was allowed to sit and watch them go without me.

Now a confession: I hate missing out.

I remember them coming off that ride laughing and talking about how good it was, and I had nothing to contribute. I had stood on the sidelines. It bothered me far more than the ride would have.

The ride I rode six times

A few months later I was at another park — Lagoon this time — and the enemy was the Fire Dragon Colossus. An enormous first drop straight into two loops at full speed.

My anxiety was through the roof. I was fully convinced that if the drop did not kill me, one of the loops would finish the job.

I stood there watching my family negotiate which of them would sit out so I would not be left alone. And something shifted. Out of nowhere I heard myself announce: come on, let's go. I ran to the ride and ended up in the front seat.

My family's excitement was contagious. Before long I was telling myself a different story — that this was going to be great, and that I was lucky to have got the front row. My brother was jealous of my seat, which I admit helped considerably.

I rode it six times that day.

What actually changed

Here is the part worth paying attention to, because it is the whole point.

My anxiety did not change.

Every time I stood in front of that thing I felt the same tightening in my chest, the same swelling in my throat, the same nausea in my stomach. Identical sensations, before the first ride and before the sixth.

What changed was the story attached to them. The physical experience was now accompanied by a different narrative — that I was going to have a story to tell and an experience worth remembering. An adventure rather than an execution.

Same arousal, different appraisal

This maps onto something well understood about how these states work. Anxiety and excitement are built out of remarkably similar physiology: the sympathetic nervous system does much the same thing in both cases. Heart rate up, breathing quick, muscles tense, stomach unsettled.

What separates them is appraisal — whether your mind reads that arousal as a threat approaching or as something good about to happen.

And appraisal is learned. Which means, at least some of the time, it can be relearned.

What this is not

I want to be careful here, because this idea gets oversold.

Reframing anxiety as excitement is not a cure for anxiety, and telling an anxious person to simply think about it differently is unhelpful at best. Notice that in my own story the anxiety never went away. It was fully present on the sixth ride. What changed was that it stopped being a reason not to get on.

That is the honest version of the tool: it does not remove the feeling. It changes what the feeling costs you.

For ordinary nervousness — a presentation, a first date, a hard conversation, a new job — that shift can be genuinely freeing.

For anxiety that has become persistent, that is shrinking your world, that is keeping you awake or producing panic, this is one tool inside a treatment plan rather than a substitute for one. Anxiety disorders respond well to treatment, and there is no prize for handling one alone.

If it has stopped being a roller coaster

The question worth asking is whether your anxiety is still occasional and situational, or whether it has become the weather you live in.

If it is the second, that is worth talking to someone about. Our clinicians treat anxiety in Orem, Murray, and online across Utah, using approaches matched to what is actually driving it.

Start with a free 30-minute consultation: 801.272.3420, text 801.997.8760, or book online.