Anxiety - Where Longing and Fear Collide
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
— Søren Kierkegaard
Anxiety—derived from “ anxietatem, “ the Latin word for anguish or solicitude—refers to a human experience as old as consciousness itself. It encompasses not merely the presence of fear but something more complex and ambiguous. Anxiety arises precisely where longing and fear intersect. It is not just the anticipation of danger but also the tension of desiring something intensely while fearing its loss or the pain involved in pursuing it.
At its core, anxiety stems from the gap between what is and what might be. It is the offspring of hope and dread, born in a mind striving to understand a world that is never entirely certain.
The Predictive Mind and the Anatomy of Anxiety
From the perspective of the predictive mind, anxiety represents a dissonance in our predictions about the world. The brain continuously generates models — or ‘priors’ — regarding what is likely to happen next based on past experiences. It seeks to reduce uncertainty by predicting and preparing for sensory input in advance. This process is not neutral; it is fundamentally affective. It is shaped by what matters to us — what we desire and fear.
Longing creates a prediction: this is what I want to happen. Fear generates a counter-prediction: this is what I want to avoid. The system becomes unstable when these two imperatives are active simultaneously — and hold equal weight. The mind cannot resolve the competing signals, resulting in predictive turbulence. Anxiety arises when our internal model is overwhelmed by conflicting signals about the future, and the accuracy of our predictions breaks down.
In this sense, anxiety represents the experienced sensation of prediction error — when our desires and fears pull the brain in opposite directions, preventing it from confidently determining what to expect.
Longing: The Forward Momentum of the Mind
Longing is not merely a psychological appetite but a directional force that propels us toward imagined futures, desired outcomes, or states of completion. From a Buddhist perspective, longing (or tanha, thirst) is intertwined with dukkha, suffering — not because desire is inherently wrong, but because it highlights the fundamental instability of the human condition.
The predictive mind views longing as a motivational signal — a value forecast. When we long for something, we do not merely recognise its absence; we rehearse its potential presence, shaping our perceptions and actions around it.
However, longing without fulfilment creates tension in the system. When our predictions continuously fail to yield the expected reward — love, success, safety — the mind grows uncertain. This uncertainty serves as the breeding ground for anxiety.
Fear: The Protective Shadow
Fear arises in response to predictions of danger or harm. It is not a passive emotion but an active, urgent message to prepare. When fear dominates, the mind narrows its field of view, focusing on threat detection. The future becomes a source of risk, and the body responds with agitation: a faster heart rate, shallow breathing, and tightening in the gut. These are not merely symptoms but part of the predictive loop, feeding back into the sense of danger.
Fear is the body’s saying, " Do not move forward. “What if something within us is already reaching out?
The Collision
This is where anxiety resides: in the clash between a forward-leaning longing and a backward-pulling fear. The mind cannot settle because it is trying to do two things at once — approach and avoid, yearn and retreat, hope and dread. The result is a kind of internal static, a buzzing uncertainty that takes up residence in the chest, the stomach, and the throat.
In psychoanalytic terms, anxiety has long been understood as a signal of internal conflict — a clash of unconscious wishes or drives that cannot be reconciled. In predictive processing terms, it can be viewed as the by-product of competing priors— high-precision expectations contradicting one another, destabilising the system’s ability to predict the future confidently.
This predictive instability creates what Karl Friston and others call surprisal — the degree to which an incoming signal diverges from the brain’s expectations. Surprisal is metabolically costly. The brain reacts by attempting to update its model (learning) or by modifying perception and action to align with its prior beliefs (active inference). Anxiety arises when neither path resolves the issue. We remain stuck in predictive limbo.
Neuroscience and the Predictive Brain
Recent neuroscience supports this perspective. In particular, the predictive coding model of the brain, based on the work of researchers like Karl Friston, Anil Seth, and Lisa Feldman Barrett, provides a framework for understanding anxiety.
Friston’s theory of the free energy principle suggests that the brain constantly works to minimise the gap between its predictions and incoming sensory data — a gap referred to as free energy or prediction error. Anxiety arises when this prediction error cannot be resolved, especially in contexts of high uncertainty or ambiguity where the stakes feel emotionally or socially significant.
Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett argues that emotions are not hardwired reflexes but constructed experiences formed from the brain’s attempts to interpret interoceptive data—the body’s internal signals—through a predictive lens. From this perspective, anxiety represents the brain’s best guess at making sense of physiological unease when confronted with ambiguous or conflicting information about the future.
“Anxiety is your brain’s way of attempting to make sense of bodily sensations in an uncertain context.”
— Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made (2017)
Similarly, Anil Seth's research on interoception and conscious selfhood indicates that anxiety arises when the brain’s models of bodily regulation (homeostasis) become unstable—when the internal predictive map fails to maintain equilibrium confidently. We are, in his words, “prediction machines,” and anxiety signals a breakdown in the coherence of those predictions.
In essence, modern neuroscience confirms what contemplative and psychoanalytic traditions have long recognised: anxiety is a relational phenomenon. It arises in the gap — between what we yearn for and fear, between what the body feels and what the mind can articulate, and between the world we predict and the world that exists.
Reflective Questions
What is it that I most long for in this moment of anxiety?
What am I most afraid might happen?
Is there a conflict between what I desire and what I fear?
How does my body signal this tension?
Can I uncover the origins of these predictions? Where might they stem from in my experience?
An Experiential Exercise: Mapping the Collision
Purpose: To enhance awareness of the internal conflict between longing and fear and how this might manifest as anxiety.
Instructions:
Spend a few quiet moments grounding yourself. Please feel free to let your breath settle.
On a sheet of paper, draw a horizontal line. At one end, write’ Longing. ‘ At the other end, write’ Fear. ‘
Reflect on a current situation that brings about anxiety. Ask yourself: What am I longing for in this moment? Write it under the "Longing" side. Then ask: What am I afraid of? Write it under the "Fear" side.
Now place an 'X' on the line representing where you feel positioned between the two poles. Are you leaning more toward longing or fear? Or are you stuck in the middle?
Finally, reflect on what could help you navigate this situation with greater clarity or compassion. What would minimise the predictive conflict?
This exercise can be revisited regularly, providing a form of emotional map over time. As your understanding deepens, you may discover new ways to view anxiety not merely as a problem but as a significant signal of inner conflict and emerging transformation.
Rory Singer