What Are The Different Types Of Anxiety?

There are around 13 main types of anxiety, including Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Social Anxiety, Panic Disorder, Health Anxiety, Sleep Anxiety, OCD, PTSD, Phobias, Agoraphobia, Separation Anxiety, Selective Mutism, Telephobia and Body Dysmorphic Disorder. As an anxiety specialist and therapist, I see one pattern underneath every one of them: a nervous system that has learned to fire its threat response too quickly, and an unconscious belief sitting underneath that keeps it firing. The label tells you where the anxiety shows up. The root cause work is where lasting change happens.

Do you ever wonder why your anxiety shows up so differently to a friend who says they are anxious too?

Do you find yourself searching for what type of anxiety you have, hoping that putting a name to it will help it make sense?

Have you been told you have one type of anxiety, only to recognise yourself in three or four others?

If any of that feels familiar, you are not alone, and there is a reason your body and mind respond the way they do. Anxiety is not a single condition with one face. It is a family of patterns, and underneath every one of them is the same nervous system trying to keep you safe. Once you understand which pattern is yours and why it formed, you can start to work with it rather than fight it.

Before we go further, it can be useful to get a snapshot of how anxiety is showing up for you right now. You may find it helpful to take our free two minute anxiety quiz to uncover the patterns sitting underneath your own anxiety.

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What You Will Learn In This Article

A clear, anxiety led look at the different types of anxiety, what they share, and what to do next.

• The 13 main types of anxiety and how each one shows up in everyday life
• Why the same nervous system pattern sits underneath every type
• The two layer model that explains why anxiety keeps repeating
• At home tools that settle the surface without reaching the root
• When the deeper therapy work becomes the next step

Does This Sound Familiar?

At the height of my own anxiety, I struggled to walk into a meeting room in my own office, even though I knew everyone in there and could happily chat to them all on the office floor. The moment a door closed behind me, my chest tightened, my mouth went dry, and my mind raced. I knew it was irrational. I could not stop it.

Around the same time, I had a phobia of mice that ran my life. I could not say the word. A leaf moving on the pavement would send me running into traffic. I once tried to climb out of a moving train because I saw an image of a mouse on a screen.

For years, I thought I was two completely different things at once. Socially anxious. Phobic. Then later, anxious about my health. Then sleep anxious during a stressful work period. It was only when I trained as a therapist that I understood what was happening. They were not separate problems. They were the same nervous system pattern, firing in different situations, holding the same unconscious belief underneath. That is what changed everything for me, and it is what I now help my clients see in themselves.

If something like this is happening for you, the place to begin is recognising that the type of anxiety is the label. The pattern underneath is the work.

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The Pattern Underneath Every Type Of Anxiety

Anxiety is not a character flaw, a weakness, or proof that something is wrong with you. It is a nervous system response. Your body has learned, somewhere along the way, that a particular situation is dangerous, and it is trying to protect you by firing a threat response before that danger arrives.

This response is what we call fight, flight, freeze or fawn. Your heart rate climbs, your breathing changes, your muscles brace, your stomach tightens, and your thinking narrows. From the outside it looks like worry. From the inside it feels like a full body alarm.

The label of GAD, social anxiety, OCD or a phobia tells you where this response fires most often. It does not tell you why it learned to fire in the first place. That is where the two layer model comes in.

The Two Layers Driving Every Type Of Anxiety

In my therapy work I keep two distinct layers in mind, because anxiety always lives in both.

Layer one is the unconscious mind. This is the meaning maker. Somewhere in early life, often before we have language for it, the unconscious mind draws quiet conclusions about ourselves, other people and the world. Conclusions like "I am not safe", "I am not enough", "people will leave", "I have to get this right or something bad will happen". You do not remember choosing them. You do not even consciously believe them as an adult. They sit underneath everything.

And layer two is the nervous system. This is the alarm system. It learns to fire a threat response whenever one of those beliefs is activated. The belief lives in the unconscious mind. The nervous system fires its response whenever the belief is touched.

That is why the same person can have social anxiety in meetings, sleep anxiety at night, and health anxiety the moment they notice a new bodily sensation. The situations look unrelated. The belief and the nervous system response underneath are the same.

If you find yourself getting pulled into spinning thoughts that feel impossible to switch off, you may find it useful to read our deeper article on how to stop overthinking. Overthinking is one of the loudest signs that the nervous system is running on high.

Understanding how close to the edge of overwhelm you are at any given moment is one of the most useful things you can learn. You may also find it helpful to download our Window of Tolerance workbook to map your own nervous system zones.

Window Of Tolerance Anxiety Workbook

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The 13 Main Types Of Anxiety Explained

Here are the main types of anxiety I work with as an anxiety therapist. Read them with the two layer model in mind. You may well recognise yourself in more than one, and that is normal. The labels overlap because the pattern underneath them does.

1. Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

Generalised Anxiety Disorder is the most widely diagnosed form of anxiety. It is excessive, hard to switch off worry about everyday things, going on for six months or more. The worries jump from one subject to another. Work. Health. Money. The children. A text message that has not been replied to. None of them on their own would justify the level of worry. Together they keep the nervous system in a constant low level state of alert.

From the outside, GAD can look like overthinking. From the inside, it feels like being unable to put your shoulders down. It often disturbs sleep, drains concentration, tightens the body, and erodes confidence. If this is the pattern you recognise, our article on the symptoms of anxiety walks through the physical and emotional signs in more depth.

2. Social Anxiety Disorder

Social Anxiety Disorder is an intense, persistent fear of being watched, judged or humiliated in social situations. It can show up around strangers, around colleagues, in meetings, on a date, at the school gate, or even on a video call. We may avoid eye contact, rehearse what we will say, replay conversations for hours afterwards, or step out of situations altogether.

The unconscious belief underneath is often "I will be found wanting", "I am not enough as I am", or "people will see something is wrong with me". The nervous system fires the threat response, and the body does the rest.

3. Deipnophobia (Fear Of Eating In Public)

Deipnophobia is a specific form of social anxiety where the fear focuses on eating in front of other people. It can show up as dread before a meeting with a meal, avoidance of restaurants, ordering only food that feels safe to eat under observation, or skipping social events altogether. It is more common than it appears, because most people who live with it never name it.

4. Panic Disorder

Panic disorder is when panic attacks happen repeatedly and without an obvious trigger. The body floods with adrenaline. The heart pounds. The chest tightens. The breath gets stuck high in the chest. Many of my clients describe it as feeling certain they are about to die or lose control.

The pattern then layers on itself. We start fearing the next panic attack, which keeps the nervous system primed, which makes the next attack more likely. We may begin avoiding the places where attacks have happened. If physical sensations like chest pain or breathlessness are part of your experience, our article on whether anxiety can cause chest pain, dizziness and breathlessness may help you make sense of what is happening in your body.

5. Separation Anxiety Disorder

Separation anxiety is most often associated with babies and young children, but it can also continue into adolescence and adulthood. In children it shows up as clinginess, distress at drop offs, refusal to sleep alone, or the conviction that something terrible will happen to a parent while they are apart.

In adults it can show up as difficulty being away from a partner, fear of leaving a child at school, or distress when a loved one travels. The unconscious belief is usually about safety and connection, and the nervous system responds as though the separation is a genuine danger.

6. Health Anxiety Disorder

Health anxiety is persistent, intense worry about being ill or about becoming seriously ill in the future, often even when there are no real physical symptoms. Many of my clients with health anxiety check their bodies repeatedly, search symptoms online, or book GP appointments often only to leave feeling no calmer than before.

Reassurance gives a few minutes of relief and then the worry starts again. The nervous system has learned to read every bodily sensation as a threat, and the unconscious belief underneath is usually "I am not safe in my body" or "I have to stay alert or something bad will happen".

7. Sleep Anxiety Disorder

Sleep anxiety is fear or worry that focuses on going to sleep, or on what may happen during the night. It might be the fear of lying awake for hours. It might be the worry of waking and not falling back. For some it is the fear of nightmares, intruders, fires, or simply not waking again.

The body comes to associate bedtime with the threat response rather than rest. Our nights become a battle. You can read our deeper article on what is sleep anxiety and how to overcome it for a closer look at what is happening and what helps.

8. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

OCD is unwanted, intrusive thoughts that loop in the mind, paired with compulsive behaviours we feel driven to perform to keep the anxiety down. We may know the rituals are not logical. The nervous system insists on them anyway, because they bring a few seconds of relief.

Examples include hand washing, checking locks, repeating phrases silently, counting, arranging, mentally reviewing past events, or seeking reassurance. The unconscious belief underneath is often "if I do not do this, something terrible will happen and it will be my fault".

9. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

PTSD can develop after a traumatic and overwhelming event, where physical or emotional harm occurred, was witnessed, or was threatened. PTSD was first recognised in war veterans, but we now know it can follow any event that the nervous system experiences as too much, too fast, too soon, with no way out.

People living with PTSD often describe difficulty relaxing, hypervigilance, flashbacks, intrusive memories, nightmares, and a sense of always scanning for danger. The unconscious mind has stored the event as still happening. The nervous system fires accordingly. This is one of the patterns where root cause therapy work is especially important, because the surface strategies cannot reach what is held underneath.

10. Phobias

A phobia is an intense fear of a specific object, place, situation, feeling or animal. The fear is far out of proportion to the actual danger, and even a thought or image can trigger the threat response. People with phobias often know the fear is excessive and still cannot stop it firing.

My own phobia of mice taught me how literal the freeze response can be. I knew there was no real danger. My body could not hear me. The fear was held in the nervous system, not in conscious thought. If avoidance is shaping your day to day life, our Exposure Ladder workbook can be a useful starting point to face things gradually.

Exposure Ladder Anxiety Workbook

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11. Agoraphobia

Agoraphobia is the fear of being in situations where escape might feel difficult, or where help would not be available if something went wrong. It often follows on from panic attacks. The nervous system has learned to associate certain places with the threat response, and so we shrink the world to keep ourselves safe.

For some it means avoiding public transport. For others it means avoiding supermarkets, queues or motorways. In its most severe form, it means rarely leaving the house. None of this is laziness. It is a nervous system trying to protect a person who has been overwhelmed before.

12. Telephobia (Fear Of Phone Calls)

Telephobia is the fear or anxiety associated with making or receiving phone calls. It is different from general social anxiety because it is the phone specifically that fires the response. The phone rings and the body floods. Voicemails get left for hours before being listened to. Calls get delayed, missed, or replaced with messages.

Telephobia can quietly cost people jobs, relationships and opportunities. Many of my clients have lived with it for years before naming it. The good news is that, like all of these, it is the nervous system response that has been learned and it can be unlearned.

13. Selective Mutism

Selective mutism is most commonly seen in children, and we have seen a sharp rise since the pandemic. It is when a child can speak freely in some settings (often at home) but cannot speak in others (often school, around adults, or in groups). It is not stubbornness. It is the freeze response of the nervous system firing in those specific environments.

Left unsupported, selective mutism can carry into adolescence and adulthood. If this is your child, you may find our How to Help Your Anxious Child eBook a warm, useful starting point.

Body Dysmorphic Disorder And Other Related Patterns

Alongside the main 13, there are anxiety patterns that sit close by. Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is intense, intrusive worry about a perceived flaw in appearance, often invisible to other people. Performance anxiety, presentation anxiety and exam anxiety are versions of social and panic patterns firing in specific high stakes settings. All of them sit on the same two layer model.

When Anxiety Becomes A Problem Worth Treating

A pulse of anxiety before a presentation, a job interview or a difficult conversation is healthy. Your nervous system is doing its job. Anxiety becomes worth treating when it is firing too often, too intensely, or in situations that do not warrant it. When it is shaping the decisions you make. When it is shrinking your life. When you are doing things to avoid the feeling itself rather than to live the life you actually want.

You do not need to wait until things feel unmanageable. The earlier we work with the nervous system and the unconscious patterns underneath, the easier the change is.

At Home Tools To Settle The Surface

These are tools you can use at home or between therapy sessions to settle the surface of your anxiety. They are a starting point, not the destination. They calm the nervous system in the moment. They do not reach the unconscious beliefs holding the response in place. For that, root cause therapy is the work. Think of these tools as easing the pressure, while the deeper work changes what is causing it.

1. Slow Your Out Breath

The single fastest way to tell your nervous system it is safe is to slow your out breath. Breathe in for four. Out for six or seven. The exhale activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the part of you that switches off the threat response. Two minutes is enough to start shifting your physiology.

2. Name What Is Firing

Out loud or in your head, say "this is my threat response firing". Naming it does two things. It moves the experience from formless dread to something specific, which the thinking brain can hold. And it reminds you that the response is the pattern, not the truth. You are not in danger. Your body has learned to respond as though you are.

3. Ground Through Your Senses

Look around the room and name five things you can see, four you can hear, three you can feel, two you can smell, one you can taste. This is not a distraction. It is orienting your nervous system to the present moment, where the danger your body is bracing against is not happening.

4. Soften Your Tongue And Jaw

Most of us hold anxiety in places we do not realise. The jaw clenches. The tongue presses into the roof of the mouth. The shoulders rise. Drop your tongue from the roof of your mouth. Unclench your jaw. Let your shoulders fall away from your ears. Hold each release for five long breaths. The body teaches the mind it is safe.

5. Stop Reaching For Reassurance

Reassurance brings a few minutes of calm, and then the worry comes back stronger because the nervous system has just learned that it needed the reassurance to be okay. If you live with health anxiety, OCD or relationship anxiety, this one matters most. The work is to sit with the not knowing for a beat longer than usual, and let your body discover that nothing terrible happens.

6. Work With Your Window Of Tolerance

Your Window of Tolerance is the zone where you can think clearly, feel your feelings, and respond rather than react. Above the window you are in fight or flight. Below the window you are in shutdown. Learning your own signs in each zone, and the small actions that bring you back into the window, is one of the most powerful long term anxiety skills there is. Our Window of Tolerance workbook walks you through how to map your own zones and gently come back to the middle.

Window Of Tolerance Anxiety Workbook

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7. Focus On What Is In Your Control

So much anxiety lives in the space of things we cannot control. Other people's behaviour. The future. A diagnosis. A decision someone else is making. Drawing a Circle of Control and a Circle of Influence on paper, and putting each worry in its proper place, can release a surprising amount of mental load. Our Circle of Control and Influence workbook walks you through how to do this on paper, step by step.

Circle Of Control And Influence Workbook

Download our FREE workbook to focus your energy on what you can actually change and reduce anxiety.

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8. Move Your Body Daily

Movement is one of the most underrated anxiety tools. A walk in daylight. A swim. A stretch. Yoga. Whatever you actually enjoy, done little and often. Movement burns through the stress hormones already in your system, regulates sleep, and lifts mood. It does not replace the deeper work, but it builds the conditions in which that work can land.

If You Would Like Further Support

If you have read this far and you recognise yourself in more than one of these patterns, please know that you are not broken and you are not stuck. Anxiety is a learned response. Anything learned can be unlearned, at any age. I have done the work myself. I have walked alongside hundreds of clients aged six to eighty six who have done it too.

If at home tools have not been enough, or if you have tried talking therapies before and the anxiety has come back, the next step is to work at the level of the nervous system and the unconscious mind. That is what a free consultation call is for.

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Can The Different Types Of Anxiety Lead To More Serious Issues?

Left unaddressed, any type of anxiety can grow. The nervous system practises whatever it does most. A pattern that fires for years tends to widen its triggers, shrink the world around it, and pull other patterns in. GAD and depression often appear together. Panic disorder and agoraphobia frequently overlap. Health anxiety, OCD and intrusive thinking sit on the same family of patterns.

This is not said to alarm you. It is said because so many of my clients tell me they wish they had reached out years earlier. The work is gentler and quicker when we catch the pattern before it has had decades to settle. And it is still entirely possible when it has.

Ready To Get Support?

Book a free consultation call with Jennifer and take the first step towards calming anxiety at its root.

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Additional Resources To Ease Your Anxiety

If you would like to explore further, here are nine of our most helpful articles, videos and free workbooks. Pick the one that feels most relevant to where you are right now.

Read

• What Are The Symptoms Of Anxiety? — the physical and emotional signs of anxiety and what they tell you about your nervous system.
• How To Overcome The Fight And Flight Anxiety Response — why your body reacts the way it does and how to work with the nervous system instead of against it.
• What Is Sleep Anxiety? — why sleep becomes harder when anxiety is high and what to do about it.

Watch

• How To Reduce Anxiety Right Now — quick steps to bring yourself back to the present moment when anxiety spikes.
• Breathing Techniques To Reduce Anxiety — simple breathing exercises that calm the nervous system in minutes.
• How To Overcome A Phobia — how to gently retrain the threat response that drives phobic anxiety.

Free Workbooks

• Window Of Tolerance Workbook — map the zone where your nervous system feels steady and spot when you have tipped out of it.
• Circle Of Control And Influence Workbook — focus your energy on what you can actually change and release the rest.
• Exposure Ladder Workbook — face the things that trigger anxiety in small, manageable steps.

To take the next step with a qualified anxiety therapist nearby, book your free consultation call today.

Still Have Questions?

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Frequently Asked Questions

How many different types of anxiety are there?

There are around 13 widely recognised types of anxiety, including GAD, Social Anxiety, Panic Disorder, Health Anxiety, Sleep Anxiety, OCD, PTSD, Phobias, Agoraphobia, Separation Anxiety, Selective Mutism, Telephobia and Deipnophobia. Body Dysmorphic Disorder, performance anxiety and relationship anxiety sit close by. Most people who live with anxiety meet the criteria for more than one type, because the same nervous system pattern fires in different settings.

What is the most common type of anxiety?

Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is the most commonly diagnosed type of anxiety. It involves excessive, hard to switch off worry across many areas of life, going on for at least six months. Social Anxiety and Health Anxiety are also extremely common, and the three frequently overlap.

Can you have more than one type of anxiety at the same time?

Yes, and you very often will. The label tells you where the anxiety shows up. The pattern underneath is the same. Most of my clients arrive with two or three types on the surface, and one nervous system response and unconscious belief sitting underneath all of them. That is good news, because the deeper work eases all of them together.

What is the difference between stress and anxiety?

Stress is the body's response to a specific demand or pressure, and it usually eases when the situation eases. Anxiety is the body firing the threat response when there is no clear current threat. Stress comes from outside. Anxiety comes from inside the pattern. Stress can become anxiety if it goes on long enough for the nervous system to start treating it as the new baseline.

Can the different types of anxiety be overcome without medication?

Yes. In my work I do not use medication or CBT. I work with the nervous system and the unconscious mind directly, which is where anxiety actually lives. Clients of mine have overcome long held GAD, panic disorder, phobias, OCD patterns, social anxiety, health anxiety and PTSD without medication, often after years of other approaches. If you would like to explore whether this is the right fit for you, a free consultation call is the easiest place to start.

Originally posted: 14 November 2021 | Last updated: 28 May 2026