Why do people with anxiety disorder have abnormal thinking?
Nov 20, 2025
Source: Cainiu Health
Dr. Zhang Baohua
Introduction
Anxiety disorders involve abnormal thought patterns, generally associated with factors such as neurotransmitter imbalances affecting cognition, excessive focus on threats leading to catastrophic thinking, and narrowed attention causing cognitive biases. In an anxious state, the secretion of neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine in the brain becomes unbalanced. These substances play important roles in regulating thought and emotion, and their imbalance disrupts normal information processing in the brain.
Anxiety disorder patients often experience abnormal thinking, generally related to factors such as neurotransmitter imbalances affecting cognition, excessive focus on threats leading to catastrophic thinking, narrowed attention causing cognitive bias, emotion-dominated suppression of rational thought, and long-term anxiety forming ingrained thinking patterns. A detailed analysis is as follows:
1. Neurotransmitter Imbalance Affecting Cognition: In an anxious state, the brain experiences imbalances in neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine, which play crucial roles in regulating thought and emotion. Such imbalances disrupt normal information processing in the brain, leading to disorganized logical thinking, reduced judgment ability, and abnormal cognitive patterns.
2. Excessive Focus on Threats Leading to Catastrophic Thinking: Patients unconsciously direct their attention toward potential dangers, amplifying minor negative signals and tending to assume the worst-case scenario. For example, they may interpret slight physical discomfort as a serious illness or imagine minor mistakes as major failures, resulting in catastrophic thinking that detaches from reality.
3. Narrowed Attention Causing Cognitive Bias: Anxiety restricts the scope of attention, making it difficult for patients to process information comprehensively. They selectively attend to negative content related to their anxiety while ignoring positive or neutral information, leading to cognitive bias. For instance, they may perceive more negative evaluations from others than positive feedback, forming one-sided and extreme judgments.
4. Emotion Dominance Suppressing Rational Thinking: Intense anxiety occupies cognitive resources in the brain, suppressing the functions of areas responsible for rational thinking. This makes it difficult for patients to analyze problems calmly, causing them to make subjective judgments driven by emotions. For example, they might deny their own abilities solely based on current feelings of unease, unable to objectively assess actual circumstances.
5. Long-Term Anxiety Forming Thinking Habits: If anxiety persists over time, abnormal thinking patterns gradually become habitual. Patients unconsciously repeat negative thought processes, automatically activating anxious thinking even when there is no obvious external threat, making it difficult to self-regulate back to normal cognitive functioning.
If abnormal thinking significantly affects daily life, professional help should be sought promptly. Cognitive patterns can be corrected through psychological interventions, combined with regular作息 (sleep-wake cycles), moderate exercise, and emotional regulation to gradually restore normal thinking function and reduce the impact of anxiety on cognition.
