The Anxiety Tree Anxiety Often Feels Like an Alarm Anxiety can feel like an alarm going off in the mind and body. Your heart races.Your thoughts speed up. You feel restless, tense, or easily irritated. Sometimes the alarm is so loud that it feels impossible to ignore. But alarms usually ring for a reason. The Branches: What People See Most people notice the symptoms first. It might look like: constant worrying trouble relaxing difficulty sleeping feeling on edge expecting som