When You’re Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

There’s a particular kind of anxiety that doesn’t always come with panic, urgency, or obvious distress. Instead, it shows up during moments that are relatively calm or neutral — when things are steady, when nothing is actively wrong, or when life feels fine on the surface.

You might have experienced this before and described this experience as a feeling of “waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

For many people, it shows up in small ways: a sense of unease when things are going well, difficulty fully relaxing, or an internal scanning for what could go wrong next. Even during periods of stability, your body stays slightly braced, as if something is just around the corner.

Understandably, this experience can feel confusing. There’s no clear threat. Nothing bad is happening. And yet, the nervous system doesn’t feel settled.

Why calm can feel unfamiliar or unsafe

For many of the clients I work with, this pattern didn’t develop randomly. It often makes sense when viewed through the lens of lived experience.

If you’ve lived in environments that were unpredictable, emotionally charged, or inconsistent, your system may have learned that calm was temporary. Neutral moments may have preceded stress, conflict, or disappointment. Over time, your body learned to stay alert — not because something is wrong, but because something might be.

In this context, the feeling of “waiting for the other shoe to drop” isn’t irrational. It’s adaptive. It reflects a nervous system that learned vigilance as a way to prepare and protect.

Anxiety without obvious triggers

This form of anxiety often doesn’t attach itself to a specific fear. Instead, it shows up as:

• A background sense of tension or unease

• Difficulty trusting that things are actually okay

• Trouble resting or enjoying neutral moments

• A habit of mentally rehearsing worst-case scenarios

• Feeling more anxious when life slows down

Because there’s no clear problem to solve, this anxiety can be especially frustrating. You may tell yourself that you should feel fine — which can add another layer of self-criticism or confusion.

When vigilance becomes the default

Over time, vigilance can become a baseline state. The nervous system stays slightly activated, scanning for changes in mood, circumstances, or relationships. Even positive or stable experiences can feel suspicious, as if they’re simply the calm before the storm.

This doesn’t mean you’re pessimistic or negative by nature. More often, it means your system learned that staying prepared felt safer than being caught off guard.

The cost, however, is that neutrality never quite feels neutral. It becomes something that feels threatening rather than something to embrace.

Why insight alone doesn’t always resolve this feeling

Many people understand why they feel this way. They can trace it back to past experiences or patterns. And yet, the sensation persists.

That’s because this kind of anxiety isn’t only cognitive — it’s physiological. It lives in the body’s expectations and timing, not just in conscious thought.

Telling yourself that things are okay doesn’t necessarily reach the part of you that learned to stay alert. What’s often needed is a slower process of helping the nervous system recognize safety in the present moment, without forcing relaxation or positivity.

How therapy can help with the “other shoe” feeling

In therapy, we don’t try to eliminate this experience or talk you out of it. Instead, we get curious about how it developed, what it’s been protecting you from, and how it shows up in your body and relationships.

Through a somatic and insight-oriented approach, therapy can help you notice when your system is bracing, gently increase your capacity for neutrality and ease, and develop a different relationship with uncertainty. Over time, many people find that calm starts to feel more tolerable, and even relieving.

You’re not broken for feeling this way

If you recognize yourself in this pattern, it doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It might mean that your system learned to stay alert in order to survive — and that strategy simply hasn’t been updated yet.

With support, it’s possible to loosen the expectation that something bad is always coming and to experience steadiness without waiting for it to disappear.

If this resonates, you can learn more about my approach to anxiety therapy and how I work with these patterns at the nervous system level.