What is anxiety cycle?

Anxiety cycle is a concept in personal epistemology: Your emotions create self-reinforcing cycles — anxiety begets more anxiety.

Example: You wake up anxious about a presentation. The anxiety makes you avoid preparing. The lack of preparation makes you more anxious. By the night before, you're in a full spiral — not because the presentation got harder, but because the loop between anxiety and avoidance ran three or four cycles without interruption. Each pass amplified the last.

This concept is part of Phase 24 (Feedback Loops) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for feedback loops.