Morning anxiety reflects cortisol's natural circadian peak combined with a nervous system that interprets waking as a transition into threat. The body's stress hormone levels rise before waking, and a sensitized system experiences this normal fluctuation as danger. This creates immediate activation upon consciousness.
The autonomic nervous system operates through learned associations between environmental cues and past events. When similar patterns appear in the present, the system activates the same physiological responses that occurred during previous threatening situations. This creates a feedback loop where heightened arousal generates more scanning behavior, which in turn reinforces the sense of danger.
Chronic activation depletes the body's resources over time. The system remains in a state of readiness that was originally a response to specific circumstances but has become a default mode of operation. Neural pathways that fire repeatedly become strengthened, making the activated state increasingly automatic and difficult to interrupt through conscious effort alone.