Anxiety can take a perfectly lovely, intelligent, capable person and turn them into a cowering, fearful mess. In fact, anxiety is infamous for its tendency to grossly over-exaggerate potential danger. To make its point, anxiety will hijack your nervous system and convince you that your life is in immediate peril, even when it’s clearly not. That’s just not nice. I think we can all agree that anxiety is a pain-in-the-patootie.