Photo by Andrej Lišakov on Unsplash
Anxiety is genetic. Some people are just “wired this way.” We tend to talk about anxiety as if it’s an inheritance—an unavoidable permanency that’s quietly passed down through DNA. If your parents are anxious, you will be too. If you are “wired this way,” the best thing you can do is manage it. People will say that anxiety runs in families, and others will say people are just born anxious. This belief is strangely comforting because it clears everyone of responsibility—not parents, not schools, not society. If anxiety is genetic, then no one is really responsible for it, not parents, not schools, not society. It simply is.
But science tells a far more uncomfortable story.
Anxiety does not develop through nature or nurture alone. Nurture plays a far larger role than we admit. Anxiety is learned through environments that we cultivate, and these systems deserve to be exposed for the collective struggle they are, not just an individual. This is not about blaming parents, but about understanding systems. How do we raise children, structure schools, and define success? This genetic faultiness shapes behavior and leads to adults dismissing anxiety as personality and schools treating anxiety as a personal flaw rather than a signal.
One of the clearest examples of this is a study that experimented on rat pups raised by nurturing or neglectful mothers. Nurturing meant that mothers constantly licked, groomed, and cared for their young, whereas neglectful mothers were much more absent. The outcomes of this study showed how the nurtured pups became calm and resilient adults; however, the neglected pups became shaky, anxious, had hyper-reactive stress responses, and high cortisol levels.
The experiment was run again, except this time they removed genetics from the equation. The biological pups of the nurturing mother were raised by the neglectful mother, and the neglectful mother’s pups were raised by the nurturing mother. Through this switch, the same DNA yielded different results. The anxiety outcomes switched as well. No matter which genes the pups carried, when they were supported by a nurturing mother, their anxiety levels were significantly lower.
The key finding was behavioral, not biological. The environment, not genetics, determined how anxious I became. This describes epigenetics since caregiving changed how stress-related genes were expressed. Moreover, early care doesn’t just affect behavior, but it also alters biology.
However, humans are obviously not rats, but our brains develop in remarkably similar ways; there are countless parallels between our minds. For instance, we have similar early brain development and stress-response systems. And early childhood is a sensitive period during which stress-response systems are shaped by experience. In humans, this stress doesn’t always come from obvious neglect. It can come from emotional absence, constant pressure to perform, instability, or environments where worth is measured by achievement rather than safety. We produce anxiety systematically, then individualize the blame.
In this context, anxiety is not a malfunction. It is an adaptation. When a child grows up in an environment that signals constant evaluation of uncertainty, anxiety becomes a survival skill.
So perhaps the wrong question is, “Why are so many people anxious?” A better one might be “What are we teaching their nervous systems?”
Anxiety isn’t fate, it’s feedback. And we should listen to it.
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