Anxiety

Like its namesake, Anxiety is shown to be a nervous emotion. She's extremely anxious about meeting preexisting emotions like Joy, especially because she wants to make a good first impression. Because her role is to protect Riley from things she "can't see", she is also an intense planner, predicting everything that can go wrong so that she can find a way to avoid them. Everything must go exactly as it must happen as she had planned, with every mistake being seen as something that may "haunt" her later.

During her first appearance she is described to be highly energetic, zealous, and a typical geek filled with excitement towards working with the original five emotions. Similar to Fear, Anxiety is prone to overthinking things, though to a larger extent. While Fear's overthinking is a reaction to a perceived threat that soons disappear once that threat is out of sight, Anxiety projects those fears, leading her to try to think of any scenario that can go wrong, even if they are not a reality. This is showed on her overplanning regarding Riley's future on high school, leading her to pressure the girl to do everything she could to get a spot on the hockey team of her future high school and blend in with the older girls. However, none of this is out of malice as her intent was to protect Riley from being alone in high school.

Despite being self-aware and extremely analytical, Anxiety is not without her limits. Her extreme overthinking and insecurities can blind her judgment causing her to put past her limits and forget what was truly important. Her hardworking and ambitious nature is overshadowed by her restlessness and self-destructive mindset, shown through Riley's feelings of inadequacy through Anxiety's driving. The more Anxiety kept adding to Riley's Sense of Self about trying to become good enough to make the team, the more Riley felt that she really was not good enough, until it became a reality to her, leading to both Riley and Anxiety to have an anxiety attack.

Similar to Joy in the first movie, Anxiety is also a control-freak, wanting nothing but to be in control of everything in Riley's life, hating when she is placed on the backseat of the controls, especially if that strays away from her plans. However, she is willing to get rid of everything she sees as unnecessary and/or dangerous to what she perceives as being the right thing for Riley, being extremely pragmatic about it, even if she has to "bottle up" the old emotions or reinvent Riley's entire sense of self. The more Anxiety tried to change things into what she believed to be Riley's best self, she would take even more control over everything, even if was too much for her to handle, until the point she got stuck into her own feelings of anxiety.

After Joy was able to covince her to let go of her control over Riley, Anxiety was able to see how her desire to shape Riley into what she perceived to be her best version by any means necessary was hurting her. Not only that, but, with a little help from Joy's positivity, she also learned to let go of the worries Riley didn't have control on, focusing only on the ones she did.

Anxiety appears as an orange emotion with a volcanic eruption like updo of a darker shade of the same color and jade green eyes, orange and white-striped long-sleeved shirt, brown pants attached by a black belt with a gold button-shaped buckle, and brown shoes.