What I used to get was this sense of impending doom that would really scare me, every few days in early sobriety. Would that be what you call anxiety? I thoguht the roof was going to fall in on me.
With the help of a good sponsor, I learned this state was self inflicted, though I was completlely unaware of it. I couldn't see how I got in this state, couldn't think may way out of it.
The long and the short of it was I still had an alcoholic mind and was till operating in alcoholic mode. So I would have a seeming period of good days, still sober, meeting, talk to sponsor etc. I thought I was doing all the right things, then, out of nowhere, it all seemed to be going wrong.
You see, I had not yet had the personality change that comes from working the steps. Though sober there was still something wrong with my reaction to life. I was reacting normally for me, and this was the result.
Each time it happened my sponsor and I would go over the previous few days. He had a great memory thank goodness. We were able to identify small relatively insignificant events where I had acted with selfish motives, old alcoholic instinct driven thinking, which had placed me in a position where I could be hurt. A single event wasn't the problem, it was an accumulation of events and the resulting niggles that combined, losing their original identity and brought on the sense of impending doom, the big black cloud.
When I took my fourth step I was able to see how I was my own worst enemy. There were a number of things about the way I thought and reacted to life that always lead me eventually to drink.It brought great insight.