Trying to encapsulate what anxiety is like to someone unfamiliar with the concept.

Feeling like a very delicate, microscopically thin but surprisingly smooth and resilient balloon containing a number of hyperactive and rapidly breeding ferrets.
They can usually be placated by various strategies but unless you let a small ferret escape once in a while – at the risk of annoying, upsetting or maybe nipping one of the people around you, there is a likelihood the balloon will exceed its tensile strength and explode, releasing a Pandora’s box of unpleasantness and leaving behind a small, limp pile of remnants.

So if you have a unexpected encounter with a small and grumpy metaphorical ferret, please do not feel aggrieved. You are doing a public service and if you treat it kindly, you are likely to be dodging a veritable shitstorm.