Concentration takes a great deal of mental energy. Anxiety can take away that mental energy, and the more severe your anxiety the worse it will be.
In a way, your mind and body is ready to concentrate. The problem is that:
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It has nothing to concentrate on.
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What it does concentrate on is not what you want to concentrate on.
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Your brain often isn't working as well since it's really your body and reactions that are concentrating
What causes the easily distracted anxiety symptoms?
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Behaving apprehensively and its stress response consequences: Behaving anxiously activates the stress response. The stress response immediately causes physiological, psychological and emotional changes in the body that encourage the body to deal with threat. Part of the stress response changes include changing how the brain functions so that areas of the brain more critical for survival are enhanced and those less, are suppressed. This change makes us more reactive to danger but also reduces our ability to focus.
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The consequences of an overly stressed body, including the stress caused by overly apprehensive behavior: when stress responses occur too frequently and/or dramatically, it is more difficult for the body to recover, which can result in a semi emergency readiness state. Remaining in this state can cause similar sensations and symptoms to that of an active stress response.
Sleepiness, hunger, bathroom breaks and physical discomfort can get you up out of your chair and wandering around the house, thus breaking your concentration
In a study by PhD Rosen on focal ability of students, he showed them a video in several psychology courses, which was followed by a graded test. He also told them he might send them a text message and to answer the message. In fact, one-third did not get a message, one-third got four texts and the other third go eight texts, to make them not be able to concentrate on the video. The result was predictable that the group who got right texts did worse than the group who got four. But what is important is, those students who answered his texts immediately did worse than those who opted to wait a minute or two even three or four to respond.
In psychology, this ability to understand when you need to focus and when it is not necessary is call "metacognition". Those students who opted to wait used their metacognitive skills to decide when was a good time to be distracted.
