Why do anxious feelings create the need to go to toilet frequently?

Anxiety can cause an ongoing feeling of urgency, or needing to go to the bathroom. This is due to the fight or flight system being activated as a result of stress. Pressure builds up inside of the body, causing stool to feel like it needs to come out. There is a good chance that although you are feeling anxious, you are only feeling a portion of the anxiety that you hold unconsciously. The rest of it needs to express itself in some manner, and in your case it seems to result in more frequent trips to the toilet. The more you can express the less this should happen.

As humans, there are certain responses that our bodies may have in response to stressful situations. The common ones that people think are "fight" and "flight," but there's also the response of "freeze," the kind of paralysis that keeps you frozen in place. Additionally, the way that we may feel psychologically can also have direct impacts on our physical bodies and biological functions. The anxiousness that people may experience can affect their digestive systems, causing pressure inside their intestines. This might be one of the reasons why anxiety can cause a person to have to use the restroom frequently.

Well, the latest science news point to part of your mental wellbeing being actually seated in your intestines, so if you are anxious enough, it can cause those intestines to empty themselves through the usual channels, among other symptoms (stomach pains for instance). It is also known that when animals need to run or fly away, emptying their colon fast makes that flight a lot easier. This reaction to anxiety is perfectly natural and practically built in. It is spontaneous when you are suddenly worried or facing a scary situation. It happens to most people, so you are not alone at all there.

This is a very old reaction to stress. When an animal is being chased by a predator and basically running for it's life it is to it's advantage to poop to lesson it's weight and run a little faster. Of course, that doesn't serve us very well in modern times when we might feel the same sort of threat in a meeting let's say and we suddenly have to go to the bathroom. However, it's a basic instinct that hasn't gone away over the years. It's that fight or flight thing! I know because it's happened to me in nervous situations and my best solution is to be close to a bathroom!

Diarrhea, along with other digestive problems that often accompany anxiety, can happen because of the connection between your gut and your brain, known as the gut-brain axis. The axis connects your central nervous system to your enteric nervous system (ENS), which acts as your gut’s nervous system. The ENS helps regulate processes in your gastrointestinal (GI) tract. But it also has an effect on your emotions and behavior through its link to your brain. When you’re distressed, chemical messengers carry signals from your brain to your gut. Your gut sometimes responds to these signals with physical symptoms, including diarrhea, nausea, or constipation. This link works both ways. If you have digestive issues or other GI problems, you might experience psychological symptoms. And having irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or related conditions is linked to an increased risk for anxiety and other mood symptoms.

I think that anxiety triggers the fight or flight response, where it is an advantage to evacuate your bowels incase you need to do either.

Maybe it makes you more sensitive or you might go to toilet frequently to subconsciously try to distract your mind from your anxiety

In my experience my anxiety shows up sometimes as an upset stomach and that causes me to sometimes frequent the restroom.

The scientific reason behind needing to go to the toilet when anxious is that the body activates the stress response (fight or flight) and a part of that involves the body removing waste products as quickly as possible, so you wouldn't have to whilst fighting or fleeing. An example would be that if you were being chased by a bear, you would be more effective a either fighting or running away if you didn't need to stop to go to the toilet in the middle of it.

My theory is basically that anxiety tells us to go to the bathroom because we can avoid other people in there. My anxiety makes me hella gassy (to the point of agony) so I usually have to go lie down (away from people) to make it go away. In my experience, a good way to avoid that is to make sure you've gone to the bathroom (no. 1 AND no. 2) before you enter a stressful situation, then anxiety can't make you do much. Except throw up. Which would be unfortunate.