How do you discern whether or not anxiety is related to your meditation practice?

Does it make a difference?

I'm engaged with a therapist also so trying to cover all bases.

Could you give us some additional context on what you've heard/read about the Dark Night? And how it may/may not apply to your meditation practice?

A classic and overly simplistic way to answer your question is that if someone is practicing consistently enough that they experience the Arising and Passing event, and their meditation practice seems to fall apart afterwards, then they are likely in the dukka nanas, which often have a mood disorder aspect to it.

(see here: 4. The Arising and Passing Away – MCTB.org and  5. Dissolution, Entrance to the Dark Night – MCTB.org)

But this kind of maping really makes the most sense when someone is meditating quite significantly (~2 hours a day or on a meditation retreat).

Usually it's much better to address mental health AS mental health using normal mental health approaches.

Of course many people meditate without dark nighting and many people have mood disorders without meditation.

Hope that gets the conversation going.

Maybe others can help point to old threads that also discussed this topic.
 

Over the last couple of years I've found consistency with my meditation and it seems to have made me feel a bit more sensitive to... everything. This is primarily manifesting as anxiety. I'll have these periods of time where I can feel my thoughts fixate and the body sensations start. I start to imagine my possible responses to the things I'm imagining.<br /><br />When I'm out of it, I can see that I'm trying to hold onto things I know are impermanent and I'm trying to calm myself by imagining my "escape route."<br /><br />I've read and re-read those chapters to see if I can say for certain I'm in some sort of "dark night" but I think its just garden variety anxiety. The meditation seems to be allowing me some distance and perspective. But its also making me acutely aware of impermanence too, which can be anxiety inducing.&nbsp;<br /><br />I'm definitely not doing enough meditation based on the qualifications you provided. I am trying to keep daily mindfulness and noting but even with that included, not that much.<br /><br />​​​​​​​Thank you!

Yeah, I would agree with you that your experience sounds less "dark night"-ish and much more related to the human development processs associated with a mindfulness practice. 

In other words, when we really start seeing the world, there is an adjustment period when we realize how vulnerable we all are, how much uncertainty there is, how there are dangers as part of life on this earth...  I remember one meditation teacher calling it the "getting real" phase --- where we can't hide from the truth of the scary stuff. But it really is a developmental phase after a while, it's accepted as just a part of life. 

I hope that gives you some hope. I definitely still go through periods where new life realizations gives me a kind of anxiety. The nice thing is that --- as you said --- meditation practice also seems to help develop distance and a mature perspective too!