What are the Symptoms and Signs of Anxiety?
Anxiety doesn't always feel like worry. Sometimes it feels like something is seriously wrong with your body.
Your heart starts pounding. Your chest feels tight. You can't seem to get enough air. You feel dizzy or light-headed. Your hands shake, your stomach turns and suddenly you are overwhelmed by a feeling that something terrible is about to happen. For some people, the physical symptoms are so intense that they genuinely believe they are having a heart attack. They call an ambulance or go to the emergency department, frightened that something is seriously wrong with their heart. And this is one of the most frightening things about anxiety: the physical symptoms are real.
Anxiety is not simply a thought in your head. It is a whole-body response involving the brain, nervous system and body. When the brain perceives danger, the body prepares to respond. The heart beats faster so blood can be delivered more rapidly around the body. Breathing changes. Muscles tense. Attention becomes highly focused on potential danger. Stress hormones including adrenaline and cortisol are released.
This response is extremely useful when you actually need to protect yourself. If you were being chased by a dangerous animal, you would want your heart beating faster, your muscles ready for action and your attention focused on the threat. The problem is that the body's alarm system does not only respond to physical danger. It can respond to the possibility of danger, anticipated danger, emotional threat, memories of previous experiences and situations that the conscious mind may not even recognise as threatening.That is why you can experience a powerful physical anxiety response before giving a presentation, getting on a plane, walking into a social situation, having a difficult conversation or waiting for medical test results.
Your body is responding to what your brain believes might happen.
What does anxiety feel like?
The symptoms of anxiety can involve almost every system in the body. Research into anxiety disorders consistently describes a combination of psychological, behavioural and physical symptoms. These can include excessive worry and fear, but also palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness, sweating, trembling, muscle tension, gastrointestinal symptoms and sleep disturbance.
One of the most noticeable effects is on the cardiovascular system. Anxiety can cause:
A racing or pounding heart, palpitations.
A feeling of pressure or tightness in the chest.
Chest is tight or that you cannot breathe deeply enough.
You may feel unable to get a satisfying breath..
The sensation can be terrifying because breathing is normally automatic. Once you become frightened of your breathing, however, you can become intensely focused on every breath you take.
Further Body Sensations:
Dizziness and light-headedness are common.
Tingling or numbness
Feeling as though you are going to faint.
Trembling, shaking or a strange feeling of unreality.
A feeling of being disconnected from yourself or from surroundings, as though everything suddenly seems unfamiliar or dreamlike.
The gut can react. The relationship between anxiety and the gut is complex and goes in both directions. Gut health can impact on anxiety and anxiety can change gut health. Anxiety Symptons in the gut can include:
Butterflies in the stomach,
Abdominal discomfort,
Changes in appetite and diarrhoea.
Muscles respond to anxiety as well. Someone who has been anxious for months may not even realise how tense their body has become because the sensation has gradually become normal. The body prepares for action by increasing muscular tension. Over time this can contribute to:
Tight shoulders,
Jaw tension,
Beadaches,
back pain and
General physical discomfort.
Living with a nervous system that is repeatedly moving into a state of high alert can be incredibly draining. A person can feel simultaneously exhausted and unable to relax. They may struggle to sleep, wake feeling unrefreshed and find it difficult to concentrate during the day. Anxiety can cause:
Insomnia
Exhaustion
Anxiety is responsible for over-thinking. This is not you, this is the cortisol spike producing survival thinking. Anxiety creates:
Over-thinking and looping thoughts
Negative Thoughts
Catastrophising
When anxiety feels like a heart attack
Perhaps the most frightening presentation of anxiety is when the symptoms resemble a cardiac event.
A panic attack can involve chest pain, a pounding or racing heart, shortness of breath, dizziness, sweating, trembling, nausea and an intense fear of dying. These symptoms can arrive suddenly and escalate rapidly.
Imagine what that feels like if you have never experienced it before.
Your heart suddenly starts pounding. Your chest feels tight. Your breathing feels strange. You become dizzy. Your hands are shaking. You feel sick. You cannot understand why this is happening.
The obvious conclusion is that something is seriously wrong.
“I'm having a heart attack.”
And this is where an important distinction needs to be made. Chest pain should never simply be dismissed as anxiety. New, severe or unexplained chest pain requires appropriate medical assessment, particularly when it occurs with symptoms such as significant shortness of breath, fainting, sweating, nausea or pain spreading to the arm, jaw, back or shoulder.
The difficulty is that anxiety and cardiac problems can produce some remarkably similar sensations.
Research in emergency medicine demonstrates this overlap. An Australian study of 338 adults presenting to an emergency department for investigation of possible acute coronary syndrome found panic disorder in 5.6% of patients. The researchers also found that the symptoms routinely collected during assessment of chest pain could not reliably distinguish people with panic disorder from those without it.
That finding is important because it demonstrates why the experience can be so convincing. The person is not imagining their chest pain. They are not making up their racing heart. They really are experiencing breathlessness, dizziness, palpitations and intense fear.
Their nervous system is producing a genuine physiological response.
Why does the body react this way?
The nervous system is designed to protect us.
Its job is not to make us feel comfortable. Its job is to detect potential danger and prepare us to respond.
The difficulty occurs when the alarm system becomes overly sensitive, repeatedly activated or slow to switch off.
A person can begin responding physically to situations that are not objectively dangerous. A presentation can produce the same pounding heart that once accompanied genuine danger. A medical appointment can trigger the same adrenaline response as a threat. A thought about something going wrong in the future can activate the body before anything has actually happened.
This is why simply telling someone with anxiety to “stop worrying” rarely solves the problem.
The body is participating in the experience. That's why I work on calming the body first, then the mind and unconscious.
Understanding this does not mean that every physical symptom is anxiety. Medical conditions can produce many of the same symptoms, and physical health problems can themselves contribute to anxiety. New, severe or unexplained symptoms should always be appropriately investigated.
But once medical causes have been considered and treated where necessary, understanding the relationship between the nervous system, physical sensations and anxiety can be an important part of recovery.
What can Help Anxiety?
I have developed a method of working with anxiety called The BodyCalm. This works on calming the body first and then working to create healthier patterns and thinking. It works deep in the nervous system and unconscious where anxiety triggers are stored.
If you want to know more about anxiety, generally, read this article:
If you want to know more about hypnotherapy for anxiety, read this article:
If your anxiety is trauma based read this article:
Diana Joy
Clinical Hypnotherapist, Balmain, Sydney
Advanced Diploma of Clinical Hypnotherapy, Psychotherapy, & NLP 10501NAT
IICT Membership #6858852099
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