By Alena Gerst, LCSW | Founder, Director, Psychotherapist
Because anxiety is such a prominent mental health condition, many people have a basic idea of what it is and what it might look like. The good news about that is anxiety has lost a lot of the stigma it used to have, such as the archetype of the “hysterical woman.” However, until you’re going through it yourself, it is hard to convey how agonizing anxiety can be.
While we consider anxiety a mental health condition, it almost always impacts physical and emotional wellbeing too. If you are one of the (rare) people who has never experienced anxiety, it can be difficult to grasp the full impact of what anxiety really feels like, and the significance of the symptoms that can negatively impact your day-to-day routine, and your quality of life.
So, what are some of those physical, mental, and emotional signs? Let’s dig deeper into what anxiety feels like beneath the surface, because it is most definitely not just characterized by the hyperventilating/panic attack we often think of.
Understanding the way this condition might make you feel can help you recognize warning signs sooner, so you can reach out to get the help you need.
Physical Signs of Anxiety
The physical symptoms of anxiety are triggered by your body’s stress response, aka the sympathetic nervous system. This is what we often think of as “fight or flight” response (we also have added “freeze” and “fawn” to the ways our stress response can present. When you’re anxious, your body releases more adrenaline and the stress hormone cortisol, causing you to feel like you’re in a dangerous situation, even when you’re not.
As a result, you’re likely to experience things like a racing heart, sweating, trembling, and dizziness or a sense of being outside your body.
Anxiety can also contribute to headaches and muscle pain, digestive issues, sleep disturbances, and changes in appetite and sleep. Both the immediate and long-term physical signs can wreak havoc on your health and potentially lead to other serious health conditions.
Unfortunately, many of the physical signs can cause your anxious thoughts to flare up even more. So it’s important to keep in mind when you feel these symptoms in your body, whether there is a “trigger” or not, you are probably experiencing anxiety.
It helps to have this information so you can begin to put your tools in place to help you move through the episode.
Mental Signs of Anxiety
The core of anxiety is excessive worry and fear. If you can’t stop worrying about the “what ifs” of a particular situation and it takes over your thoughts, you’re dealing with anxiety. As you might expect, that can cause you to feel restless and on edge all the time, and make it hard to concentrate on things.
Anxiety can also cause a feeling of brain fog, or a reduction in your ability to remember information.
When you feel like you always have to stay alert, you’re also more likely to become easily agitated and experience mood swings.
In addition, people with anxiety often experience obsessive thoughts. These repetitive ideas can become very difficult to control and it feels nearly impossible to focus on anything else. When you’re dwelling on something for that long, you are more likely to think about the worst-case scenario, which is exactly what anxiety tricks you into doing. You’ll ruminate on negative thoughts, making it more difficult to escape the cycle of fear and worry until you are able to recognize what’s happening.
Emotional Signs of Anxiety
All the physical and mental symptoms of anxiety can take a toll on your overall well-being. You might start to see yourself and the rest of the world in a different light, negatively impacting your emotions.
It’s not uncommon for people dealing with anxiety to feel extremely stressed, and take on a negative outlook. Unfortunately, that contributes to more anxious thoughts, and the cycle continues. You might also struggle with sadness or feelings of hopelessness. If you’ve been dealing with the effects of anxiety for a long time, those negative and hopeless feelings can contribute to depression.
Anxiety often makes it difficult to control your emotions. That’s one of the reasons why so many people dealing with it tend to withdraw from social situations and even people they love and activities they once enjoyed.
Unfortunately, isolation can make nearly all the symptoms of anxiety worse.
Managing and Treating Anxiety
If there’s a silver lining to all of these signs, it’s that anxiety is often very manageable with the right kind of help.
Changes in nutrition, sleep hygiene, physical activity, and therapy can help you better understand where your anxiety stems from, and recognize it when it’s coming on so you can get ahead of it before it takes hold, or move through it with more confidence.
You can learn how to overcome your negative thoughts while managing the symptoms on a daily basis. If any of these signs sound familiar or are impacting your day-to-day life, don’t hesitate to reach out for help as soon as possible so you can get back on the road to a good quality of life.