It’s fairly easy to identify the mental signs of anxiety, but what’s trickier for some of us is figuring out when our body is sick or actually just a reflection of our mind feeling sick.
In other words, anxiety can produce physical symptoms that make us think we have some other disease or condition.
You’re familiar, of course, with the typical “racing heart,” “turning stomach” clichés, and those are, indeed, physical symptoms of anxiety.
But Healthline draws attention to some other signs of anxiety that you might not associate with it (in another post, I’ll go through additional symptoms).
Here’s Healthline’s list, and I dug up some references for you to explore further.
-frequent urination (stress affects via nervous system and muscles)
-muscle tension and pain (panic disorder or anxiety can cause us to tighten our muscles)
-chest pain (one of the most common symptoms of an anxiety or panic attack).
-shortness of breath (fight or flight leads to quicker, shorter breathing, That, in turn, leads to all kinds of other symptoms beyond merely being short of breath).
-teeth grinding that results in facial or jaw pain (there is a significant connection between anxiety and TMJ).
-no appetite (Anxiety affects your sense of hunger, via fight-or-flight).
-fatigue and weakness (hyperventilation, muscle tension, fatigue, “perceived weakness” can all be the culprits).
-numbness or tingling in feet, hands, or fingers (hyperventilation — your blood vessels constrict which shuts off blood flows to your extremities).
-insomnia (anxiety can obviously lead to “mental hyper-arousal.” Good luck trying to sleep in that state).
-headaches (muscle tension, lack of sleep, low serotonin levels‘).
-muscle tension and pain (anxiety can make us tighten our muscles, which over time, leads to pain).
-dizziness (vasovagal syncope — our blood pressure drops which can lead to fainting or dizziness. And the aforementioned hyperventilation).
All of these could be signs of something other than anxiety, so get it checked out, but if you’re someone prone to anxiety and you’ve been cleared by the doctor and still have these kinds of symptoms, it really is often from anxiety and not some lurking disease.
However, we do know that, over time, anxiety is associated with both the development of and worsening of other chronic disease.
Anxiety raises your risk of heart disease, gastrointestinal diseases, worsening asthma and COPD, Alzheimer’s and many other conditions.
Now to a tangent….
Regarding that last symptom — dizziness — I recently came across a term I’d never heard, “Chronic Subjective Dizziness,” that’s a great example of the interplay between our anxiety and physical bodies.
Often, someone with CSD will suffer an injury to a key part of the body that affects balance — the vestibular system. They get dizzy, their balance suffers, they need treatment etc.,
But soon enough, the person heals, but not really.
Dr. Peter Pressman writes, “Even after this initial injury has healed, people with CSD usually describe a vague sense of unsteadiness worsened by triggers in their environment. These triggers may include high places, standing on moving objects, or standing in motion-rich environments, like busy streets or crowds.”
Now why do thy experience dizziness even though they’re now better?
Essentially, even though the vestibular system has healed, the brain hasn’t moved on from the accident. Your anxiety hasn’t.
So when you’re confronted with something related to balance (an escalator, for example), your brain remembers the time you genuinely couldn’t handle the escalator, and suddenly, you’re dizzy again.
The dizziness is absolutely real, even though the original injury has healed. Now, instead, there’s something going on in your brain — not the injury to your vestibular system — that’s the source of your vestibular problem.
Pressman explains: “The exact cause of chronic subjective dizziness is still being worked out. The general theory, however, is that the disorder results from the brain’s inability to readjust after the vestibular system has been damaged.
…..In CSD, the brain fails to adjust to a new normal. Even though the original insult may have healed, the brain remains hyper-vigilant to anything that has to do with motion or balance, like a soldier who, home from war, still jumps or ducks for cover every time a car backfires.
In addition, underlying personality traits or psychiatric disorders may contribute to this inability to correctly estimate movement.”
In fact, in a scientific study at a dizziness clinic, practitioners found that nearly 11% of all patients had “chronic subjective dizziness” and, within that group, nearly 79.3% had some psychiatric disorder, primarily anxiety,
Now keep in mind — these were patients who genuinely scored poorly on balance testing. Their dizziness was real. It’s just that the source of that dizziness seemed to be coming from the brain feeding into the vestibular system, and not vice versa.
Soon after a head injury, I went through a period of dizziness, prompted by damage to my vestibular system, and yet it took me much longer to get discharged from the balance clinic than it should have because my brain wouldn’t just let me move on.
My anxiety started producing the same symptoms that my damaged vestibular system produced.
I still remember my physical therapist finally saying, “Dude, it’s your anxiety.” And you know what, even though everything in me objected, I knew he was right.
I recently posted one of my favorite boards for those of us who struggle with anxiety and strange physical symptoms. Please go there, and you will find comfort, knowing that there are millions of others who experience all kinds of weird physical stuff related to anxiety.
And I’m going to write a “part 2” to this post soon — because really, this has just scratched the surface of all the weird symptoms anxiety can cause.
