Anxiety is not only a mental phenomenon. It lives in your body too. Very often, the physical manifestations appear long before anyone makes a connection to stress or worry.
You’ve been to the doctor. Maybe more than once. The tests are normal, there is nothing wrong with you, but your body continues to signal that something isn’t right.
Chest tightness. Constant fatigue. An unquenched stomach. Unpredictable headaches; they come and go.
If this is familiar, you are not imagining.
Anxiety has genuine physical roots, though we often fail to recognize them because most people grew up in a society that separates the concept of mental health from physical well-being.
Learning about how the human body responds to anxiety is probably the most significant part of seeking help that can aid your healing process.
Your Body Talks, and So Does Anxiety
Whenever you undergo anxiety, your brain is telling your body that some danger is nearby, so it reacts.
This does not mean that the threat is real or a perception. Your nervous system reacts like it does when you are in real trouble.
What Happens Physically When Anxiety Kicks In
The body activates what’s commonly called the “fight-or-flight” response.
Cortisol and adrenaline – stress hormones – saturate your system. Your heart speeds up. Your muscles tense. Your digestion slows. Your breathing becomes shallow.
This response is life-saving in a true emergency. The problem with anxiety is that this alarm system gets triggered repeatedly – often over ordinary daily situations and the body never fully gets the signal that the danger has passed.
Living with this anxious nervous system over the long haul takes its toll. Every system in your body proceeds to feel it.
“Chronic anxiety stops being a mental experience. It becomes a whole-body condition.”
Common Physiological Symptoms Associated with Anxiety
Probably one of the most disorienting aspects of anxiety is that many of its physical symptoms can be confused with much more severe health issues. Some of the most common manifestations of anxiety:
In the Chest and Heart
- A pounding or racing heart, even while sitting down
- Tightness in the chest
- Breathlessness or feeling like you cannot take a deep breath
- Palpitations that feel dangerous but are not cardiogenic
In the Gut
- Nausea, especially when faced with stressful events or during the event
- Stomach cramping, bloating, or discomfort of unknown dietary cause
- Bouts of constipation followed by diarrhea, which is often seen with IBS
- Decreased appetite
In the Muscles and Mind
- Recurring chronic tension-type headaches or migraines
- Clenching of the jaw or grinding of teeth, frequently at night
- Stiff, achy shoulders and neck that don’t get better after stretching
- Feeling shaky or a sense of physical jitteriness that cannot be understood
In Your Energy and Sleep
- Fatigue that does not get better, no matter how hard you try
- Finding it hard to fall asleep
- Rising in the middle of the night, sometimes panicked
- Already exhausted first thing in the AM before the day has even started
Related – Can You Have ADHD and Anxiety at the Same Time?
When Your Body Gets the Diagnosis and Anxiety Gets Missed
However, due to the extreme realness of anxiety’s physical symptoms, most of us stay clear of the added basic component and just focus on the physical aspect for months or years. Sometimes people wind up in the doctor’s office, with chest pain they attribute to their heart but that a cardiologist can’t explain; or stomach trouble after a trip to the gastroenterologist; or headaches following an exam by a neurologist.
And those appointments often go unanswered.
Between What You Feel and What Gets Found
It is deeply frustrating when tests come back normal, and symptoms linger on.
Some people struggle through, thinking they only need to try harder. But what is usually missing is the anxiety that was running in the background of everything.
This does not mean that physical symptoms are not real. They absolutely are. Which means, if you only treat the physical body and not what is happening in the mind and nervous system, it is unlikely that whatever relief you get will be long-lasting.
That is where a proper psychiatric evaluation can connect the dots. For many, once their anxiety is diagnosed and treated correctly, physical symptoms may go away.
How Chronic Anxiety Affects Your Body Over the Long Term
The body is designed to manage stress over the short term and to help us recover. Chronic anxiety is different. However, when the stress hormones remain present for weeks or months, even life-threatening damage can occur.
Systems That Feel the Greatest Brunt of Damage
- The heart: Chronic tension corresponds with high blood pressure and an increased permanent threat of coronary events.
- The immune system: Cortisol, when chronically upregulated, dampens immune response. Those with untreated anxiety also tend to find they get sick more frequently or take longer to recover.
- The gut: The brain has a very close connection to the gut via the gut-brain axis. Chronic anxiety can upset the gut microbiome balance and cause more severe or even new diseases like irritable bowel syndrome.
- Sleep architecture: It disrupts sleep, and it cuts down on deep, restorative slumber. This poor sleep subsequently exacerbates anxiety the following day. With inadequate support, this cycle can be difficult to break.
- Hormonal balance: The unending cortisol release may contribute to hormonal imbalance, leading to potential negative impacts on mood, metabolism, and reproductive health over time.
This is not intended to alarm any of you. We want to emphasize that anxiety should never be shamed, ignored, minimized, or otherwise swept under the rug.
How Treatment Works And Breaks the Cycle
Fortunately, anxiety is among the most treatable mental health disorders. When people get the right mix of support, most can make meaningful advances. And when anxiety is resolved properly, many of the physical symptoms fade away with it.
The Right Starting Point: A Comprehensive Evaluation
First things first, it helps to know exactly what you are up against.
Anxiety presents as different subtypes, from generalized anxiety disorder to panic disorder, social anxiety, etc. A comprehensive psychiatric evaluation looks at the entire picture: your symptoms, your history, how your life is being impacted, and whether other diagnoses are in play.
This is exactly the sort of thorough assessment that every new patient undergoes at Trained Mind Psychiatry LLC.
Therapy, Medication, and the In Between
Treatment isn’t a single path. Some people get so much relief just from therapy alone. In some cases, medication forms a vital component of anxiety management strategies, especially when symptoms are strong or longstanding. So many do well with a combination of both.
- Evidence-based therapy helps identify and change the very thinking patterns that feed anxiety while helping develop real skills that you can use on a day-to-day basis to manage your anxiety.
- When pertinent, medication management may decrease the severity of physical and mental symptoms, which facilitates engagement with therapy as well as in daily life.
- Continuous monitoring is important.
Everyday Choices
Daily habits that support professional treatment. These are not substitutes for care, but they do actually help:
- Daily movement, even short walks every day, regulates the nervous system
- Sleep is important, and establishing a routine has the obvious benefit of decreasing baseline body arousal levels
- Avoiding caffeine and alcohol, as both can make anxiety symptoms worse
- Breathwork and grounding techniques that can break the stress response in real-time
- Rely on people you know, because social connections are one of the natural regulators of the nervous system
You Don’t Have to Keep Guessing Why You Feel Like This
Anxiety might be at the root of it if you’re experiencing strange physical symptoms and constant fatigue.
Trained Mind Psychiatry LLC · South Plainfield, NJ
Nkem Ani is a Board-Certified Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner providing psychiatric evaluations and medication management for anxiety and similar disorders. Care is in-person and online for all areas of NJ, including South Plainfield.
You don’t have to keep cycling through appointments that don’t address the root of what you’re experiencing. Start with a conversation.
