Index
It is a mental, emotional and physical condition.
Anyone who has anxiety or knows someone who has had trouble with anxiety can identify anxiety by some of its most common symptoms: nervousness, sweating, fear, racing heartbeat, and a few others.
But these are not the only symptoms of anxiety. In fact, they are not close, the list of symptoms associated with anxiety may surprise even doctors, and it is responsible for millions of dollars in wasted medical tests.
Anxiety is sometimes called “The Great Copycat” because of its ability to mimic other health conditions.
For those living with chronic anxiety, the number of symptoms it can cause is extensive, from the usual to the unusual to the rare. Anxiety changes the way you think.
Anxiety alters your hormone levels and how you process nutrients. Anxiety changes your perception and awareness, so that you notice physical sensations that someone without anxiety would never notice. Anxiety can even amplify physical sensations.
For example, someone without anxiety may have knee pain so mild that they don’t even notice it, but a person with anxiety feels that knee pain severely, because their mind has been altered to be hypersensitive to the way the body feels. .
Anxiety can also create symptoms that don’t exist at all.
The best way to stop anxiety is to understand it. The more you understand what causes your symptoms, what they mean, why you are struggling with them, and what you can do to stop them, the more you can start to really progress on your own anxiety symptoms.
Note : Some people experience anxiety symptoms that are 100% mental, with no physical symptoms. Others experience anxiety symptoms that are 100% physical, where they are physically anxious, yet have no worries and their mind is clear.
Most people experience a combination of the two. There is no right or wrong way to experience anxiety.
Keep in mind that categorizing some anxiety symptoms is difficult. For example, what we consider a whole body symptom may feel more like a chest symptom, and vice versa.
Each type of anxiety has different symptoms. Anxiety is not a unique disorder.
This is incredibly important, anxiety has hundreds, possibly thousands of symptoms, but these symptoms can change depending on the type of anxiety you have. Anxiety disorders are a generic term for a group of anxiety conditions, each of which has its own unique signs and symptoms.
Keep this in mind as you learn about the symptoms of anxiety. However, it’s also important to note that everyone’s anxiety doesn’t fit into a neat little bubble. Many people with one type of anxiety struggle with symptoms that are very similar to another type of anxiety.
The most common anxiety symptoms are those caused directly by the fight or flight system – the system in your brain that is responsible for keeping you safe from harm, and when it malfunctions, the system in your brain causes anxiety.
Usually, if you have anxiety, you will experience some of these symptoms. However, not everyone will experience all the symptoms. Much depends on their anxiety disorder, how long they have had anxiety, what they are paying attention to, and more.
For example, some symptoms, such as chest pains, are more common in panic attacks than in generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder .
Don’t take this list to check whether or not you have anxiety. Anxiety is more complex, but if you have anxiety, you are likely to experience at least 50% of the following common anxiety symptoms:
Belching, flushing, breathing difficulties, chest pain, chest pressure / firmness in the chest, cold, concentration problems, cough, depersonalization / derealization, slurred speech, digestion problems, dizziness, fear, feeling sick or unwell general.
Also feeling overwhelmed, feeling unsteady, headaches, ‘heart attack symptoms’, heart palpitations, hyperventilation, insomnia / drowsiness, shortness of breath, lightheadedness, low energy, muscle tension / sore muscles, nausea, nervousness, shaking, sweating, tiredness and yawn.
These are some of the most common anxiety symptoms. But if your symptoms don’t appear on this list, that doesn’t make them rare. There are still thousands of anxiety symptoms that millions of people experience around the world.
Are Anxiety Disorder Symptoms Different From Anxiety Symptoms?
No. The symptoms of anxiety disorder and anxiety symptoms are the same.
The only difference between the two would be that as anxiety and its persistence increase, the number, type, intensity, frequency, and duration of anxiety symptoms will also increase. Otherwise they are one and the same.
Symptoms of anxiety in women and men
Most anxiety symptoms in women and men are similar, but there are some differences in anxiety symptoms.
For example, anxiety causes stress hormones to enter the bloodstream where they travel to specific places in the body to cause specific changes in the emergency response. These changes prepare the body for immediate action.
Since stress hormones affect other hormones, women can experience a wide range of sensations and symptoms due to how stress hormones affect the hormones that affect the female menstruation cycle.
Many women experience increases in anxiety-related symptoms in association with their monthly cycle.
Women may also experience an increase in symptoms due to the biological changes of pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and menopause.
Women are also more emotionally focused than men, so your anxiety symptoms can seem more numerous and discouraging.
Men have challenges too, as stress hormones affect male hormones as well. Men who are more emotionally focused may also struggle with anxiety symptoms more.
Mental symptoms of anxiety
Anxiety is a mental health problem, so the best place to start talking about anxiety symptoms is by looking at mental problems.
Anxiety alters your brain. Change the way you think, how you perceive and how you process information.
It can cause upsetting thoughts, such as imagining yourself being violent against a child, even if you don’t have violent tendencies. It can even make you forget who you are.
Anxiety changes the messengers in your brain that tell you how to think and act. But rest assured, curing anxiety can change it too. Anxiety changes your brain like a disease, but none of those changes have to be permanent.
Symptoms of anxiety related to thoughts
The following are some of the most common symptoms of anxiety related to thoughts. Thought symptoms are especially common in people with obsessive compulsive disorder, but they play a role in almost all forms of anxiety in some way.
Symptoms of thinking anxiety include:
Bad thoughts, such as crazy thoughts, disturbing thoughts and intrusive thoughts, irrational thoughts, obsessive thoughts, sudden thoughts, dark thoughts as well as strange and violent.
If you are having trouble with one of these thoughts, it is important to remember over and over that these symptoms are caused by anxiety, and that anxiety changes the way you think.
Cognitive functioning symptoms of anxiety
In this case, cognitive functioning refers to how your brain acts, not necessarily how you think.
An example could be memory loss. Memory loss is very common in people with anxiety, especially for smaller details. The following are some anxiety symptoms that affect how your mind works:
Auditory hallucinations, confusion, delusions, dementia, detachment, disorientation, distorted reality, forgetfulness, hallucinations, memory loss, memory problems, neurological symptoms, and nightmares.
Emotional symptoms of anxiety
Anxiety has a strong effect on your emotions. In a way, anxiety itself is an emotion. But it also overwhelms and disrupts the brain’s serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine systems, symptoms that are directly responsible for emotion.
As a result, it is not uncommon for anxiety to affect your emotions. You can have almost any emotion as a result of anxiety.
Some people actually experience anxiety euphoria, that is, anxiety makes them feel extremely happy (although this usually occurs only when they have some relief from anxiety).
Because anxiety alters neurochemicals associated with mood, many symptoms of emotional anxiety are common.
If you have anxiety, the changes in brain chemicals will affect your mood. But how it affects your mood is different for different people, because the human mind translates neurotransmitters differently.
You may experience any, all, or just one of the many symptoms of mood anxiety, including:
Aggression and violence, agitation, anger, annoyance, delirium, development of apathy, euphoria, feelings of crying, hyperactivity, irritability, isolation and loneliness, mood swings or bad mood, senseless feelings, ‘psychotic’ behaviors, severe sadness and mentality suicide.
Other symptoms can be caused directly by different levels of neurotransmitters in the brain, which in turn is caused by anxiety.
Fear-based anxiety symptoms
Anxiety itself is a form of fear. In fact, fears are often a type of anxiety disorder. Phobias are significant fears of a specific stimulus and cause their own anxiety symptoms.
The following, however, are some fears that are also symptoms of anxiety:
Fear easily, fear of dying and death, fear of going crazy and hypochondria.
In some ways, the fear of flying can be a symptom of anxiety, as well as a fear of going outside. But they can also be causes. This shows how both the causes and symptoms of anxiety can be linked.
Anxiety symptoms that affect the whole body
Anxiety affects muscles in many ways. The following are some of the symptoms of anxiety and muscles, which can affect almost any muscle in the body.
Muscle aches, muscle cramps, muscle spasms / behavioral spasms, muscle stiffness, and muscle weakness.
Anxiety can also affect the way your heart pumps blood, how your hormones react, and much more. The following are some of the symptoms of blood and circulatory anxiety:
- Blood pressure.
- Circulation problems.
- Hormonal changes.
- Hypertension and low blood pressure.
Anxiety can also make some problems you already struggle with worse. Fortunately, most of the time, these problems are only temporary and do not cause long-term damage or long-term risks.
Anxiety also affects your body heat, which in turn can make you feel hot, cold, or both. Some of these can also cause anxiety themselves, but in most cases, they are largely harmless. Other symptoms would be:
Ongoing illness, body odor, joint pain, numbness, obesity, pain throughout the body or changing regions, tingling of the skin or legs, restlessness and a weakened immune system.
Anxiety symptoms can also migrate, which can make them feel like they affect the whole body.
Anxiety symptoms affecting the organs
Although slightly less common, anxiety can also affect your organs, especially the largest organ in your body; your skin.
But you may also find that anxiety affects your organs or produces similar symptoms in your organs, in the following ways:
Atrial fibrillation, hot skin in some areas, eczema, heart palpitations, irregular heartbeat, kidney problems, rash, red patches, skin color changes, slow heart rate, spleen problems, and tachycardia.
If you’re having trouble with any of these symptoms, it makes sense to see a doctor for safety, but anxiety really does cause all of these conditions, and if you’re having trouble with them, curing your anxiety may be the only way to eliminate it.
Anxiety symptoms affecting the head, including eyes, nose, mouth, and headaches
Since anxiety is a mental health condition, it seems to make some sense that anxiety would have a strong effect on the head. But the number of physical anxiety symptoms in the head area can be staggering.
Anxiety seems to have a very strong effect on the eyes. This is partly as a result of the fight or flight response, which constricts the blood vessels in a way that should keep you focused, but does so ineffectively.
However, since the eyes depend on a fully functioning brain, it is not surprising that anxiety causes many symptoms in the eyes, including:
Blindness, blurred vision, double vision, eye pain, eye problems, pupil changes, seeing spots, eye pain, and vision problems.
Often times, if these problems are caused by anxiety, the symptoms will come and go at different times, which means that the lenses alone may not fix them.
Sleep-related anxiety symptoms
Anxiety has a profound effect on sleep, which is why ” insomnia ” was there with the most common anxiety symptoms. But there are many other problems related to sleep, including:
Lethargy, night sweats, sleep problems, and sleep apnea .
Stress is so complex that it can affect each person differently, and yet they all can be traced back to your mental health.
Symptoms of speech anxiety
Because anxiety affects both your thoughts and your mouth, speech problems can also be common. If you have a hard time speaking up as a symptom of your anxiety, see if you may have one of the speech symptoms of anxiety below:
Sensitivity to sound, fluent speech without thinking and not remembering what was said and disordered speech patterns.
Of course, anxiety can also cause a fear of public speaking, and those with anxiety, especially social anxiety, can have symptoms that include overthinking before speaking or speaking too quickly.
Anxiety symptoms in the arm and hand
Anxiety does not have a “strong” effect on the arms and hands, but it does affect them. The main culprits are nerves, which can fail when you have anxiety, and blood flow, which generally flows to the arms and hands.
Some common hand and arm related anxiety symptoms include:
Arm pain, armpit problems and sweating, cold hands, finger joint pain, trembling hands, nail biting, and tingling hands.
Beware of hypersensitivity as well. Anxiety makes you so sensitive to normal sensations that you feel worse. This happens occasionally with tingling of the hands, for example, although anxiety can also cause the hands to tingle on their own.
Symptoms of abdominal and stomach anxiety
Just below the chest is the abdomen, which houses the stomach and has some of the most sensitive muscles in the entire body.
Those who struggle with stress regularly have abdominal pain and other conditions due to the tension of the muscles and the balance of the digestive system. Symptoms include:
Abdominal pain, bloating, gas, stomach cramps, stomach pain, stomach problems, and an upset stomach.
Stress has a strong effect on stomach acids and digestion, which in turn causes the body to process food differently, struggle with nutrient intake, and much more.
Genital and Sex-Related Anxiety Symptoms
Problems with sex itself can be both a cause and a symptom of anxiety and due to stress, changes in blood flow and brain functioning, anxiety can also create many unique problems affecting urination, desire sexual and more.
The following are some of the genital and waste symptoms of anxiety:
Bowel problems, constipation, diarrhea, fertility problems, genital symptoms, incontinence / loss of bladder control, infertility, irritable bowel syndrome, low libido, urine problems, urination problems, vaginal discomfort, yellow stools.
Some of these problems are as fascinating as they are stressful. Take urination, for example. Your brain can only use a certain amount of resources at a time.
So when you have severe anxiety, your brain gives those resources to the place it thinks it needs the most: the fight or flight system. To do that, it takes resources from the part of your brain responsible for holding urine, causing you to want to urinate.
Although the symptom can be extremely stressful, the science behind it is interesting.