Why does anxiety make me feel so unwell?
Anxiety isn’t just a mental battle; it can manifest physically, too. If you’ve ever experienced sudden chest tightness, dizziness, or stomach discomfort, seemingly without cause, it could be a sign of anxiety.
Many people mistakenly believe that anxiety is just excessive worrying or overthinking. However, it can have profound physical effects. I’ve seen many clients where anxiety has caused such intense physical symptoms that they feared a serious health issue. It’s not all in your mind – the physical symptoms are very real.
Understanding what happens in the body when you feel anxious can provide a significant sense of relief and help reduce the fear.
In this blog, we’ll explore common anxiety symptoms, what causes them, and how to cope with them with some techniques from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
Why Anxiety Affects the Body
Anxiety is a survival mechanism. When your brain perceives real or imagined danger, it activates the fight-or-flight response designed to protect you. The nervous system floods your body with stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol to prepare you for action. The problem is that sometimes your body can react to being a few minutes late for work as it would respond to being under attack.
Here’s what happens when your brain perceives danger:
- Heart rate increases to pump blood to your muscles.
- Breathing quickens to deliver more oxygen to your body.
- Digestion slows down as energy is diverted to survival functions.
- Muscles tense in readiness to fight or flee.
While these changes are helpful in a true emergency, they can feel uncomfortable or alarming when triggered by everyday stress or anxious thoughts.
Common Physical Symptoms of Anxiety and Their Causes
Many people find it helpful to have some explanation about why they have particular physical sensations, so here’s a rundown of the most common physical symptoms and what’s likely taking place in your body when you feel them.
1. Chest Pain
- What it Feels Like: Tightness, pressure, or discomfort in the chest.
- What Causes It: Shallow breathing (hyperventilation) reduces oxygen levels, and muscle tension around the chest adds to the sensation. Increased heart rate can also mimic the feeling of heart problems, but it’s usually harmless in the context of anxiety.
2. Dizziness
- What it Feels Like: Feeling lightheaded, unsteady, or as though you might faint.
- What Causes It: Hyperventilation disrupts the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood, reducing blood flow to the brain and creating a sense of dizziness.
3. Feeling Sick (Nausea)
- What it Feels Like: An upset stomach, queasiness, or the urge to vomit.
- What Causes It: The gut and brain are closely connected through the vagus nerve. Anxiety signals disrupt digestion, leading to nausea. The fight-or-flight response also diverts blood flow from the digestive system, compounding the discomfort.
4. Other Symptoms
- Sweating: Helps cool the body during perceived danger.
- Trembling or Shaking: Results from muscle tension and adrenaline.
- Shortness of Breath: A byproduct of shallow, rapid breathing.
Why These Symptoms Feel So Intense
The brain often misinterprets these physical sensations as signs of a serious issue, creating a feedback loop of fear.
For example, noticing your heart racing might lead to thoughts like, “Am I having a heart attack?”—which, in turn, increases anxiety, especially if you have health anxiety. Other people worry that others will notice them sweating or looking red in the face, which causes them to feel more socially anxious.
Understanding that these sensations are part of your body’s natural response to stress can help break this cycle.
Everyday Triggers That Mimic Fight-or-Flight
Certain lifestyle factors can trick your body into thinking it’s in fight-or-flight mode, even when there’s no immediate danger. For example:
- Caffeine: Drinking caffeine stimulates your nervous system, increasing heart rate and triggering jitteriness that feels like anxiety.
- Lack of Sleep: Sleep deprivation can heighten your body’s stress response, making you more sensitive to physical sensations and less able to regulate emotions.
For a little more about this check out this blog on hidden causes of anxiety
Being mindful of these triggers and making small changes—like reducing caffeine intake or prioritizing sleep—can help reduce the frequency and intensity of anxiety symptoms.
Building Resilience with an ACT Approach
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offers a different perspective on anxiety. Instead of trying to eliminate anxiety, ACT encourages you to accept it as a natural part of being human and focus on moving forward through the discomfort.
1. Accept the Sensations
- Acknowledge that anxiety symptoms are temporary and not harmful.
- Practice saying, “I notice I’m feeling anxious right now,” rather than fighting the sensations.
2. Defuse from Anxious Thoughts
- Use techniques to create distance from unhelpful thoughts, such as saying them in a silly voice or imagining them as leaves floating down a stream. This helps reduce their power over you.
3. Focus on moving towards not away from
Towards behaviours move you closer to your goals over the long term, and away behaviours do the opposite.
Example: You feel overwhelmed and stressed. The house is a mess, and you know you’d feel better if you cleaned a bit. You also haven’t been outside for a couple of days, and a walk would probably make you feel better. But you feel overwhelmed and sit doomscolling for hours to numb the discomfort. Then you feel worse about yourself because your home is still a mess, and you feel lethargic.
In this case, doomscrolling is an away from the ,activity, and towards activities would be cleaning or going for a short walk.
When you feel stressed and overwhelmed, try to think of one small activity you can do to interrupt the downward spiral. The key is to choose something that will improve your well-being in the longer term rather than just provide short-term relief from anxiety by distracting you.
4. Redefine Success
If you currently define success as “not feeling anxious,” consider changing that definition. Success can mean feeling anxious but not letting it hold you back from living your life. For instance, if you give a presentation at work while feeling nervous, celebrate that as a win. This shift in mindset can reduce the pressure to eliminate anxiety and instead focus on your resilience.
It might seem counterintuitive, but building your ability to tolerate the discomfort of anxiety is one of the most effective ways to recover. Naturally, when you feel anxious, your first instinct is to try to make it disappear—whether by distracting yourself or avoiding the situation altogether. However, learning to sit with anxiety instead of fighting it can transform how you handle it. Anxiety isn’t something you can eliminate—nor should you, as it serves a purpose in keeping you alert to potential danger.
When anxiety becomes overwhelming, it’s easy to fear it and structure your life around avoiding it. This avoidance, however, gives anxiety even more power. By gradually increasing your tolerance for discomfort, you can learn to feel anxious without letting it control you. Then, the anxiety seems to show up less often and is less intense.
To build distress tolerance, try these techniques:
- Breathing Exercises: Slow, deep breaths can help calm hyperventilation.
- Noting: Notice how you feel in your body and your thoughts. For example, “I notice I am feeling anxious, I am thinking about the presentation at work a lot, I feel a little shaky, and my chest feels tight”. Don’t judge or fight the thoughts and feelings; just notice them and label them.
Start with manageable steps and gradually expand your capacity. If you have avoided feeling anxious for years, this will feel hard, but allowing yourself to feel it, even for just a couple of minutes at a time, is a great start.
When to Seek Help
While anxiety symptoms are usually harmless, it’s essential to rule out medical conditions if they’re severe or persistent. Please check with a doctor if you have any physical symptoms you are worried about.
If you’d like some help or support coping with anxiety, I have helped many people struggling with anxiety.
I offer a free introductory call if you’d like to find out more.
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