anyone suffering physical anxiety symptoms

[Joey7]

I've been having more and more physical anxiety symptoms and they are really starting to scare me I suffer from health anxiety so these symptoms are making me terrified and taking over my every day life. Has anyone else suffered from physical anxiety symptoms and if so what type of symptoms have you had and how did you deal with them. I just don't see how these weird symptoms and sensations are from severe anxiety I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle sometimes. 

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[Anon357]

Depends on how long my anxiety goes on for.

If I have worried myself sick and I have tests done and they turn out negative, I see the symptoms slowly disappear over a few weeks, sometimes quicker.

it depends how much I have psyched myself up over my health worries. I find, once I move from one concern, over to another those symptoms can disappear. 

I know it seems impossible to think anxiety can do this to your body, but if you think of flight/fright response, how your heart races, you breath faster, you feel numb, weak and sick all at once. Well now think of it as your body is in a mild state of flight/fright mode all the time. You aren't allowing yourself to recover and calm down. When anxiety is at it's peak, we do breathe shallower and we don't even notice it. So if you think then, well we are not breathing correctly, oxygen is not adequately been moved around the body, so it's no wonder we have all these symptoms. I find when I'm going through an episode that my extremities get numb more than they would if I wasn't anxious. For example if I cross my legs, they will go numb and tingly, where's if I wasn't anxious this does not happen.

also another thing is my symptoms will hang around for as long as I focus on them. Remember there is a lead up to anxiety and symptoms slowly creep up, they will take just as long to go away.

hope this helps

[Anon357]

The reason you wake up anxious is because your mind is not switching off. 

I think of it as when I was studying, I would be up late every night reading and doing little tests. I would eventually become fatigued and go to bed. I often though, how on earth  am I going to remember all this? During my sleep, I would wake up as you do sometimes and look at the time, and my mind would be rehearsing everything I just learnt. Storing all the facts and info I guess. I would wake up the next day, being able to remember everything I learnt from the night before and also understanding it better. So I guess you have heard of people cramming the night before an exam.

so my point is, you are going to bed with all these concerns and worries, and while you think you are sleeping, your mind is still doing all the worrying, so you are not relaxed like you normally would be when your not anxious. As much as you tell yourself you are going to wake up better (that's your subconscious trying to override your conscious thoughts) your conscious is going to win. Until you find a way to overcome your thoughts and worries,whether that is through medication, behavioural therapy, meditation, exercise you will wake up day in and day out feeling tense/uneasy/upset. Your mind once in this state is very hard to switch off.

I have had anxiety for as long as I can remember (I'm 31 now) and I find the more attacks I have the more physical the symptoms and the more I can convince myself and freak my self out of having a disease. I know anti depressants don't help so CBT, yoga, exercise are the best medicine for me and remembering to stick at it, regardless if I start to feel better

[Scotty2013]

Pains chest/arm thinking hear attack for 20sec, then i realize its Anxiety. Nausea, dizziness, restlessness. Problem is i will take something, then i have the negative effects of that feeling, Seems I cant win!. Sometimes i just look out the window at the World and think what a mess!!!.

[BeeCee]

I hear you! I'm very much the same. My anxiety symptoms are mostly chest related. I get flutters, little tiny zings, so minute I even wonder if I've experienced anything at all, but the problem is that my body is so hypersensitive to the tiniest sensation that when I do feel something, I go into a state of hyper-alert (the only way I can describe it) and I wait.... And the what if games begin... And just when I convince myself that it's anxiety, I'll experience a completely different sensation, which throws me off kilter ALL over again. 

[Scotty2013]

BeeCee Hyper-Alert is a good word for it :), I could be sitting here and hear a loud bang and jump through the roof, almost like every nerve ending is waving around. :/

[ThousandMiles]

For me, the physical symptoms are definitely the worst - I feel your pain, and I think a lot of others do too *hugs*

I get quite a few physical symptoms, like hyperventilating, feeling sick, feeling dizzy, heart beating really fast, head rushing, sweating, blushing... but the worst for me is that I suddenly - for basically no reason - will need to use the bathroom (for either one, or both, of the two things). And if I don't get to it induces or worsens a panic attack.

I'm not coping excellently with it, but having some tablets on hand at all times for preventing diarrhea reassures me a little - it's not good to take them too often, because that's an avoidance behaviour, but having them helps me. As for the other thing, I try not to drink too much before a class, car/train/bus journey or anything like that, and take regular bathroom breaks.

For everything else I find that deep breathing, having some tea (or cold water if I can't have tea), going for a walk outside and just normal painkillers seem to help. Talking to someone about how I'm feeling also sometimes makes me feel a little better.

Stay strong, and remember that while the physical symptoms are really happening to you and are scary/a pain, you can prevent them in future, and deal with them when they happen. You've got this x

[BenD]

Glad to know others experience these too. I blush (I'm half English show my face goes pretty red), get sweaty hands, get uncontrollable body tremors, breathe fast and shallow, and become ultra-sensitive. As many people have told me - awesome if you're fighting a sabre-toothed tiger, not so awesome for going about day to day life.

Ironically the time I'm most relaxed is after some really tough exercise.

[strangebrew]

Been getting a lot of the sabre-toothed tiger (or Jungle Lion) references recently from MHC professionals when talking about the panic/anxiety attacks.

Shouldnt evolution have smoothed that out by now? or maybe are we stuck with it for the next 20,000/30,000 years.

[Rain_Girl]

Hey Joey

I went through a series of really high stress situation during 2011 when I was in year 11 that resulted in my first encounter with physical symptoms of anxiety. One day I came home from a camping trip and started cooking myself some food, ate it and almost immediately afterwards i was throwing up. 

This continued to happen to me for 8 weeks, things that stressed me would make me begin to gag and through up. I couldn't eat so my doctor gave me anti nausea medication and told me to try yogurts, up and go and things that would give my protein in liquid forms.
 I went from 60kgs to 45 in those 8 weeks. I was scared that i might die, but my mother kept reassuring me that i would overcome it, It's a slow process and as I have a very fast metabolism it's difficult for me to put on weight, but i'm happy to say that my appetite is very strong now.I'm not sure what your symptoms are but when i was in this really bad state it was a catch 22, I would eat and through up, and then i wouldn't eat incase i would throw up. I in no way had body image insecurities, my anxiety just manifested in a physical form. Cheers x

[Girl_Anachronism]

Hi All,

I have generally been on the depressivd scale of the spdctrum, with very few anxiety attacks which generally resolved themselves very quickly. Since leaving my husband however, my anxiety has been through the roof and I am finally understanding that at least to me it is worse than depression. Maybe I just know how to deal with depression, and am yet to get far with that for anxiety. 

I have had fast breathing and heart rate, dizziness and worst of all, shakes. I normally have a left hand tremor, but it goes from there to my other hand and my legs, some extent to my chest and worst is the facial twitches. I am a verbose person who speaks clearly and well, but when I am anxious, which is most of the time lately, I develop a stutter and repeat words. 

These physical symptoms, on top of my psychogenic non epileptic seizures, terrify me in ways that depression does not. Any advice would be helpful as to how to deal with it. 

GA