Why do we feel anxiety physically?
Anxiety impacts us on multiple levels—not only our minds.
Yes, anxiety may come with persistent worry, racing thoughts, or loss of focus, but it goes much deeper than that. There are biological and physiological parts of anxiety too.
Physical symptoms of anxiety
When anxiety is showing up physically, we might experience (source):
difficulty sleeping
headache
stomach pain, uncomfortable gut feelings
digestion issues
sweating, trembling, shaking
muscle tension
changes in our breathing rate
changes in our heart rate
fatigue, bodily weakness
Those experiencing a panic attack might experience these symptoms with more severity, as well as:
trouble breathing
tingling or numb sensations
chest pain
dizziness or faintness
feeling overly hot or getting chills
feeling as if you may die
For some people, it might be immediately obvious that this is anxiety. It might feel familiar. For others, it can be distressing to suddenly notice physical symptoms like this. All physical symptoms that feel like anxiety should be checked with your doctor to rule out other potential medical issues.
Whether you’ve felt these physical symptoms of anxiety before or they’re new to you, they have a biological explanation and a protective function. Understanding this can sometimes help us remember that anxiety is not our fault and our symptoms are not caused by us or our minds. This is because anxiety begins in the body before it is perceived by the mind.
Anxiety is the body’s response to stress
We all have a system inside of us that is designed to help us respond to stress and survive threatening situations. This system is called the autonomic nervous system. Its main function is survival, but it also plays a role in other functions like recovery, breathing, circulation, rest, and digestion.
When something stressful happens inside of us or outside of us, our autonomic nervous system involuntarily activates a stress response to help us stay safe. There are two main ways that it does this, which I’ll illustrate below with a quick anecdote:
Imagine you’re walking down a busy street with a friend you’re very comfortable with. You’re totally focused on them, engaged in the conversation. As you cross the road, your eyes detect a city bus hurtling toward you. Without thinking, you grab your friend’s hand and pull them out of the way, jumping back onto the sidewalk. You look at each other, take a deep breath, shake it off, place your hands on your knees to catch your breath, and you walk over to a park bench to sit down and recover. After a few minutes, you begin to process what just happened by talking it through, saying … “I don’t even remember grabbing your hand, it was just automatic!”
In this story, our characters move from calm and connected, “up” to fight/flight mode, and back “down” to calm and connected again. This is a good thing! The autonomic system kept them safe from the bus and then allowed them to calm down again after the threat was over.
During moments when we go into fight/flight mode, here is what happens in our body to help us stay safe:
hormones adrenaline and cortisol increase your heart rate and breathing rate
your lungs try to get more oxygen so you can move your muscles
blood rushes into your limbs to prepare for movement
our “thinking mind” shuts down so we can focus only on the danger
Do any of these sound familiar? That’s because when you are experiencing physical symptoms of anxiety, these same mechanisms are being activated in your body.
Why do these stress responses turn into anxiety?
The fight/flight response is the result of a large amount of energy be generated within the body in order to mobilize and stay safe. This is useful to us when the threat we face comes and goes like the bus in our example: we recognize the threat, our body mobilizes, we escape or fight it off, and then we relax again when it’s safe to do so. However, if the threat does not go away, keeps reappearing, or we don’t feel safe enough to let go of the protective fight/flight response, this excess energy in the body can generate the feeling of anxiety. Over time, and through particular life experiences, our nervous systems can become fine-tuned to stress and can mobilize the threat response to a degree that is not needed. This experience can become chronic.
Your nervous system is very perceptive, but it does not filter cues of threat through the part of your brain that can think critically, categorize things, or consider pros and cons. This would take too long, and survival often requires immediate action. It uses the senses to perceive danger, scanning both inside and outside of you to pick up on clues that there might be a threat that needs to be responded to.
Your nervous system can perceive a broad range of things as threatening, depending on your own life history, genetics, biological/physiological makeup, and more. What my nervous system detects as threatening might not be the same for you. It doesn’t have the capacity for objectivity.
Your nervous system can respond to things that feel emotionally or psychologically threatening, or threatening to your sense of belonging, love, nurturance, connection, self-esteem, and more. It does not only detect physical or life threats like speeding buses. Additionally, it can respond to internal threats, such as internal feelings that are overwhelming.
How can this information help me respond to my anxiety?
You may start by considering what it means for you that anxiety is your body’s natural response to feeling unsafe. It could be responding to something that feels unsafe now, such as a big emotion or a social situation, it could be responding to something that felt unsafe a long time ago that your system is being reminded of, or it could be “stuck” in fight/flight after an immediate threat has passed. Feeling anxiety means your body is trying to protect you, and sometimes your body is a little overzealous with this or has a hard time letting go of this protective strategy which has a lot of important uses. All of this is a result of the unique genetic, biological, and environmental factors that have shaped your nervous system.
The great news is that the way your nervous system responds is not set in stone. It can be shaped through new experiences. So, often with the help of a therapist, you can determine what strategies and techniques help your body to feel safe during anxious moments so that you can “show” your nervous system that it’s OK to put on the brakes and bring you down from fight/flight mode. For many of us, it’s difficult to achieve this with thinking alone, because your body’s survival mechanisms, as we’ve learned, are designed to be more compelling and powerful than the parts of our brain that we use to think clearly. Activating our nervous system’s natural brakes can be done through body-based techniques such as deep breathing, using your senses (i.e. weighted blanket, listening to music), releasing energy through exercise, connecting with others through laughter or touch, massage, yin yoga, and more. There are so many ways.
Essentially, when your nervous system is stuck in fight/flight mode, you can step in and consciously do some of the work of returning to safety and re-establishing your sense of calm. Everyone’s going to use this information differently to find what works for them. I recommend trying this alongside a therapist to find what works for your unique nervous system.
