Most of us are at least a little bit familiar with anxiety, both as a condition and as a feeling.
- We know what it’s like to be nervous at times.
- We can generally recognize when we’re experiencing anxious thoughts.
- We have an idea of many of the symptoms, such as rapid heartbeat, sweating, etc.
When someone calls me to discuss their anxiety, they’re rarely a blank slate. They may not be intimately familiar with anxiety as a diagnosis, or the different ways it manifests, or how it affects behaviors, but rarely, when talking about anxiety, are we starting these discussions from scratch.
But what you may not know – in fact, what is almost never talked about – is the random and often nonsensical symptoms that arise when you’ve been struggling with anxiety and panic attacks for a long time.
Anxiety is long term stress, and long term stress can affect every single part of your body from your head to your toes. Different forms of anxiety, such as panic attacks, can be especially problematic, because these conditions also come with additional issues such as hyperventilation, which itself can cause different symptoms when it occurs frequently over a long period of time.
As a result, those living with anxiety can also have a lot of “physical” issues that are actually still related to anxiety. These symptoms could be reduced, or even go away, if we addressed our anxiety.
I want to introduce you to some of these symptoms now, and explain how they occur (if we can) and why they are a problem.
Who Am I
My name is Audrey Jung. I’m a therapist in Chandler, AZ, near Phoenix, and do in person therapy – though I often work remotely and am licensed in both the state of Arizona and California, so no matter where you are in those two states I can provide you with support.
I also specifically specialize in anxiety. Like many therapists, I do treat patients with other mental health disorders, but these days I work almost exclusively with individuals struggling with anxiety and anxiety related conditions.
The “Weird” Symptoms of Anxiety
As we introduce all the strange symptoms of anxiety, it’s important to remember why these occur. Anxiety may be a mental health condition, but it also put stress on the body. That stress, especially prolonged stress, opens the door for the body to respond differently than it would if the person had no anxiety at all.
Not everyone is going to experience these symptoms. Nor are these symptoms always anxiety. It may still be beneficial to consult with your doctor to determine if there are physical causes, as many of these symptoms can also be other conditions. Nevertheless, the following are some of the strangest symptoms of long term anxiety, and how they occur.
Symptom 1: Eye Pain and Blurry Vision
Anxiety causes rapid heartbeat. It causes sweating. It causes shaking. We don’t often talk about the ways that anxiety can affect the eyes, but it can, especially after a long period of time with intense anxiety.
There are actually several reasons for this, not only one:
- Anxiety strains the muscles around the eyes.
- Anxiety causes frontal lobe headaches, which can feel like eye pain.
- Anxiety causes pupil dilation, which leads to both eye strain, light sensitivity, and blurry vision.
- Anxiety and panic attacks can cause hyperventilation, which narrows blood vessels and reduces blood supply to the eyes.
People have gone to visit eye doctors because their blurry vision got so bad, or they catastrophize that they may have issues like glaucoma despite limited to no risk factors.
Also, although not directly anxiety related, many people scroll their phones more to disassociate from their anxiety, and excessive screen use can also lead to eye pain.
Not surprisingly, these issues are not believed to be permanent. Thus, addressing anxiety should reduce eye pain.
Symptom 2: Trouble Walking
When a person has anxiety – especially panic attacks and panic disorder – they are prone to several issues that can all affect each other. For example:
- Hyperventilation, which makes people feel weak and light headed.
- Hypersensitivity, which makes people more aware of their body and its sensations.
- Stressed thinking, which makes it harder to distract ourselves from our thoughts.
This can cause many different problems, including one that may surprise people – trouble walking.
“How can anxiety cause trouble walking?” is a great question. To understand that, let’s talk about something slightly different, breathing.
We breathe all the time. We breathe all day, every day. We breathe automatically, without thinking about it, and the process is entirely automatic.
UNLESS we think about our breathing. If you think about breathing, then you need to control your breathe. While you’re thinking about it, your body doesn’t breathe on its own, so you have to remember to make yourself breathe or distract yourself so your body’s automatic processes take over.
This exact same thing can happen with walking.
We know how to walk. We walk every day. But if you have to think about walking, then it no longer becomes an automatic process. You have to remember how to move each leg, each muscle. It becomes very difficult. You are then (because of the symptoms listed above):
- Extremely sensitive to this difficulty.
- Lightheaded and weak anyway.
- Having trouble distracting yourself so the automatic movements can take over.
You’re not likely to fall on the floor, but you also don’t have as much control over your body and walking can feel odd or funny, like a challenge. The result is that it feels like you have trouble walking, despite no clear medical reason for those troubles.
Symptom 3: Auditory Hallucinations
Hallucinations are experiences where a person sees, hears, or feels something that isn’t there. Hallucinations are often associated with issues like psychosis, drug abuse, or sleep related issues. They are not typically associated with anxiety.
And while it’s not clear that *actual* hallucinations exist with anxiety (meaning, you are unlikely to see someone that doesn’t exist), there are issues that can feel and present like hallucinations. It is more common with hearing, but can occur with vision as well.
One symptom of chronic anxiety that can get worse over time is “hyperawareness.” It is when you become excessively alert to the world around you. This makes sense from a biological standpoint. Anxiety is the activation of the “fight or flight mode,” a response your body has when you’re in danger to help you fight or flee in the face of danger.
If you felt like you were in a dangerous situation (for example, you’re hiding in a jungle) and you’re worried that there might be a predator out there, it would be really advantageous to be able to hear and see risks instantly. The slightest noise could be a sign of a threat.
When we have an anxiety disorder, we’re experiencing that when no danger is present. So what happens? We start to hear and process every noise the moment we hear it – noises that we might never have heard if we did not have anxiety.
That causes us to “hallucinate” sounds, in a sense, because a slight noise coming through a pipe might sound to us like someone whispering our name. Or a cracked knuckle in the other room may sound like a dangerous popping noise as though something broke. Our brains are trying to process sounds that we were not meant to hear, and that means that you might be hearing things like your name, people talking, noises outside, and more, even when the noises are slight or harmless.
Symptom 4: Throat Clearing/Coughing
Coughing and throat clearing are also possible long term anxiety symptoms, although the reasons for this may be different depending on the individual. Examples include:
- Heartburn/GERD – People with anxiety are both more prone to acid reflux (heartburn) and more prone to worsening symptoms. Both of these may increase the frequency of throat clearing and coughing.
- Habit – Some people with anxiety do a lot of throat clearing as a nervous habit. It’s not entirely clear how throat clearing and coughing becomes a habit for anxiety (perhaps excess mucus, which may occur with anxiety) but throat clearing is often the result.
- Hyperventilation – Frequent and chronic hyperventilation can be rough on the throat and lungs as it narrows airways, dries the throat, and makes it harder to breathe. This, in turn, may lead to throat clearing and coughing.
Throat clearing can also be self-sustaining. Clearing the throat also damages it, which makes a person more sensitive and need to throat clear more often. So it’s not entirely certain that it will immediately go away once the anxiety is managed, but therapy for anxiety may help minimize it.
Symptom 5: Memory Loss
We don’t have to review the science of how the brain creates and stores short and long term memories. But one thing to understand is that, in order to create and store long term memories, a person has to process the information of the day.
NOTE: I want to encourage you to read this blog post about digital overload, as it relates to this topic in some ways.
In essence, if you aren’t able to process the day’s events, then it’s difficult to turn your experiences into short and long term memories.
Anxiety is overwhelming. It is distracting. It consumes your thoughts and your experiences, so it’s harder to be truly present and in the moment enough for experiences to turn into long term memories. That alone is enough to cause memory loss.
But there’s more:
- Cortisol, the stress hormone, prevents the formation of memories when it’s experienced in higher amounts.
- Those with anxiety tend to sleep less and have less restful sleep. Rest is extremely important for creating memories.
- Your mind and body have a limited supply of energy. When you’re anxious often, your body may be using up the resources it needs to creates to memories.
These can all make it much more difficult to create memories.
Lastly, if you’re not training yourself to remember things, then you won’t remember things as easily. In other words, if you’ve experienced anxiety for long enough that you’ve experienced memory loss, your body may not start creating memories again as easily unless you train it to, because your brain often works like a muscle. You have to keep working on it in order to make it function property.
Only the Beginning – The Many Other Weird Symptoms
These are only a few of the many strange and surprising symptoms of long term anxiety – symptoms that most people do not know could be anxiety caused or anxiety related. Other examples include, but are not limited to:
- Yawning
- Tingling in the Fingers/Feet
- Tinnitus
- Eye Twitching
- Changes in Food/Diet Habits
- Body Smells
- Rashes
- Strange Tastes
- Trouble Swallowing
- Discolored Stool
These are all possible symptoms of anxiety that can occur in the long term, and symptoms that many of us do not usually associate with anxiety.
Lastly – The FEELING of Symptoms of Anxiety
Finally, let’s talk about hypersensitivity one more time. Hypersensitivity, which is a symptom of anxiety, is when a person is very, very sensitive to anything they feel in their body. The slightest tinge, the slightest feeling of any kind, and not only do you notice it right away but it feels stronger than it would to someone without anxiety.
Anxiety also makes people more anxious and aware about their health.
So, what happens to many people is that they are noticing every single thing that happens in their body all the time, even if would otherwise be normal, and they’re experiencing it stronger than they would have if they didn’t have anxiety.
A little tingle in the foot might feel like a foot falling asleep. A small pain in the hip might feel like a very painful hip issue. You may even over-adjust, creating an actual hip issue by throwing your body out of alignment.
So, not only can long term anxiety create real symptoms, but it can create the perception of symptoms as well.
Caring for Your Anxiety Through Therapy
These are some possible, weird, strange, and often nonsensical potential symptoms of anxiety. Not everyone will have these symptoms. Not everyone will experience them in the same way.
But the reason I want to point them out is because it’s important to understand that anxiety can impact your life in both the short and long term. I talk to some people that see anxiety as manageable, and they don’t feel like they need help.
But over time, new symptoms may arise. New issues may occur. Anxiety is not a single experience. It changes.
If you have anxiety, let me help. I can treat anyone in Arizona or California, no matter where you are located. I also have an in person office in Chandler for those clients that want to speak to someone directly, and many of my clients come from Phoenix and much of the surrounding region.
If you’re ready to make a difference in your anxiety, please reach out to me today.