What are the symptoms of Anxiety?
The symptoms of anxiety disorders fall into two categories, physical and emotional.
Physical Anxiety Symptoms
The physical symptoms of anxiety are varied to say the least and vary dramatically between sufferers. Our genetic makeup is a strong factor in determining if and how we develop and anxiety disorder.
The anxiety symptoms that you experience could be drastically different to those experienced by other anxiety sufferers and can also vary massively in intensity and regularity.
Physical anxiety symptoms include:
- Panic attacks
- Shaking, sweating
- Pins and needles
- Hyperventilation
- Stomach troubles
- Dizziness
- Racing heart
- Dry mouth
- Lump in the throat
- Difficulty breathing
- Muscle cramps
- Headaches
- Neck pain/migraines
- Numbness in face, head back etc.
Whilst anxiety symptoms can feel very threatening indeed, they are not the sign of an underlying physical illness and are, in themselves, completely harmless. They are simply an inappropriate response, fuelled by the anxiety response and perpetuated by your fear.
By undermining the core anxiety which fuels these symptoms, the symptoms, along with the core anxiety, will fade away completely, never to return.
Emotional Anxiety Symptoms
The emotional symptoms of anxiety can be as frightening as the physical ones. Anxiety produces these symptoms as a by-product of your raised anxiety level.
Emotional anxiety symptoms include:
- Dreaminess
- Tiredness
- Nightmares or bad dreams
- Depersonalization (feeling removed from oneself)
- Derealization (feeling as if in a nightmare or dream)
- Depressive thoughts
- Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, obsessive thoughts or compulsions
- Thoughts of a sexual or violent nature. Inappropriate thoughts about people you love, sometimes of a violent or sexual nature.
- Increased violence/aggression
- Mood swings
- Inability to love, inability to care for others
- Agoraphobia, social phobia, shyness
- Feeling like you can't cope
- Disinterest in life
The list goes on and on.
Anxiety symptoms vary from person to person, however, all sufferers have one thing in common, that is that given the correct treatment, all of these anxiety symptoms can be reversed and eliminated permanently.
Many clients experience thoughts which they say: "they would never have thought that before they had anxiety". These anxiety thoughts can be violent or sexual, they can cause Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) which manifests itself as constantly checking (that the gas is off, that their hands are clean etc.) This often manifests itself as the performance of rituals.
Anxiety has the force to drive these physical and emotional anxiety states to the extreme, but they can be eliminated.