This article talks about how to tell if you have anxiety with 45 signs and symptoms it brings and how they feel like.
Signs and Symptoms of Anxiety
Below are 45 signs and symptoms that show you how to tell if you have anxiety. You may experience one or more of the following sensations:
1. Shortness of breath
This is probably the commonest symptom of anxiety everyone first feels. Here, you feel like your lungs are not getting enough air, you are taking short quick breaths, you are gasping for air and you need to yawn to catch a full breath.
2. Heart palpitations
Alone with quick breathing comes heart palpitations which may be one of the first signs of anxiety for most people.
You feel your heart fluttering, skipping beats, pounding loudly in your chest, beating in your throat or thumping in your head.
3. Trembling
Another one of the usual signs of anxiety is trembling. Your hands may start shaking uncontrollably even though you don’t want them to.
You may spill the drink you’re holding or not be able to write properly.
Your whole body may start shaking.
4. Body Twitching
This may be controllable or uncontrollable.
If its uncontrollable, you find that you can’t stop the twitching. Your lips may twitch when talking or just in the presence of people (mine does!) or your eyelid starts twitching.
For controllable twitching, you feel restless and the need to move body parts to quell the anxiety like shaking your leg (restless leg syndrome) or moving your fingers/arms.
5. Stomach issues
You know right before a presentation or an exam how you feel like your stomach starts acting up and you have a stomach upset? That’s one of the symptoms of anxiety.
Other stomach issues that crop up when you have anxiety are gas, bloating, stomach pain and tension or a ‘knot’ in the stomach.
6. Nausea
Another symptom of anxiety that commonly affects people, including me is getting nauseated and feeling like throwing up. Sometimes, you even end up throwing up.
7. Dissociation
One of the most felt but less understood symptoms of anxiety is dissociation. Suddenly, you feel yourself dissociating when confronted with a bad situation that gives you anxiety.
You don’t feel like you’re existing or in the present anymore, your surroundings don’t feel real and you check out from the real world.
If you’re like me, you feel dissociated multiple times a day.
8. Derealization
Many of us with anxiety experience this. It goes hand in hand with dissociation.
When anxiety kicks in, suddenly you feel the world becoming unfamiliar, as if your world or what is happening to you is not real, you’re fading away, you feel like a ghost, nothing is tangible and you are in a dream.
9. Depersonalization
This is connected to dissociation and derealization.
In depersonalization, you don’t feel yourself. You suddenly get disconnected from yourself. You feel like you’re an alien to your surroundings or what is happening to you at the moment. You may also feel like a ghost floating around, just observing the world and not living in it.
10. Tingling
This is also a familiar symptom of anxiety for many people. It usually comes as a sign before you experience dissociation, derealization and depersonalization.
Your fingers, hands or feet suddenly start tingling or burning. You may also feel a pins and needles sensation or bugs crawling on your skin.
11. Ringing ears and other ear symptoms
Suddenly you feel your ears ringing. You may not hear what people are saying around you or what someone is saying to you. The ear alarm may be loud and sharp or dull and fading.
Your ears may also feel stuffy, they may pop, feel a sharp pain or itching.
This may also be something you experience before you dissociate or experience derealization or depersonalization.
12. Dizziness
Together with ear ringing, shortness of breath and heart palpitations, you may have dizziness. Maybe the lack of air may cause you to feel lightheaded and feel like you’re going to faint. You feel like you’re swaying, the floor feels like it’s moving and the world spinning.
13. Lightheadedness
Feeling lightheaded is not exactly the same as dizziness, where you may real faint. Lightheadedness makes you feel unstable, you may feel like you are about to fall down. You can’t stand or walk properly and feel the need to sit or lie down.
14. Vision problems
Anxiety symptoms include vision problems like seeing dark spots, eye floaters, blurry vision, not being able to focus on objects or people very well or even not seeing distant objects clearly.
15. Becoming frozen
Anxiety and nervousness can make you completely freeze. Your body can’t seem to move. You stop doing whatever activity you are doing.
16. Restlessness
While some people freeze, other people find themselves restless when anxious. You may start rushing in whatever you are doing, start cleaning, arranging, pacing around the room, and doing tasks quickly. You may end up spilling things or cutting yourself if you are in the kitchen. Or dropping something when doing things quickly.
17. Skin reactions
One of the noticeable symptoms of anxiety is skin issues coming up suddenly like hives, rashes, itching, burning or tingling skin. You may feel the need to scratch at your skin.
People with skin conditions like eczema, psoriasis, and more may also have flareups.
18. Sudden tension headache
Someone can say something or you find out a piece of news and anxiety immediately kicks you in the butt – you get a sudden headache that feels like your head may explode.
It is a throbbing pain where you feel your heart painfully beating within your head. It may also feel like a sharp or shooting pain with intense pressure.
19. Chest pain
You feel like you’re having a heart attack. You may feel a sensation of having your heart gripped with an iron fist or a sharp shooting burning and intense pain in your chest.
20. A lump in your throat
This is another fairly common symptom of anxiety. It is also known as globus sensation. You feel like there’s a thick lump in your throat and you can’t swallow or feel like swallowing multiple times but the lump doesn’t go away.
You feel like you are chocking yet there is nothing in your throat. It may be accompanied by shortness of breath.
21. Grinding your teeth
When anxiety heightens, you may start grinding your teeth, keep biting your teeth or clenching them. It can cause jaw pain, migraines and even neck pain.
22. Muscle pain
You may feel certain muscles such as shoulder muscles and neck muscles tensed and sore.
Your leg muscles may also tighten and make you feel frozen in the spot.
23. Twitching muscles
You suddenly feel an involuntary twitching, jumping or vibrating sensation in the muscles on any part of your body.
24. Panic
You feel an impending sense of doom, overwhelming fear and immeasurable distress. You may feel like everything is coming crashing down, you’re going to die or a feeling that ‘it’s all over.’
25. Sensory disturbances
All your senses become disturbed. Lights seem brighter than usual and you feel extreme sensitivity to loud noises and smells. You may not want anything or anyone to touch your skin. Your taste may also be affected – you may have a strange taste in your mouth.
26. Loss of appetite
Anxiety can make you lose your appetite. You suddenly don’t feel like eating anymore, even if you are hungry.
If you do eat, you feel the food is tasteless like chewing on cardboard.
27. Insomnia
At night time, anxiety attacks are very common.
Late at night when it’s quite and peaceful, you may have disturbing memories or thoughts that keep you from falling asleep. You may also sleep but wake up frequently. Your sleep may also be affected by nightmares.
28. Hypnic jerk
This is experienced during the times when you’re asleep or have just gone to sleep and suddenly you feel like you are falling as you are entering sleep mode.
You then immediately wake up with a pounding heart and also, a sharp headache.
29. Intrusive thoughts
These usually strike especially hard at night when you can’t sleep but they appear at any time of the day.
You can be normal and okay but suddenly remember something cringe or traumatic and you get anxious. These thoughts and memories can’t harm you but make you feel as if you are going through them or it’s going to happen.
30. Facial issues
Your face feels droopy or numb which may make you feel like you’re going to have a stroke. It may also feel itchy or twitchy. Your eyelids or lips may start twitching, your jaw might feel tight and painful and you may feel facial pain or tooth pain.
31. Brain fog
When anxiety hits, you can suddenly feel like you can’t remember stuff, you feel woozy and your thoughts are unclear and cloudy.
Brain fog also makes you feel like your head is heavy yet at the same time empty.
32. Fatigue
You feel like you’ve been hit by a truck and all the energy has left your body. You may feel the need to sit or lie down when anxiety crops up.
You feel sluggish, struggle to focus, are not motivated and your body is exhausted.
33. Slurring words
You may start slurring or saying things that don’t make sense. Words can come out of your mouth jumbled in the wrong order.
34. Dry mouth
Your mouth suddenly goes dry like there’s no saliva. Your throat also feels dry when you swallow.
35. Brain zaps
Sharp shooting sensations in your head that feel like mini electric shocks or ‘zaps.’
36. A drop in your stomach
A sudden rush of blood downwards to your stomach as if a stone has fallen there.
37. Blood rushing to your head
When you feel anxiety, blood can immediately rush to your brain making you feel suddenly lightheaded or off-balance. It can cause a tension headache or leave your head pinning.
This is also known as a brain surge.
38. Hot or cold flashes
You may immediately feel a sensation of a drop or rise in body temperature.
Your hands may suddenly get cold and clammy.
Or, you may feel blood rushing to your face, ears and head making you feel very warm.
You may also start sweating uncontrollably.
39. Jelly hands, arms or legs
Your hands, arms or legs suddenly feel like jelly and you can’t move or sit. They feel like they’ve lost sensation. It may happen right after another symptom which is tingling.
40. Bladder issues
This is one symptom of anxiety that makes me feel so embarrassed and frustrated.
When you feel stressed and anxious, suddenly you feel the need to urinate frequently. You may not even feel like peeing but it just comes out in drops and you can’t control it.
41. Irritability
One of the symptoms of anxiety is irritability. You feel snappy and easily irritated by things or people around you.
42. Angor Animi
It is known as the ‘sense of dying.’ Angor animi is a medical term that is defined as a symptom where a patient perceives that they are actually dying.
43. Rumination
You may keep replaying a certain problem or scenario over and over again.
44. Talking to yourself aloud or in whispers
Anxiety can make you talk to yourself in whispers or aloud. You may find yourself repeating what happened aloud or whispering certain phrases or recounting incidences that happened.
45. Ominous feeling
You feel something bad is going to happen but you are not sure what it is. The feeling hangs over you throughout the time you are anxious.
I hope you learned how to tell if you have anxiety with the above symptoms and descriptions of how they feel. Are there any other symptoms of anxiety you feel? How would you describe them? Please share in the comments below.
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