The Symptoms of Anxiety: A Guide to Recognition and Treatment

What Are the Symptoms of Anxiety?

Anxiety can present in various symptoms, ranging from obvious physical symptoms such as racing heartbeat, palpitations, and chest tightness, to feelings like excessive fear, worry, or apprehension.

The symptoms of anxiety fall into three main categories: physical symptoms that affect your body's systems, cognitive and emotional symptoms that impact your thoughts and feelings, and behavioral symptoms that influence how you interact with your environment. Recognizing these symptoms early and getting professional anxiety treatment can help prevent anxiety from negatively impacting your quality of life.

In this article, we’ll explore the symptoms of anxiety, and explain how modern treatment technology like qEEG brain mapping, neurofeedback therapy, biofeedback, and neurostimulation can help you overcome anxiety-produced symptoms or disorders.

The Drake Institute understands the complexity of treating anxiety disorders, and how every patient has their own unique history or circumstances. For over 40 years, we have provided non-invasive, drug-free treatment designed to address the needs of patients suffering from anxiety disorders and stress-related medical illnesses.

Physical Symptoms of Anxiety

Anxiety produces psychophysiological changes as the mind and nervous system respond to perceived threats, even when no real danger exists. Here are some common physical symptoms and issues associated with anxiety.

Cardiovascular Symptoms

• Heart palpitations are common and unsettling, often creating the sensation that your heart is racing, pounding, or beating irregularly. It can amplify the feelings of anxiety.
• Rapid heartbeat (tachycardia) occurs when anxiety stimulates your heart rate to rise, sometimes climbing over 100 beats per minute at rest.
• Chest pain or tightness can feel like pressure, squeezing, or sharp discomfort and is sometimes mistaken for heart problems.
• High blood pressure often develops as a result of ongoing anxiety, as the cardiovascular system shifts into a constant state of hypervigilance. While Mayo Clinic says that anxiety doesn’t necessarily cause long-term high blood pressure, it does cause temporary spikes. When these spikes are frequent, or daily, it can cause damage to the blood vessels, heart, and kidneys.

Respiratory Symptoms

• Shortness of breath can make you feel like you can't get enough air to breathe properly, even during rest.
• Hyperventilation is experienced as rapid, shallow breathing that sometimes leads to lightheadedness and tingling sensations.
• Feeling of suffocation creates a terrifying sensation that breathing passages are blocked or constricted.
• Shallow breathing becomes a habitual pattern that involves breathing only from the chest instead of the diaphragm, which reduces oxygen utilization and increases physical tension.

Neurological Symptoms

• Dizziness and lightheadedness occur when anxiety affects blood flow and breathing patterns.
• Headaches and migraines can be a result of increased muscle tension and stress, and can range from mild pressure to debilitating pain, and sometimes nausea and vomiting.
• Trembling or shaking can affect your hands, legs, or entire body when the nervous system becomes overstimulated.
• Muscle tension and stiffness in the neck, shoulders, and jaw, create pain and discomfort that can persist even when anxiety levels drop.

Gastrointestinal Symptoms

• Nausea and stomach upset are common, as your digestive system is directly affected through the gut-brain connection.
• Digestive issues and IBS can develop or worsen as persistent anxiety disrupts your normal digestive processes and gut motility, causing unpredictable and uncomfortable GI symptoms. Either constipation or diarrhea may result.
• Loss of appetite may occur when hunger signals are suppressed by anxiety.

Sleep and Energy-Related Symptoms

• Insomnia and restless sleep prevent restorative sleep as racing thoughts, worry, and physical tension cause frequent awakenings or make it difficult to fall asleep as well as reach deeper levels of restorative sleep. This can be cyclical as anxiety causes sleeplessness, and sleeplessness can cause or worsen anxiety.
• Chronic fatigue may develop if your body’s energy reserves are constantly depleted from staying in a state of high alert (hypervigilance).
• Early morning awakening occurs when anxiety triggers you to wake up hours before the alarm, often in a state of apprehension or worry, and unable to return to sleep.

Mental and Emotional Symptoms of Anxiety

The way anxiety impacts your thinking patterns, emotions, and behavior can be just as debilitating as physical symptoms. Here are some of the most common mental and emotional symptoms of anxiety:

Cognitive Symptoms

• Racing thoughts create a mental whirlwind where your brain jumps from one thought, fear, or worry to another with no clear process or resolution of specific concerns. It’s almost as if your problem-solving ability is frozen.
• Difficulty concentrating makes it challenging to sustain focus, follow conversations, or complete tasks efficiently.
• Memory problems can affect both short- and long-term recall, leaving you feeling forgetful and frustrated.
• Mental fog and confusion cause a cloudy mental state where it feels difficult to focus and your problem-solving ability is compromised.

Emotional Symptoms

• Excessive worry and fear dominate your emotions, making your concerns and experiences disproportionate to the actual threats or situations, according to the American Psychiatric Association.
• Irritability and mood swings can lead to over reactivity, making you more sensitive to stress and prone to becoming easily frustrated by minor inconveniences, often leading to outbursts or erratic emotional shifts.
• Sense of impending doom may cause you to irrationally feel like something terrible is about to happen even when there is no real threat.
• Feeling overwhelmed occurs when everyday responsibilities feel beyond your capacity to manage.

Behavioral Symptoms

• Avoidant behavior and social withdrawal involve actively staying away from people, situations, places, or activities and often lead to limiting daily interactions and isolation.
• Restlessness and agitation may feel like you can’t sit still or may cause constant fidgeting. You may even be misdiagnosed with ADHD hyperactivity.
• Procrastination creates a cycle of delaying anxiety-inducing tasks and responsibilities, but often increases stress and worry as they accumulate.

Anxiety Symptoms by Disorder Type

Different types of anxiety disorders often have their own symptom patterns, but overlap is common. Here are some types of anxiety disorders, and the symptoms that are most commonly associated with each.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder Symptoms may include persistent worry, physical symptoms such as headaches, palpitations, muscle tensions, etc., along with restlessness, fatigue, and the inability to control anxious thoughts.

Panic Disorder & Panic Attack Symptoms may include sudden, intense episodes of fear, overwhelming threat, heart palpitations, chest pain, sweating, shaking, and fear of dying or losing control.

Social Anxiety Disorder Symptoms generally includes the intense fear of social judgement, rejection, along with blushing, sweating, and discomfort before or during social situations, and avoidance.

Specific Phobia Symptoms can include immediate or intense fear of specific objects or situations, sometimes the triggering of rapid heartbeat, extreme avoidance, and excessive fear.

Understanding Anxiety Symptoms vs. Normal Stress

Normal stress is a temporary response to certain life experiences or challenges. These typically subside once the situation is over or resolved. Normal stress can actually be beneficial in some ways, motivating us to meet deadlines or perform well under pressure. Anxiety disorder, however, is a persistent, excessive state of worry that continues even when there's no immediate threat, or after stressful situations have passed. You can be in a chronic state of hypervigilance or apprehension, “waiting for the next shoe to drop” or “feeling like you’re on thin ice”.

Normal stress becomes an anxiety disorder when worry becomes uncontrollable, disproportionate to actual situations, and interferes with daily functioning. As described by the American Psychological Association, an anxiety disorder may have developed when symptoms persist most days, for more than six months.

The severity of anxiety is different from one person to another, and can change from one day to the next. History of previous trauma can have a cumulative effect on predisposition to anxiety. Some people may experience only mild anxiety with occasional worry and minor physical symptoms that don't significantly impact daily life, while others may have moderate to severe anxiety with more persistent symptoms that interfere with work, relationships, or daily activities, and begin to significantly limit quality of life and may even result in health problems. Previous trauma can produce a chronic state of anxiety long after the trauma has passed and one’s life experience is non-threatened or safe. Clinical treatment can enable patients to shift out of the anxiety pattern and free themselves from the hypervigilance and fear.

When Anxiety Symptoms Become Severe

Severe anxiety can impact every aspect of life, creating complications that extend far beyond the initial symptoms. At this point, anxiety can become a self-perpetuating cycle that becomes difficult to break out of, where the fear of experiencing ongoing or additional symptoms promotes, sustains and perpetuates  the anxiety.

Complications from chronic anxiety can include:

• the development of secondary mental health conditions such as depression.
• increased risk of substance abuse.
• physical health problems like cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal disorders, and compromised immune function.
• chronic pain and accelerated aging from being in a constant state of hypervigilance.

When anxiety becomes severe, some people may even find themselves unable to maintain employment, pursue educational goals, or engage in activities that they once enjoyed. Severe anxiety can dominate and significantly disrupt one’s personal, social and family life. This functional impairment can sometimes lead to financial difficulties and social isolation, making professional treatment essential for recovery.

Hidden Signs of Anxiety

Some anxiety symptoms are subtle, leading to delayed recognition and treatment. Some people may even experience subconscious anxiety. Additional signs of anxiety to look for include:

Perfectionism and Control Issues: The excessive need to control outcomes and environments, setting unrealistically high standards, and experiencing abnormal distress when things don't go as planned can appear as high achievement but, according to Psychology Today, it may actually be caused by underlying anxiety.

Physical Pain Without Cause: Unexplained chronic headaches, muscle pain, jaw pain, and illnesses that don't respond to typical medical treatments may be physical manifestations of subconscious anxiety.

Sudden Personality Changes: Becoming withdrawn, irritable, indecisive, or experiencing changes in social behavior or sleep patterns could stem from increasing anxiety levels.

Anxiety Symptoms in Different Age Groups

Anxiety Symptoms in Children and Teens: Anxiety in younger groups is often identified through behavioral changes rather than verbal complaints. Common symptoms include issues with attending or performing well in school, separation anxiety, physical complaints like stomachaches, changes in sleep patterns, and clinginess. Some teens may experience social anxiety more intensely due to puberty and peer pressure.

Adult Anxiety Symptom Patterns: Adults often experience the full range of physical, cognitive, and emotional symptoms, with work, relationship, and financial stress being common triggers. Symptoms often interfere with job performance, parenting abilities, and social connections.

Anxiety Symptoms in Older Adults: Aging adults may experience anxiety related to health concerns, loss of independence, or grief. Their symptoms can sometimes be complicated by medical conditions and medications, making it difficult to diagnose. Social isolation and cognitive changes can increase the severity of anxiety symptoms in this population.

The Neuroscience Behind Anxiety Symptoms

Anxiety symptoms typically result from dysregulation in specific brain networks. When these neural circuits become overactive or dysregulated, they cause the physical and psychological symptoms associated with anxiety disorders.

Brainwave patterns play a crucial role in anxiety symptoms. People with anxiety typically have excessive beta brainwaves associated with racing thoughts, mental restlessness, and hypervigilance, and fewer alpha waves linked to relaxation.

Advanced treatments like qEEG brain mapping can identify these specific brainwave dysregulation networks, while brain map-guided neurofeedback treatment trains the brain to develop healthier, more functional patterns. Neurostimulation techniques can also help regulate overactive brain regions, providing targeted relief from anxiety symptoms. These neurologically-based treatments address the root cause of anxiety rather than just managing symptoms, offering hope for lasting improvement and recovery.

Drake Institute’s Non-Drug Treatment For Anxiety

Conventional treatment for anxiety disorders usually includes psychotherapy and medication. However, for over 40 years, the Drake Institute has successfully treated anxiety and stress disorders using advanced, non-drug technologies including biofeedback, qEEG brain mapping, brain map-guided neurofeedback, and neurostimulation.

Here’s how our treatment works:

First, we use Biofeedback instrumentation to measure physiologic indicators of anxiety, including muscle tension, hand temperature, skin conductance response, brainwave activity, and heart rate variability.

Next, we develop a personalized treatment program designed to help the patient reduce tension levels to normal. Our treatment provides real-time visual and/or auditory feedback to teach you how to reduce abnormal tension levels to a healthier physiologic balance.

While traditional relaxation techniques like meditation may help you feel calmer, they cannot confirm whether or not you’re reaching the stable and deep levels of psychophysical relaxation that optimize healing. Our clinical biofeedback treatment can help patients confirm that they are consistently reaching deeper levels of relaxation needed to break up stress patterns that can lead to symptoms and illness. By developing self-regulation ability and skills, our patients become empowered in achieving lasting improvement in how one’s body and mind responds to stress.

Unlike medication, which only works while you're taking it, our treatment helps you develop lifelong skills you can use to reduce anxiety via self-regulation techniques. In short, we will teach you to shift out of “fight or flight” mode naturally so that you can maintain better emotional balance and prevent anxiety from taking you over again and disrupting your autonomic nervous system.

After Biofeedback, We Then Use Brain Map-Guided Neurofeedback

Once we’ve analyzed your brainwave patterns through qEEG brain mapping, we can then enable you to train the brain towards healthier, optimal balance and functioning via brain map-guided neurofeedback treatment.

Neurofeedback is a non-invasive, drug-free treatment that uses real-time feedback to help your brain learn  healthier, more optimal brain functioning through self-regulation. During a session, sensors monitor your brainwaves and display them on a computer screen with auditory and visual feedback so you can learn to produce healthier brainwave patterns.

Over time, neurofeedback can help:

• Calm an overactive stress response.
• Improve sleep and restore mental clarity.
• Enhance focus, mood regulation, and emotional flexibility.
• Promote long-term improvement by stabilizing optimal brain functioning.

Contact The Drake Institute Today!

Our comprehensive non-drug treatment helps address the psychophysiological reactions that produce anxiety, allowing you to reduce or resolve symptoms without medication.

If you or a loved one are experiencing anxiety, please call us at 1-800-700-4233 or fill out our free consultation form to get started.