You’ve been to the GP maybe more than once, had tests, been checked over, been told everything looks fine, and yet something in your body doesn’t feel fine.
The chest tightness, the nausea, the headaches, the fatigue, the dizziness, the feeling that your heart is doing something it shouldn’t, all of it is real.
Anxiety is not just in your head, it lives in your body just as much as it lives in your thoughts, and for a lot of people, the body is actually where they notice it first.
The symptoms are real. They just don’t mean what your fear says they mean.
When your brain senses a threat, it releases adrenaline and cortisol to get you ready to fight or run. It can’t tell a tiger from a deadline, a difficult conversation or a text left on read. Same alarm, same body response.
Heart palpitations and racing heart. Adrenaline increases heart rate to pump more blood to your muscles in preparation for action. When there is no action (because the threat is psychological, not physical) the elevated heart rate has nowhere to go. It sits in your chest and frightens you.
Chest tightness. The muscles around the chest and ribcage tense during threat response. Combined with changes in breathing, this produces a sensation of tightness or pressure that can feel alarmingly similar to cardiac symptoms. This is one of the most common reasons people with anxiety end up in A&E.
Shortness of breath. Anxiety changes breathing patterns, typically making them faster and shallower, which can lead to hyperventilation. This reduces carbon dioxide in the blood, producing dizziness, tingling in the hands and feet, and a paradoxical sensation of not being able to get enough air.
Nausea and digestive issues. The gut and the brain are directly connected via the vagus nerve, what researchers now call the gut-brain axis. During threat activation, blood is diverted away from the digestive system towards the muscles. This produces nausea, stomach cramping, and in chronic anxiety, contributes to conditions like irritable bowel syndrome.
Dizziness and light-headedness. A combination of hyperventilation, changes in blood pressure, and muscle tension in the neck and shoulders can all contribute to dizziness. It feels alarming, but it is not dangerous.
Fatigue. Chronic anxiety keeps the nervous system in a sustained state of activation which is physiologically expensive. Carrying that level of alertness day after day is exhausting in a way that sleep alone doesn’t fix, because the nervous system isn’t fully switching off even at rest.
Headaches and muscle tension. The body braces under threat, shoulders rise, jaw clenches, neck tightens. Held over time, this tension produces headaches, jaw pain, and a general feeling of physical heaviness.
Skin responses. Flushing, sweating, and in some cases skin sensitivity or flare-ups of conditions like eczema or psoriasis, all have documented links to stress and anxiety activation.
You notice a symptom, it scares you, the fear makes more symptoms. The symptoms “prove” something’s wrong. Then come the things that keep it going:
Each one keeps your attention glued to your body, and the alarm stays on. The response is normal, your brain is trying to protect you, so you basically have to show your brain through experience that it’s safe.
Get checked properly, once. New or changing symptoms always deserve a GP. After that, re-checking is reassurance in a lab coat.
Notice without investigating. “There is a feeling of x around my heart” instead of “Why is my heart doing that?”
Do the things you’ve cut back. Let your body show you it can cope.
Your body doesn’t need to feel calm before you’re allowed to live in it.
Understanding the symptoms is a start, but knowing something doesn’t switch off a body that has learned to stay on edge. That changes through experience.
Interoceptive exposures (deliberately bringing on the sensations in small doses until your brain stops treating them as an emergency) works well for anxiety, combined with other types of exposures and ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) for learning how to build psychological flexibility (the ability to move towards what matters to you even when difficult feelings are there, without getting overwhelmed by them). For other difficulties you experience alongside anxiety, an integrative approach might be useful.
If you’re still stuck, get in touch and let’s work together to help you get your life back.
Anxiety Therapist working with fear, and the life built around it
A 3-step free guide to understanding and interrupting repetitive patterns in your relationships, behaviour and emotional responses.
