Are you finding you wake with a sick feeling, headache or feel generally poorly – but the doctor states nothing is physically wrong is it possible that anxiety could be causing a sick feeling every day? The answer to this is most certainly yes.
How Anxiety Affects Your Body
It’s important to remember that anxiety doesn’t just exist in the mind, but also manifests in the physical body. In response to being anxious your brain signals to the rest of the body to release a stress response, meaning you release hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol.
In situations where we face real danger this helps us to run away or fight the situation. However, when constantly anxious, the body remains constantly on alert.
Why Anxiety Makes You Feel Sick All the Time
Another thing many people will experience when anxious is a disruption in their digestion. The “second brain” (otherwise known as your gut), is sensitive to stress hormones, which interfere with how our gut digests food, causing many symptoms like nausea, bloating, stomach ache. So a person might experience symptoms everyday where there is no medical explanation for it.
Beside these digestive problems the muscle tension and headaches also present as one of the ways anxiety can make a person ill. High levels of anxiety leave you with tensed muscles that result in tension headaches and can cause tension to the neck shoulders and back, chronic muscle tension on top of an inadequate amount of rest can worsen symptoms of nausea and fatigue, and contribute to them continuing, forming a vicious cycle.
Sleep And Anxiety
You may feel physically sick because you can’t sleep due to anxiety. When anxiety causes sleep disturbance, the body isn’t able to rest properly, therefore making the feelings of nausea, ‘brain-fog’ and exhaustion worse. You also become hypersensitive to your own body, therefore things like the sound of your stomach growling, slight dizziness or rapid heartbeat that you would normally ignore may be amplified, increasing the sense of being physically unwell.
As draining as this may be to feel physically sick every day due to anxiety, there are methods you can use to overcome this on a day-to-day basis. Focusing on breathing is one simple method to alleviate symptoms. When you take slow breaths and focus on them, your nervous system should begin to calm down.
Regular exercise such as walking or stretching, or any gentle activity, helps reduce the production of stress hormones and may aid the digestion. You may also want to consider cutting out any caffeine and sugar in your diet as these are believed to worsen anxiety and increase stomach upsets. Grounding activities such as concentrating on what’s in front of you or thinking about the sensations in your body will help take your mind off any anxious thoughts.
How Does CBT Help
It is also vital that there are places available for those who need the support. CBT or counseling can allow a framework to identify triggers and symptoms that can cause you to feel physically unwell on a daily basis. The professional can help to identify when you will be experiencing symptoms and also provide a coping mechanism to aid with reducing the physical affects of your anxiety. Many feel that if the support is there the constant feeling of being unwell will gradually start to reduce.
While this illness can affect you every day by making you feel sick, it is always beneficial to rule out a physical reason to feel sick. If you feel like you are suffering a really serious or declining form of the illness, have blood in your stool or vomiting or have lost weight unexpectedly and significantly with no other cause for it, go and visit a doctor so that nothing more serious may be occurring. When that is all put aside, then we can just focus on treating it as a part of anxiety.
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