Physical symptoms of anxiety? Or something else?

[NoPoet]

Hi all,

I've mentioned this before but never really asked for opinions. When I feel anxious I often experience nausea (varies from mild to fairly bad), a shimmering feeling of headache in the head (which I have mentioned before on NMP) and inexplicable fears that I am either ill, or something is terribly wrong with me.

Does anyone else experience any of these symptoms? I realise it's probably anxiety but it does worry me. I am starting to get permanent headaches and tired eyes.

[Bluebelle]

I have experienced these symptoms as well. Since I have declared war on my anxiety depression I have been telling myself ANY physical symptom is a symptom of my anxiety/depression wilting away....
This has granted me a degree of freedom as I now tell myself everything is caused by anxiety and depression rather than an actual physical illness- sometimes I believe and sometimes I question it but it is a total blame game.
Just blame everything on anxiety /depression !!
Another symptom I experience is the feeling that the blood rushing through my veins is boiling hot. You know that feeling you get when you drink coffee/tea/soup when it is still too hot and it burns all the way down your throat? Well my entire body feels like that- like my blood is trying to burn through my skin. It is awful but hey it is anxiety/depression....right?!?!

[NoPoet]

I have always believed that if a symptom can best be described as "weird", it is caused by anxiety. The feeling of boiling blood really does deserve the "weird" label, so I would agree it is anxiety.

Part of me knows I am simply feeling anxious... I have always had health anxiety, mainly when I was younger... God, if I'm ever going to get better I feel like I need to completely re-write my personality!! Ah well, I might not have to reprogram myself, maybe a few clever "tweaks" will be as effective...

[NoPoet]

Well here we are more than a month later and I still find that the worst of my anxiety and feelings of depression are linked to headaches and nausea - I start to feel down, which provokes the physical symptoms, then the physical symptoms reinforce my feelings of fear, and the whole thing goes into a loop that takes days or weeks to resolve. It is really horrible -- the logical side of my brain seems to go on holiday and all of the toughness and experience I have gained over the last month is almost worthless.

The rational side of me knows that my headaches are due to tiredness and a migraine that I had the other day. The paranoid side says it's a brain tumour or something equally horrible. My CBT doctor and the hypnotherapist both tell me that this is one of the most common things for someone to feel when anxious... that used to reassure me but doesn't help when I am in a "blip".

[Emaa]

Hey, I can't really help with the headaches or the nausea..

But the cycle is something I get all the time. It gets me down quite a bit because in my head I KNOW there is nothing wrong, it's just anxiety, but it's like I'm on auto-pilot when I panic and I completely ignore my head and just freak out. It is SO hard to tell yourself that it's just anxiety I've mostly given up on trying to do that and taken up the method of 'distraction'. Even if it's just talking to someone on msn or playing uno with the other half lol.. Eventually I manage to get calm enough that I can listen to my rational thoughts and calm down, although it never fully goes it's my ANXIETY that's in the back of my head not my rational thoughts (- Forgive me if this post makes no sense I haven't slept lol!)

Does distraction work for you? I find it really helps, and it's hard to take your mind of it but if you persevere it becomes easier. It's the only way I've found to cope atm.

HopeThatHelped

.. In some way.