Ten Effects Of Anxiety On Body & Brain
Ten effects of anxiety of body and brain: Anxiety and stress are more than just acute states that occur in a sad condition – they don’t bounce back like a bad rainy day; rather, they leave lasting effects on your brain if not addressed in time. You may feel yourself getting overwhelmed in moments, but the truth is this situation is, in fact, solvable. However, first, you need to understand how anxiety can damage our brain and body in different ways. Let’s see some of the ways through which anxiety affects your brain and body.
The following are the ways through which anxiety affects your mental and physical health:
1. It Makes You Feel Tired
When you are in an altered state of mind all the time, your body releases stress hormones to adapt to that state. While some of it is necessary for survival, when it happens too much, your body enters a fatigued state. You feel lethargic all the time, and the activities that you once wanted to do become too overwhelming for you; you feel as if they take out all your energy. Meeting deadlines for work is also a big challenge.
2. You Never Feel Relaxed
Anxiety will have you on your toes all the time. People with high-functioning anxiety might feel super-productive and be able to do all the tasks assigned to them, but they are never able to relax. Even when there is nothing to do, they feel like doing more and more and therefore; their body never feels it is well-rested. The stress hormones make the body hyper-alert mode all the time, which is a bummer.
3. You Get Frustrated Easily
It is quite obvious to become frustrated all the time when you are not getting the much-needed rest you deserve. Your body is high on stress hormones, and your brain keeps thinking about the worst things possible. When there is no positivity around, you are bound to feel annoyed at little things.
4. Your Memory Gets Affected
Anxiety keeps you thinking about the past and the future. It doesn’t allow you to be in the present, which makes you overthink. As you do so, you lose your ability to retain information about the present. You might be thinking about a future event and be worried about it, which can affect your brain cells. As a result, you feel your memory has gotten weaker and weaker by the day.
5. You Cannot Focus Clearly
One of the many things anxiety does to you is to make you lose your concentration. If you have a situation at hand that you have to deal with carefully, anxiety will make you lose your focus. Rather than thinking about the current condition, you are anxious about what would happen if you don’t do it right, and that will affect your concentration.
6. You Lose Interest in Positive Things
More ways through which anxiety can affect your brain include you losing interest in healthy activities. While a mentally healthy person will understand the importance of trying positive things, an anxious person will start having doubts and fears. This can lead to a complete abundance of building positive habits, which can hinder your growth as a person.
7. You Do Emotional Eating
An emotional eating disorder is common in people with anxiety. Most people with anxiety tend to overeat or try to take out their emotional distress by fulfilling their cravings. As they do it, they are able to avoid what is disturbing them and thus escape their feelings. This unhealthy coping mechanism can lead to rapid weight gain, which itself causes a lot of other health problems.
8. You Look Burned Out
Having anxiety means you are on alert mode 24/7. Your body cells get fatigued from being in this condition, but for some reason, you find it impossible to break this vicious cycle. People with chronic anxiety have visible tiredness – they cannot perform strenuous activities, nor do they look fresh.
9. You Have Chronic Pain
When your stress hormones are up in anxiety all the time, your muscles tend to get tense. This constant state of muscle tension makes your body prone to pain. Anxiety and the body have a strong connection, and this is one of the most obvious signs that show this connection. You feel as if this chronic pain would not go away with rest or painkillers. That is because the underlying condition is your affected mental health, and you need to address this first.
10. Sleeping Becomes Difficult
One of the many ways how anxiety affects the brain is having difficulty sleeping. You keep overthinking even when you are tired and want to sleep at night. Fears, doubts, and worries keep you up all night, and you ultimately fall prey to insomnia. Moreover, anxiety can aggravate restlessness in your body, which doesn’t let you sleep easily at night.
Final Thoughts
These are some effects of anxiety on the body and brain that can disturb your life to a big extent. In a nutshell, you are affected by anxiety both physically and mentally. If you have any of the symptoms above that linger on even with quick fixes, it is time to address the problem at hand and do something about it at the earliest.
FAQs
a) What’s an example of getting frustrated because of anxiety?
For example, if someone asks you to take some rest while you are busy somewhere, you might get agitated.
b) What do people think of an anxious person who seems tired?
People around them feel they are burned out, and a good night’s sleep might help them solve their problem, but it is much deeper than that.
c) Why do anxious people with insomnia have poor brain performance?
Insomnia affects your cognitive functions to a significant extent, which ultimately leaches out your thinking ability during the day.
d) How anxiety affects your brain and body?
While on one side you are not able to focus and retain information, on the other side, you lack the energy and the health to take on healthy habits.
