We are used to relating anxiety with breathing problems, with nerves, with being accelerated, however, we never consider that the opposite could happen and that you could end up feeling extremely tired.
Have you ever felt excessively tired despite having slept well? Have you had an anxiety attack and then felt a drop in tension? Have you been feeling dizzy? Have you been sleeping extra hours lately and still feel tired?
Next, in Psychology-Online we will see not only the different symptoms of anxiety, but we will also answer the question of Whether extreme tiredness can be due to anxiety and, if so, we will answer the reason for this anxiety symptom.
What is anxiety?
What is anxiety and why does it occur? Anxiety is a feeling of fear or concern. It can be a normal reaction to a stressful situation and even beneficial since when faced with a difficult situation, such as a presentation at work or an exam, it drives you to work harder on it.
However, for many people, anxiety becomes an added problem to the one they already had and stops being useful, even becoming an obstacle to being able to cope with their daily lives.
Depending on the reasons for anxiety, we would have different types, such as , and .
Even if a person was not diagnosed with one of these types, they still anxiety can be a big problem and the first step to solve it is to make sure if we have anxiety or not. To do this, we recommend that you go to a professional. Meanwhile, you can check if you have symptoms of anxiety with the . Next we will see what symptoms anxiety has, both psychological and physical.
Psychological symptoms of anxiety
What are the symptoms of anxiety? Anxiety occurs as a result of something we are thinking about. Therefore, a key symptom is intrusive thoughts about situations that concern us. Have you ever found yourself thinking over and over again about something that hasn’t happened yet but that you fear will happen?
The person also invests large amounts of effort and energy in suppressing these thoughts, which leads them to avoid certain situations related to what worries you and that affects you in different areas of your life such as family, social or work, you can have many conflicts and, ultimately, you cannot have a normal life.
In the most extreme cases, the person may believe that they are dying of a heart attack. A feeling of leaving one’s body may also develop during an anxiety attack (depersonalization) or the feeling that everything is happening as if it were a movie (derealization).
Physical symptoms of anxiety
As we have mentioned before, some of the more physical symptoms of anxiety are quite well known. Examples of this are the hyperventilationthesensation of drowning or shortness of breath, increased heart rate, feeling of a knot in the stomach or tremors.
Due to all this overexertion that the body is making, it can become exhausted, producing a sensation of dizziness. In addition, if the anxiety occurs constantly It is quite common for the body to end up becoming exhausted. and a feeling of permanent fatigue occurs since the energy that drove the body to move has been exhausted in anxiety attacks.
Extreme fatigue due to anxiety
Anxiety, therefore, can lead to produce fatigue Since, when anxiety occurs, the body uses high effort and high energy to make the heart beat faster or the breathing rate increase. Therefore, after an anxiety attack, it is quite common to suffer a sudden drop in energy.
Furthermore, it is quite common to continue thinking about what has caused anxiety since it is usually a situation to which we give quite a lot of importance. This concern and dedication to the cause of anxiety can also occur during sleep, either through dreams or not allowing a good rest, causing insomnia. Therefore, you do not get a good rest or, if you do get to sleep, you normally do not reach the deep phases of sleep, so the body never recovers the energy lost during anxiety attacks.
Over time, this fatigue is accumulating seriously affecting attention or performance at work. Furthermore, continually thinking about what worries us can cause emotional exhaustion. This refers to exhaustion as a result of fighting with oneself, one’s own thoughts and the attempt to eliminate them and constantly show positive emotions, which also implies a significant loss of energy. In some cases, fatigue may occur after an anxiety attack, while in others, fatigue may be more chronic.
Therefore, yes, extreme tiredness can be due to anxiety. Due to the characteristics of the anxious state and the symptoms and consequences of anxiety, such as lack of sleep and rest, they lead the person to emotional, mental and physical exhaustion.
Extreme fatigue can have other causes
Although extreme tiredness is also a symptom of anxiety, Being tired does not necessarily mean that it is due to anxiety, but it can be a sign that you are suffering from depression or some other type of medical condition, so neither this nor any of the other symptoms alone are sufficient to diagnose anxiety. In this article we talk about the possible ones.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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Bibliography
- Iruarrizaga, I., Gómez-Segura, J., Criado, T., Zuazo, M., & Sastre, E. (1999). Reducing anxiety through social skills training. Motivation and Emotion E-Journal, 2(1).
- Sierra, JC, Ortega, V., & Zubeidat, I. (2003). Anxiety, anguish and stress: three concepts to differentiate. Revista mal-estar e subjetividade, 3(1), 10-59.
- Ramírez, MTG, & Hernández, RL (2007). Emotional exhaustion scale (ECE) for university students: psychometric properties in a sample from Mexico. Anales de Psicología/Annals of Psychology, 23(2), 253-257.