Anxiety and what it feels like to you

[Steff1990]

Hi everyone hope you're all well and staying safe.
I just wanted to ask what anxiety feels like to you when you have it and experience it? The way you feel and your physical symptoms. Doesn't have to be a major anxiety attack even when it's mild. I feel like I wake up with it as soon as I step out of my bed I feel it hits me and I'm not even thinking about anything at the time to trigger it. I just wanted to see what other people's experiences are.

 

[Keesha]

It feels tense, tight, thick and suffocating.
it feels overwhelming and frightening.
It feels disconnected to self, others and spirit.
It feels lonely.

 

[Aleks82]

It feels like a boot on my chest,
like I have ants in my legs,
like a vice is holding my jaw and neck.
Fear and pain and despair.

 

[BigHeartsBigProblems]

I get hot
I can't think straight or focus
I feel like my head is in a shrinking pressure bubble
My voice shakes if i can even talk
I will cry uncontrollably or have outbursts of anger
Attacks lasting about a hour these days with lingering side effects about 4 hours
Sometimes comes with headache, neck ache, shoulder ache, stomach pain occasional vomiting.

Just very sad/angry/frustrating

 

[Faith198]

Constant worry
Worrying that I’m not doing enough to control and prevent bad things from happening
Always wondering “what if” about everything I do.
It is like someone’s breathing down my back and I have to do what they tell me to do or else bad will happen.

 

[Black Despondency]

My anxiety symptoms can very quite a bit. My anxiety at it's worst turns in to fight, flight or freeze, each reaction can be changed at the drop of a hat. These my experiences I can remember. The longer I stay in fight the more I dissociate I think. I would add more, but I need to go to sleep.

• Foggy too blackout memory
• Intense undirected fear
• Hypervigilance constantly looking for threats. My eye usually dart to motions that are perceived as fast for threat assessment and can start natural defensive or offensive reflexes. I could accidentally hurt someone from my natural fight or flight reflexes fully triggering.
• Pain can be very negligible feeling
• Fear can disappear and be replaced by a thrill of the hunt feeling, almost like how a cat catching it's prey feels like, I think.
• Little regard for risk of my life.
• Very fast reflexes
• The already minimal governing of my strength disappears
• Freezing in place

 

[Lavender_Rose]

I can go from very extreme to everyday stuff. My extreme is I hyperventilate, the world's closing in around you, there will never be enough air, never, you gonna die, nothing ever gonna be okay. Something like that. But more everyday or less extreme stuff it like
*Being on edge all the time.
*I see unfarmilai people and places and dangerous
*I have a lot of nervous habits like nail biting, or just fidgeting with my hands in general. Sometime it's to calm my breathing.
* Heart racing, and I feel hot too like other people have said.
*I often try to make myself feel small too.