Did you know people tend to feel different types of symptoms, including physical ones due to excessive anxiety and all-out anxiety disorders? There is this thing called anxiety tingling that often comes into existence due to different types of anxiety conditions such as panic disorder, generalized anxiety, or phobias. These conditions are not always symptoms that are only related to anxiety or emotional in type as these conditions can also involve physical manifestations of symptoms that include but are not limited to muscle tension, an upset stomach, chills, and headaches. But we need to talk about it more in the words below to scratch out what is the underlying problem:
How Does Anxiety Cause Tingling?
So, does anxiety cause tingling? It has been established that it indeed causes tingling sensations in different parts of our body and this is especially true when an affected individual is suffering from some kind of mental condition which is based around or has anxiety as a major symptom. It is something that people may call or say, “I have tingling in my hands and feet anxiety”.
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Can Anxiety Cause Tingling All Over the Body?
You often feel numbness accompanying this anxiety tingling and both of these are not just in hands and feet but a lot of other body parts. It can also evolve into worsening symptoms like rumination (a kind of eating disorder, aka re-eating), excessive worry, rarely obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), or predominantly generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and can make someone have racing thoughts.
If this numbness is not part of the anxiety symptoms, it probably means nothing serious is happening beneath the surface or is an underlying problem. This is because numbness is an issue that can present itself due to common reasons like these(1):
- sitting idle or standing in the same position for an extended period of time
- non-venomous insect or spider bites
- rashes or allergic reaction
- low levels of nutrients like vitamin B-12, potassium, calcium, or sodium
- medicational side effects
- alcohol addiction
So, why are you still asking questions like “Can anxiety cause tingling?, Can anxiety cause tingling in hands?”, or “Does anxiety cause tingling?”? Well, sometimes the culprit is indeed anxiety tingling and for that, we need to discuss the actual causes.
So, Coming Back, How Does Anxiety Cause Tingling and Numbness?
All this relates to anxiety tingling in considerable ways. When we go into panic mode, we are essentially entering the realm of something known as the fight and flight response, which is our body’s natural response that is used to sense danger. But get this, the choice has to be made by your brain’s internal processes whether to take flight and run away from impending danger or stay and fight it. In panic mode, we get stuck in between and excessively think about what to do next, so basically having to overthink about what to choose between flight or fight. It gets more excessive when it comes to anxiety disorders such as OCD, and GAD as the aforementioned deadlock is in overload mode and thus, much more severe.
As a physical manifestation of it and before it becomes anxiety tingling we start to hyperventilate, the blood vessels get constricted, leaving no room for blood to flow, increasing the heart rate and blood pressure in the process as soon as the blood flow to your overall body is reduced, especially to your hands (specifically left hand, which is why many start to call it tingling on the left side of body anxiety) and feet, you begin to feel physical sensations like anxiety tingling, numbness, and even a cold feeling sometimes.
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Other Ways Anxiety Tingling Be Triggered
Feeling anxious can also lead to other ways that can essentially trigger anxiety tingling. For example, people suffering from excessive anxiety may unknowingly clutch together their different body parts such as legs, or tense their muscles so much that they start to feel numb.
Some people try to self-medicate their anxiety problems with alcohol. However, this creates the problem of alcohol neuropathy, which means the nerve endings of your body parts essentially go numb, which in turn leads to excessive anxiety tingling. This can persist even when the anxiety is gone.
Additionally, when we are taking anti-anxiety pills such as benzodiazepines or antidepressants (which are used to treat depression and anxiety alike) such as Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), we can go through side effects such as anxiety tingling hands or just general anxiety tingling in the whole body(2).
Treating Anxiety Tingling
To treat anxiety tingling, one needs to target the ultimate culprit of its origin: anxiety. For that, there are a couple of ways like psychotherapy and psychiatric medication management that can help in treating anxiety tingling, even if you are asking this – “Can anxiety tingling last for days?”.
But before treatment, you can always try to handle it by making some changes to your lifestyle such as:
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Trying Deep Breathing Exercises
For starters, this can help with treating what causes tingling throughout the body anxiety by directly catching the culprit behind it, which is hyperventilation. There is something called Belly (diaphragmatic) breathing, which one gets to doing by:
- Sitting down first.
- Leaning forward with your elbows resting on your knees.
- Then take a few naturally induced gradual breaths.
Once you start following these steps whenever you feel anxious you can help prevent that nuisance of fight-or-flight response from taking over.
Exercise Regularly
Regular physical exercise has long been known to induce beneficial effects that help fight excessive stress and anxiety, the usual suspects associated with anxiety tingling(3).
Find a Good Hobby To Relax
Another one you can bring yourself to a calmer state and therefore at a place where you don’t feel any anxiety tingling is to get a hobby that helps you relax. It could be something making music via trying new musical instruments and picking up the old one, painting or even perhaps, writing and journaling.
Now Back To The Treatment
Here are some of the ways one can treat body tingling anxiety:
Psychotherapy
It is a kind of “talk” therapy that helps patients look inward into their behavior and the mental health experts help them find a resolution to end that problematic behavior. Considerable examples exist for this kind of therapy, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure therapy.
Medication
As mentioned before anti-anxiety medicines such as benzodiazepine, beta-blockers or antidepressants can be used to treat anxiety tingling. All of these initiate certain biological processes to decrease the negative effects of anxiety.
Read More: Can Dehydration Cause Anxiety? Understanding The Connection Between Water And Mental Health
Summing Up!
This is the end now but we have summed up quite a lot when it comes to anxiety tingling. If it is the treatment you need for anxiety prevention or for treating it, then you should consult the Inland Empire Behavioral Group. The experts can also look over other conditions like bipolar disorder via treatments like the ones mentioned above and others much more flexible such as telehealth psychiatry.
References and Footnotes:
- https://www.healthline.com/health/anxiety-numbness
- Praharaj SK. Serotonin reuptake inhibitor induced sensory disturbances. Br J Clin Pharmacol. 2004 Dec;58(6):673-4. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2125.2004.02207.x. PMID: 15563365; PMCID: PMC1884649.
https://bpspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2125.2004.02207.x - Stonerock GL, Hoffman BM, Smith PJ, Blumenthal JA. Exercise as Treatment for Anxiety: Systematic Review and Analysis. Ann Behav Med. 2015 Aug;49(4):542-56. doi: 10.1007/s12160-014-9685-9. PMID: 25697132; PMCID: PMC4498975.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25697132/
