Weird Anxiety Symptoms You May Have Experienced But Didn’t Realise Why

If you google ‘signs of anxiety’ you’ll likely come up with a very run of the mill list of symptoms such as irritability, difficulty concentrating, worrying thoughts, fatigue, difficulty sleeping etc. Whilst these definitely are common symptoms, as people who suffer from anxiety will tell you, there are many other strange symptoms, which range from uncomfortable to debilitating, especially if they go unchecked. Often anxiety sufferers feel alone with their unusual and sometimes terrifying experiences, which leads to feelings of isolation. It’s possible to feel anxiety as a physical symptom such as a pain in the chest, even when you aren’t cognitively aware that you have anxiety or are having worrying thoughts. Unfortunately, these symptoms can trigger worry and before you know it, you’re caught in a loop of worrying about the symptoms, which only serves to make them worse, which makes you worry more!

Online forums can be a great place to find people with similar experiences to your own. Just knowing that the weird and uncomfortable feelings you’ve been having are common in other anxiety sufferers, and being able to give a name to them, can be incredibly empowering. For this reason, I have compiled a list of some of the weird sensations that people suffer which is due to anxiety, in the hope that it will help other people who are struggling with it. Having suffered from anxiety on and off since my third pregnancy,  12 years ago, I have experienced most of the below in varying degrees at one time or another. Knowing what it is can help to take some of its power away.

Disclaimer: This article is intended for informational purposes only. If you believe you are suffering from anxiety, or any other form of mental illness, we recommend seeking advice from your local GP or other medical professional.

Itching or Buzzing Sensations

• Parts of my body itch like crazy (legs, belly, torso, back of my hands,etc), I can’t stop scratching myself. I have several scares because of that. (blublu72)
• My body will buzz sometimes… and no, I don’t mean I shake or tremble. It’s as if my skin is crawling from the inside, even when I’m sitting still. (Tough_but_fragile)
• My teeth buzz. Really bad, keeps me up at night. (EveryMornANewArrival)
• I can feel like every single vein and capillary pulse all over my body it sucks (bearhatbaby)
• I’ve been having many physical symptoms including: random sharp pains in my head, left shoulder pain, tension headache, depersonalization, butterflies in stomach, body feeling like it’s vibrating inside/feeling of electricity. slight pins and needles in my wrist and forearm sometimes into my elbow, slightly achey molars. (planetz00m)
• I’ve had the vibrations since June of 2014 after a panic attack landed me in the ER. I never had them before but now they just kinda part of my normal daily life. The noise part is called hyperacusis 🙂 I also have phonophobia with some sounds triggering anxiety (LunaticMiko)

Difficulty Swallowing

• Cannot remember how to swallow, keep gagging on whatever I try to swallow. Not all the time, but I have not actually ATE while eating out in a long time. (curly-haired-nerd)
• Losing my ability to swallow. My brain tells me I can’t swallow the food and I literally can’t. (chigalathrt)
• I swallow too much, like I forget swallowing Is automatic and you’re not supposed to be aware of your saliva swallowing habit lol ([deleted])
• Been there to, it also can be when I’m just in the bed , trying to sleep and my brain starts saying like now it will gets harder to swallow and then I swallow and it feels like I’m getting mucus and I want to swallow again so it feels clear and clean throat. But i can’t swallow. And then I’m getting tightened and nervous about that, and i goes on and on and it’s getting harder to sleep. (Jeppopeppo)
• Oh my god! I’ll be walking and thinking I’m about to pass out! Like I’ve just started experiencing dizziness as a symptom and it’s so annoying. Sometimes I also get this weird feeling that I can’t swallow my own spit, and it freaks me the hell out dude.Why is anxiety so random with these symptoms ?? (Disastrous_14)
• The lump I get in my throat. Which in turn just leads to plenty more anxiety lol(therealobs)

Diarrhoea

• Stress poops. You’re feeling the anxiety and panic rise, then your stomach cramps up…(DemotivatedTurtle)
• Tense muscles all over. The worst is when my hand goes numb & I can barely use it. (roxyrocks12)
• Tightness in the chest that just makes it feel heavy. Recently, panic attacks where I feel like my heart is giving out. Needing to pee way more than usual. Elevated heartbeat. Nausea, diarrhea… Just good times. (YourPathologist)
• My anxiety makes me have to poop. Its mainly just the feeling of butterflies in my tummy but then it escalates (ratmangang)
• I get extremely impatient. I clench my jaw a lot, too. If I’m having a full on panic attack, I lose my appetite and get diarrhea. (schoofer)

Hypersensitivity to Smell or Sound

• Everything starts to smell terrible. Like, every bad part of a smell is exaggerated and it makes me want to throw up. It’s horrible, and I’ve never heard of anyone else with that one. (you_own_my_uwu)
• When in high anxiety, every little noise while make me jump, like an intense adrenaline rush for no reason, I hate it (yassAKa)
• Weird high pitched sound in my ears; fingers turn whitish blue. (Doktor_Konrad)
• I used to get ringing in my ear. (ThrillerMovieFan)
• I get extremely annoyed and short tempered. Like I can’t stand people to talk and laugh and act normal when I’m freaking out and want to be silent and collect my thoughts. Physically, I feel super faint, weak, and like I have low blood sugar and am going to pass out. And very nervous with knots in my tummy. Sometimes for no reason. (steph314)

Jaw Clenching

• Dizzy, jaw clenching, my heart fluttering like almost feels like it stops for a second or skips a beat and then is normal again. Feeling like I’m going to pass out. (yojenny9983)
• Chattering teeth. Every. Single. Time. (Cookie_Brookie)
• My whole jaw goes tight like im being strangled. And my face goes numb (Ebbxo)
• Numbness in my teeth, face, lips and extremities. I also get an internal tremor and teeth chattering. (Soft-Difference5204)
• When I’m about to have an anxiety/panic attack, I always feel like my tongue is too big to fit in my mouth properly, my head is going to explode, my heart stopped beating, and sometimes if my brain is feeling fancy, It’s like I can feel all my bones in my body and like my joints and muscles when I move. Anxiety is so mf weird. (astrophi1ia)
• Full body numbness, racing heart, numb head, throat closing up, hard to breathe, dizzy, clenching my jaw, shaking / trembling. (ExoticNatalia)

Brain Zaps

• During a longer stressful episode, when trying to relax and let my mind go….ill suddenly get like a weird ‘zapping’ sensation starting deep within my brain, releases a bit of adrenaline, then some kind of fog rolls in. It clears. Then repeats. It always clears up as I recover and the less I react to it the less stressful it is. Scared the crap out of me the first time it ever happened to me. Thought I was having some kind of micro seizures or something. Never done me any harm though. Also exploding head syndrome when trying to sleep. Also goes away when I recover. (reclaimthecontrol)

Burping

• If I get anxious to the point where I might have a panic attack, specifically in a public place, I cannot stop burping. No clue why it happens but it is the least worrying physical symptom I get from anxiety so I’ll take it haha (nostopandchats)
• Aerophagia! I forget how to breathe normally when I’m really anxious, and take short shallow breaths without realising. I guess I swallow air doing this bc then I start burping essentially, but it’s closer to the sound of your stomach growling however the noise is clearing coming from my throat/mouth. Can make it very hard to study in a public library. 😅 Also can make me feel lightheaded as I’m not getting enough air into my lungs. (ellasnovellas)
• Burping. I get like air trapped in my chest from breathing too fast I guess and I burp almost like hiccups. It’s really frustrating and gross. (mustardyellow123)

Muscle Weakness or Spasms

• Jelly legs – this is the one that’s been driving me crazy recently because I literally feel like I can’t stand in one place without falling over. I can walk just fine but for some reason staying still is a problem. (shaand24)
• twitching in my vagina. yes you heard it right. went to the doctors they said it was all fine (_LaylaFox)
• Sometimes my hand moves or sort of twitches without me wanting it. It’s so weird because I can’t control it at all. Eye twitching, swollen hands and legs, muscle spasms and feeling my veins sort of twitch, loss of balance. I know it’s anxiety because when I’m at home, most of these disappear. Most of my anxiety is from the outside world. Also last year got 1 month of loss of sensation in my whole body and neurologist said I’m healthy after a physical exam. (alice_moonstone)
• The hypnogogic jerks. They came back once again yesterday after disappearing for years (Tomtanks88)

Temperature Changes

• I start to shake a little bit. Like I shiver and get kind of cold. And my voice goes all shaky so it sounds like I’m scared. This mostly just happens in job interviews. (MuffetsTuffet)
• Omggggg it feels like my temperature drops to 0 and my teeth chatter uncontrollably and I shiver. AND I get a sort of tensions headache around my head.. it feels like my hair follicles shrink because I’m cold lol. (disco-potato-)
• My weirdest symptom Is my chin feeling tense or tight, as if my skin was too small for the chin, but if I touch it it’s normal and soft lol Also last night it (the chin) started to feel like it was burning, and I started to get afraid of it being something related to the nerves, but I put on a guided meditation video AND the burning went AWAY like in 2 minutes, fuck my mind. ([deleted])
• I once had this sensation but I felt that my blood was on fire. It was awful. It’s as if I was boiling from the inside and not even cold temperatures made it stop. After 10-20min I calmed myself and it went away (CamBG)
• I think for me would be sudden changes of temperature on my feet and sometimes in my hands, it’s weird but I know it’s anxiety related bc whenever i stop thinking about it it goes away and now I don’t feel it a lot anymore bc I’m getting better (acemychoice)

Rapid Eye Flutters

• My eyes flutter rapidly when I close my eyelids (myweedstash)

Memory Difficulties

• I have memory problems thanks to my anxiety. It’s not that I have trouble remembering things, but when I’m really stressed my brain just decides it doesn’t need to remember what’s happening so it doesn’t make memories in the first place. It really sucks. (buzzpea)
• Lose track of what I’m saying and jump from topic to topic. Then freak out about someone thinking I have like early onset dementia if I forget what I am talking about. Talking really fast. I don’t think these are super weird though. (Remarkable-Ranger710)

Sensation of Falling or Losing Your Balance

• Mine is feeling like a tickle on my throat like butterfly sensation and falling sensation as well.. (Suspicious-Dress-767)
• Feels like my body is falling (srg7488)
• I have this really unnerving sensation that the floor/room moves slightly, and I lose my balance. When that happens I’m always worried people noticed and will think I’m drunk or something’s wrong with me or I’m really weird. I also have the usual stuff, like shortness of breath, sweating, sick feeling. I get twitches pretty often in my eyelid and thumb. (TattoosBooksAnimals)
• I had slightly different version, I felt the floor slightly going up and down it was particularly Infuriating and unnerving, I would feel so unstable (yassAKa)
• I get a kind of dizziness that makes it seem like the room is spinning. (hodiboo)
• It’s not vertigo, it’s not the actual room spinning, it’s just the feeling that the ground is slightly off and maybe tilting ever so slowly that I catch it and then it goes away. It’s the strangest feeling. (coffeeinthedesert)
• I get that feeling when I’m having anxiety and go in an elevator as soon as I step out. It’s like my brain still think I’m in the elevator. (g4tam20)

Chest Pains or Concerns About Heartbeat

• Feeling my heart beat too hard, or the lack of a heartbeat all of a sudden. Sometimes I feel like my throat is constricted and it’s difficult to breathe. Sometimes I feel like my brain is a balloon and it doesn’t fit in my skull. My favorite one is when my chest starts hurting on one side so I’m led to believe I’m about to experience a heart attack. Once I find a distraction it goes away I’ve noticed, so I’ve learned to not give it too much attention. Anxiety sucks. (Disastrous_14)
• I feel like my heart is beating through my skin, like if I looked I could see it like pumping out. Also like restless energy it’s so weird (DiscussionDramatic39)
• Yeah I sometimes feel there’s not enough air to take in and I’m suffocating but nothings wrong. I have this stabbing tightness in my chests that feels like something grabbed my heart and it’s not letting go. And it feels like a heart attack. I have a feeling of falling or the floor moving when I sit in a place for a long time. Really does suck (Muffin_Bunny19C)
• 6 years of panic disorder + generalized anxiety here. Nausea, my heart starts to hurt really bad and feels sore/burning, buzzing all over my body along with random muscle spasms, complete depersonalization, impending doom, unable to sleep. (ladylonglove6)

Difficulty Breathing

• Feeling positive my throat is going to close up. It feels tight all the way down to my chest and like I am going to not be able to breathe any second. I can’t stop thinking about it unless something distracts me. (ButterflyFew5696)
• I find myself holding my breath for far too long and I don’t even realize I’m doing it until my throat spasms suddenly and it gushes out (claricestarlings)
• Feeling all my veins pumping blood (my pulse) through out my whole body. Tightness in chest. My tics get worse (twitching, involuntary noises – hiccups, screech, etc, muscles spazzin). My getting the weird ringing in my ear. Suddenly gasping out of nowhere even if I’m breathing normal. Diarrhea. Shaking. I get so many symptoms that are physical from anxiety on a daily basis and I hate it 🙁 (baby_darko)

Excessive Sweating

• My buttcrack sweat was raging when I was in high school. I actually at one point carried a towel around to sit on. I claimed it was for something tailbone related (can’t remember exactly now) but really it was so I didn’t leave a streak of sweat on the chair….about a decade later and I wish my worst symptoms were only buttcrack sweat. (hrcules-28)
• Burning sensation on top of my head. Random muscle spasms in random parts of my body. Feet getting extremely sweaty, to the point I have to put on new socks. (iwantadogg)
• My feet sweat like crazy when I’m anxious. (Blueberryvolts)

Extreme Fatigue

• Intense urge to sleep when I get overstimulated or anxiety gets too intense. Or depersonalization/derealization. I think they are related honestly, but can’t find any literature on the sleeping issue. It’s so intense it almost feels like I’m going to pass out. It used to happen (knock on wood) when I was driving sometimes, that was fun. (eyeoftheshiticane)

Changes to Vision

• My throat tightens like I’m nauseous and retching but I have no other effects of it. Also my vision fades into a gray color except for an area around the center of my view (wanderingstalker)

Nausea and Digestive Issues

• Occasional bouts of nausea. The kind where you can hear your heart thumping hard and you feel like you’re gonna pass out but then just feel like you might throw up. All you can do is quickly find somewhere to lie down, plough through all the coping exercises and wait to go back to normal. (Velvet_Thunder13)
• Stomach symptoms — cramping, pain everywhere (but mostly in lower stomach), random nausea. I hate them, and they terrify me. I feel like I might be really sick or something might really be wrong. (CCM333)
• I think I have heartburn thats made worse by anxiety, and I have rib pain that flares up when I’m anxious. (athansiah)
• Acid reflux and twitching/chills.(zbega)
• Definitely the humming or the buzzing, overall feeling instantly sweaty, and then TMI but the worst of all is feeling like I’m going to shit and vomit🙃 (br0wneyedgrill)
• If my anxiety is sky high, my stomach is feeling funny and I want to puke. (PsychoKinezis)

Numbness is Body Parts

• omg! the tip of my nose and parts of my face would go numb, usually accompanied by one of my hands going numb too! (Shoddy_Chain2375)
• When I was really bad, I lost my sense of taste. (houseoflies_qwerty)
• My arms goes numb and sometimes it feels like a crawling sensation In my head along with pressure trying to be released or a burning sensation throughout my body and head (NipseyRussel)
• At the very worst of times, I have come out in Hives 😬 (trailrunningwales)

Depersonalisation/Derealisation

• I don’t know about weird, but I feel like I’m in a glass dome, and the rest of the world is on the outside. (Meg-a18)
• Extremely cold hands to the point where it hurts. Tightness in my throat. Derealization is what I hate the most. (cherryphoenix)
• The most disturbing physical symptom for me is depersonalization/derealization it’s basically a feeling that everything around you isn’t really and that you are in a dream, I got it really bad once from you first panic attack and I lived with it for like 6 months I don’t quite remember when it went away but I get it again every now and then (Intrustive-ridden)

Disclaimer: This article is intended for informational purposes only. If you believe you are suffering from anxiety, or any other form of mental illness, we recommend seeking advice from your local GP or other medical professional.

Sources:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Anxiety/comments/r4a1so/what_is_your_weirdest_physical_symptom_of_anxiety/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Anxiety/comments/48b9t3/what_weird_symptoms_do_you_experience_with_your/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Anxiety/comments/bydgsh/weird_anxiety_symptoms_whats_the_weirdest_symptom/