Looking to get a better handle on the negative effects of anxiety that disrupt your life?  Look no further, this post is about 7 common negative effects of anxiety that many people experience, along with tips to manage these anxiety symptoms.

Recognizing some of your negative effects of anxiety can be one step in the right direction to getting a better handle on managing your anxiety. 

Anxiety is experienced differently with each person and sometimes differs throughout our lives.  But being aware of how it shows up is necessary when attempting to combat it.

Read on to learn how anxiety can negatively impact our daily living and learn tips to deal with your anxiety in different ways.

1.  Pain

Anxiety is our body’s natural response to stress.  But when our stress levels are high especially over a course of time, those effects of anxiety on the body can lead to pain showing up.   

Enough anxiety and stress can cause a person to have pains such as headaches, stomachaches, chest pains, and other pains throughout the body. 

Sometimes these pains can be scary but it can also be pretty confusing too.  It may lead a person to believe they are truly ill with a physical sickness.  Pain from anxiety may lead a person to be less productive and even absent from their favorite activities or daily tasks.

Tip:  Dealing with pains from anxiety can be annoying and extremely challenging but through the use of a relaxation technique can be helpful when trying to ease those pains. 

One helpful relaxation technique is something called progressive muscle relaxation. This technique focuses specifically on one part of the body at a time.

You can give it a try by starting at your toes. First, tightening them for 5 seconds while breathing in, then releasing them for five seconds while slowly breathing out. After your toes, you move up your body repeating the same process. You will focus on each body part tightening, releasing, all the while taking deep breaths. You can start at your toes, then move to your calves, thighs, buttocks, hands, arms, stomach, shoulders, mouth, then eyes.

2.  Poor focus

This negative effect of anxiety symptom can be pretty frustrating as well.  You may find yourself in the middle of a sentence not remember what you were about to say next. Or going from one task to another and completely losing focus.

Anxiety effects on the body can be just as tough as it is on the brain can be. Anxiety has a way of hijacking the brain as it fills with worry, fear, and other overwhelming feelings and thoughts.

Tip:  There are numerous different ways to try to relax and gain better control of your thoughts and feelings but a great go-to is meditation.  It can be done in many places and for rather short periods of time but can also be done over a long period of time if you choose to. 

Some people may choose to listen to music and meditate.  Some may be still and focus on a specific mantra or phrase that they will repeat like I will get through this, until it calms them. 

And if those aren’t your style of meditating, that’s fine there’s plenty of online guided meditations that can help aid you to serenity and calmness.  Once the brain is calmer, you’ll notice it’ll be easier to focus and stay focused.

3.  Not Sleeping

Feeling anxious and having anxious thoughts can cause us to have restless nights.  When we are anxious, our bodies have more energy and that can lead us to not being able to fall asleep. 

Another problem with being anxious is having a lot of thoughts, especially repeated thoughts can sometimes lead a person to ruminate.  Ruminating is when we focus on the same thoughts over and over until it consumes us.  Thinking like that can make it very difficult for anyone to sleep at night. 

Tip:  One great way to combat lack of sleep due to anxious thoughts is doing a braindump.  Try taking your thoughts to pen and paper and writing down all the thoughts that are consuming your brain. 

It can be the things that you’re worried about or maybe it’s a list of things you need to do.  Getting it out of your brain and onto paper can help free up your brain and help you get to sleep.

The effects of anxiety on the brain can affect normal daily functioning.

4.  Negative Self-Talk

Everyone talks to themselves in their mind.  We have countless thoughts and conversations with ourselves every day, all day.  However, symptoms of anxiety and depression can lead to negative self-talk. 

Negative self-talk can sound something like telling ourselves things like “I’m so dumb” when we say the wrong thing or “Nobody likes me” because we may be feeling lonely in the moment.  Sometimes we can be our own worst enemies and indulging in negative self-talk often is damaging to ourselves and simply being unkind to ourselves.

Tip:  When you find yourself telling yourself something mean and often times mean things that aren’t true, try changing that thought. 

Changing a thought is a little thing called reframing.  Reframing is when a thought is changed. When we reframe, we take a statement and change it so that it no longer holds a negative perspective. 

For example, instead of saying “I’m so dumb” because you said the wrong thing maybe say something like, “That may have not come out the way I wanted it to.

5.  Excessive Worry

Excessive worrying is another anxiety symptom that can be extremely difficult to manage.  Wondering about what’s to come, what has already happened, what’s out of our control, and the list goes on and on.  The what-ifs of the world can be so overwhelming and even lead to overthinking. 

Let’s be honest overthinking can be the absolute worst.  On any normal day there’s a lot to think about but sometimes it’s like we think about a thought and break down the possibilities of that thought and rethink it over and it can truly be too much!  

Tip:  Thinking of course is normal and being concerned about things is also normal but how to know if you’re worrying too much?  Great question, start by asking yourself is this consuming a lot of my time?  Is it making me feel uneasy to the point I feel physically sick?  Are my worries to the point where I would rather stay home or to myself? 

If it is affecting your normal daily functioning, it’s a sign that it is a problem.  So it’s very important to become aware of how your thoughts are affecting you.

6.  Anxiety Attacks

Symptoms of anxiety attacks can cause the body to feel like it is really under attack. It can cause someone to feel as though they are having a heart attack.

Anxiety attacks typically happen as a result of overwhelming effects of anxiety on the body.  Just like many things when they aren’t dealt with, they have a way of coming out another way.  So sometimes when anxiety is not managed it causes us to have anxiety attacks. 

For those of you who are unfamiliar with anxiety attacks, let me see if I can describe it. When we are anxious, our hearts typically will beat faster, we may sweat, we may cry, we might even feel a sense of panic, we might shake, our breathing may get off its normal rhythm, may not be able to think clear, or we may have irrational thoughts filled with fear and worry.  These are some common things people may experience when they are anxious, but of course it's not the same for everyone.

A person may experience one or a few of these symptoms but they’re still able to somewhat function normally. Now imagine experiencing all or most of those symptoms at once to the extreme, that’s commonly how an anxiety attack is.  An anxiety attack will stop a person right in their tracks and they become captive of those severe anxiety symptoms.

Tip:  It is not always possible to prevent anxiety attacks but it is helpful to practice relaxation techniques on a regular basis which will make it easier to manage your anxiety. 

If you feel an anxiety attack is happening or about to happen, it helps to try something like a grounding technique.  The 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique is pretty effective when experiencing anxiety.  It can help you to re-center your focus and calm yourself down. 

To do the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique you will start with naming 5 things you see, then name 4 things you can feel, followed by naming 3 things you can hear, and 2 things you can smell, lastly naming 1 thing you can taste.  Doing these things intentionally and focusing on each while taking deep breaths will help to calm your anxieties.  

7.  Social Isolation

Social isolation and desiring to be alone when anxious can be a tricky one.  It’s rather interesting how each one has the possibility to cause the other.  In some cases, people who isolate will become anxious due to loneliness and just being left with only their own thoughts for too long.  But in other cases, some people will become increasingly anxious and feel the need to isolate, in an attempt to reduce anxiety. 

Feeling the need to isolate while feeling anxious doesn't necessarily equate to a person having social anxiety (an anxiety disorder where social interactions causes extreme anxieties, fears, and worries) but it can.  Sometimes we do need to be alone to reset and recharge.  But I will say that there’s a difference between alone time and isolating. 

The best way to know if you’re isolating or truly having alone time is how do you feel after taking this period of time to yourself?  Do you feel energized or do you still feel emotionally drained?  If you feel energized then yes you needed alone time but if you still feel drained and possibly worse, it’s more likely than not you’ve been isolating.

Tip:  As I just said it’s nothing wrong with alone time but in the times you find yourself isolating, just remember that it’s probably not helping you.  And as much as you’ll probably disagree with this suggestion, it’s very important that you do connect with others. 

Connecting with a trusted friend or family member and possibly even sharing some of your concerns can help to reduce some of your worries and fear.

Conclusion

Feeling anxious to the point where it negatively affects us can be downright burdensome.  And we all will have experience anxiety throughout our lives, some of us will just experience it more than others and that’s okay too. 

But I’s important to recognize how it shows up in you individually.  Learning how it affects you and how it looks for you is only half the battle.  And just as these negative effects can negatively impact the quality of your life, just know that there’s hope on the other side of your anxiety. 

The tips in this blog can be used for multiple issues from anxiety and can be of great help especially if you start adding them into some of your daily practices.  And in the meantime, I'm wishing you good mental wellness.