Can Extreme Fatigue be From Anxiety?

We are used to associating anxiety with breathing problems, with nerves, with being accelerated, however, we never consider that the opposite could happen and that you could feel extreme fatigue.

Have you ever felt excessively tired despite having slept well? Have you had an anxiety attack and then felt a drop in blood pressure? Have you been feeling dizzy? Have you been sleeping too many hours lately and still feel tired?

Next, in Psychology we will see not only the different symptoms of anxiety, but we will also answer the question of whether extreme fatigue may be due to anxiety and, if so, we will answer the reason for this symptom of anxiety.

What is anxiety?

What is anxiety and why does it occur? Anxiety is a feeling of fear or unease . It can be a normal reaction to a stressful situation and even beneficial as a difficult situation, such as a presentation at work or an exam, prompts you to work harder on it.

However, for many people anxiety becomes an added problem to the one they already had and is no longer useful, even becoming an obstacle to coping with their day to day.

Depending on what are the reasons for anxiety would have different types, such as generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder and phobias.

Even if a person was not diagnosed with one of these types, anxiety can still be a big problem and the first step to solve it is to make sure if we have anxiety or not. For this, we recommend you go to a professional. Meanwhile, you can check if you have symptoms of anxiety with the Hamilton anxiety test . Next we will see what symptoms anxiety has, both psychological and physical.

Psychological symptoms of anxiety

What are the symptoms of anxiety? Anxiety is caused by 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 about something that hasn't happened yet but that you fear will happen?

The person, in addition, invests large amounts of effort and energy in suppressing these thoughts, which leads him to avoid certain situations related to what worries him and that affects him in different areas of his life such as family, social or At work, you can have many conflicts and, ultimately, you can not have a normal life.

In the most extreme cases the person may come to believe that he is dying of a heart attack. The feeling of getting out of one's body ( depersonalization ) or the feeling that everything is happening like a movie ( derealization ) can also develop during the anxiety attack . In this article you will find different types of anxiety and their symptoms.

Physical symptoms of anxiety

As we've discussed before, some of the more physical symptoms of anxiety are well known. Examples of this are hyperventilation , the feeling of suffocation or shortness of breath, increased heart rate, the 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 feeling of dizziness at the moment . In addition, if the anxiety occurs constantly, it is quite common for the body to end up exhausting itself and a permanent feeling of fatigue occurs since the energy that drove the body to move has been depleted in anxiety attacks.

Extreme tiredness from anxiety

Anxiety, therefore, can lead to fatigue since, at the moment in which anxiety occurs, the body uses a high effort and high energy to make the heart beat faster or the rhythm of breathing increase. Therefore, after an anxiety attack, it is quite common to suffer a sudden drop in energy.

In addition, it is quite common to keep thinking about what has caused the anxiety since it is usually a situation to which we give a lot of importance. This concern and dedication to the cause of anxiety can also occur during sleep, either through dreams or by not allowing a good rest, causing insomnia. For this reason, you do not get a good rest or, if you do get to sleep, the deep phases of sleep are usually not reached, so the body never recovers the energy lost during anxiety attacks.

Over time, this fatigue accumulates, seriously affecting attention or performance at work. Also, continually thinking about what worries us can cause emotional fatigue. This refers to exhaustion as a result of fighting with yourself, your 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 can follow an anxiety attack, while in others, that fatigue can be more chronic.

So yes, extreme tiredness can be from 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 to emotional, mental and physical exhaustion.

Extreme tiredness can have other causes

Although extreme fatigue is also a symptom of anxiety, being tired does not necessarily mean that it is due to anxiety , but rather it can be a sign that you are suffering from depression or some other type of medical condition, so neither this nor none of the other symptoms alone are sufficient to diagnose anxiety. In this article we talk about the possible causes of fatigue .