What are the symptoms of anxiety?
Anxiety feels different for everyone. You might experience some of the physical and mental effects listed on this page, as well as effects in other areas of your life.
You might also have experiences or difficulties with anxiety that aren’t recognised here.
Effects of anxiety on your body these can include:
- a churning feeling in your stomach
- feeling light-headed or dizzy
- pins and needles
- feeling restless or unable to sit still
- headaches, backache or other aches and pains
- faster breathing
- a fast, thumping or irregular heartbeat
- sweating or hot flushes
- sleep problems
- grinding your teeth, especially at night
- nausea (feeling sick)
- needing the toilet more or less often
- changes in your sex drive
- having panic attacks
Effects of anxiety on your mind these can include:
- feeling tense, nervous or unable to relax
- having a sense of dread, or fearing the worst
- feeling like the world is speeding up or slowing down
- feeling like other people can see you’re anxious and are looking at you
- feeling like you can’t stop worrying, or that bad things will happen if you stop worrying
- worrying about anxiety itself, for example worrying about when panic attacks might happen
- wanting lots of reassurance from other people or worrying that people are angry or upset with you
- worrying that you’re losing touch with reality
- low mood and depression
- rumination – thinking a lot about bad experiences, or thinking over a situation again and again
- depersonalisation – a type of dissociation where you feel disconnected from your mind or body, or like you are a character that you are watching in a film
- derealisation – another type of dissociation where you feel disconnected from the world around you, or like the world isn’t real
- worrying a lot about things that might happen in the future