The Symptoms of Anxiety – What Your Body Is Actually Doing

Here is an excerpt from lecture 11 of The Calmness in Mind Process, in which John Glanvill deeply explores the symptoms of anxiety.

What they are, where they come from, and whether we should be bothered by them or not! In my experience, many people forget how natural many of these feelings, emotions and reactions are and the role we may (unknowingly) play in their occurrence and intensity. Even if you have read a lot about anxiety, I will encourage you to watch this video because it only takes one little nugget of new information to change yourself at a profoundly deep level.

Many people live with anxiety for years without fully recognising what is happening in their body. They know they feel “bad,” “off,” or “not themselves,” yet they often mislabel the physical sensations as something more sinister — a heart problem, a breathing disorder, a neurological issue, or an unexplained illness. The result is fear of the symptoms themselves, which then feeds more symptoms. This is a short, practical look at what anxiety actually does, so you can stop adding a second layer of fear on top of the first.

Anxiety is not a mysterious force. It is the body’s ancient survival system firing when it is not needed, or firing more intensely than the situation requires. The adrenal glands dump adrenaline and related chemicals into the bloodstream. Within seconds the body prepares for fight or flight. That preparation produces a predictable set of physical sensations.

Your heart may pound hard against your chest or race from a normal 70 beats per minute up toward 140 or 160. This feels dramatic, yet for a relatively healthy heart it is simply efficient pumping — more blood delivered to the muscles in case action is required. It is not a sign that the heart is failing.

Breathing can become shallow, rapid or restricted. The chest and diaphragm muscles tighten under the influence of adrenaline, so the chest feels tight or crushing. Many people, especially men, become convinced they are having a heart attack and end up in A&E, only to be told everything is fine. The intensity of the sensation makes the medical reassurance hard to trust.

You may notice a dry mouth, butterflies or churning in the stomach, sweating, trembling, tingling in the hands or feet, hot or cold flushes, dizziness, or a sense of unreality. All of these are normal physiological responses to the same chemical surge. None of them means you are in immediate physical danger. They mean your body has received a message that danger might be present and is preparing accordingly.

The problem is not the symptoms. The problem is the story the mind attaches to them. “This is dangerous.” “Something is badly wrong.” “I can’t cope with this.” That secondary fear keeps the adrenaline flowing and turns a short-lived activation into a prolonged state.

A useful practical response is to change the sensory messages your brain is receiving. The brain sits in darkness inside the skull and makes its best guess from the information arriving through the senses and the posture of the body. If you are tensed, hunched, and breathing rapidly, the brain continues to conclude that something threatening is happening. If you deliberately sag the body, soften the shoulders, and slow the breath, you send a different set of signals.

One simple technique: sit or lean somewhere safe, allow the body to slump, and breathe out slowly through pursed lips until the lungs are completely empty. Then allow the next breath to come in naturally, preferably into the belly rather than the upper chest. Focus attention on the slight resistance of the out-breath. Soften any internal commentary. You are not trying to force calm; you are simply giving the nervous system clearer information that no emergency is present.

These symptoms are common, normal, and temporary when they are not continually re-triggered by fearful interpretation. Recognising them for what they are — the body doing its old job at the wrong time — removes much of their power. You do not have to like the sensations. You only have to stop treating them as evidence that something is fundamentally broken.

As you think less, worry less, and stop fighting the physical feelings, the overall chemical load on the system gradually reduces. The body spends more time in a repair-and-restore state. The same symptoms that once felt catastrophic begin to feel familiar, manageable, and eventually less frequent.

You are not weak for having them. You are a human being whose survival system is still switched on when it no longer needs to be. Learning to recognise the signals without adding a catastrophe story is one of the most useful skills an anxious person can develop.