18 Consequences of High-Functioning Anxiety

12. You Find it Hard to Interact in Person

The technological age has redefined how humans communicate. When is the last time you called your friend on the phone? If you are an avid participant in the digital revolution, chances are you can’t remember that last phone call. People text each other now. These are not letters, and they are not long.

They are a few lines they use to convey almost everything. Some people even try to convey emotion with these lines. This has been made possible by those little things called emojis. If a person sends a wink after an ambiguous statement, then you know they are joking. If the line ends with a single full stop or even no full stop at all, there could be something wrong.

This is the language of the new millennium. There are some who may chastise the movement. They may say that it has diminished the ability to communicate. But, there are people, people with anxiety who find it a welcome relief. They are given the opportunity to think carefully about what they want to say.

If you suffer from high anxiety, texting allows you to construct the perfect message before sending it. The problem comes in when you have to speak to people face to face. Anxious people feel stripped of their digital camouflage and may find it difficult to voice their thoughts.

13. You Find it Hard to Concentrate

Anxiety involves the prefrontal cortex and amygdala in your brain- a key region involved in memory and learning. When you are anxious, your adrenaline levels rise, and the sympathetic nervous system takes over. This is not a state conducive to concentration. Even if you manage to take in what has been said, it tends to bounce around in your brain and not be adequately processed or stored in your long-term memory.

Students may experience high levels of anxiety when studying for exams. A study of undergraduates in the UK found that 20% of students who did not experience anxiety when starting their studies began to experience a significant level of anxiety by their second year. The minds of anxious students are often full of racing thoughts, and they have great difficulty in trying to focus on information and remember it.

Anxiety can wreak havoc in a work environment where it’s necessary to concentrate, take in information and decide on what to do. It not only affects your productivity but the way you relate to colleagues and clients. If you fear a project is too large or complicated, you may procrastinate and put off starting it. Excessive worry can also make you jump from one task to the other and be unsuccessful in completing any of them. It can also affect your ability to listen and take on board what others are saying.

When anxiety is severe, it will affect your concentration in every area of your life. It impairs your short-term learning and concentration areas of the brain. It’s important to realize that you don’t have to put so much pressure on yourself to remember everything because when the pressure is lifted, the stress response subsides. More strength to focus and to memorize creates the opposite effect of what you want to happen.

14. Your digestion suffers

The changes that occur in your digestive system don’t start in your stomach but your brain. When your body is in “fight or flight” response mode, it slows down processes that are less important at the time, such as digestion. Usually, this response is supposed to be temporary, but the problem occurs when anxiety is a long-term, chronic condition. It can cause symptoms such as constipation, abdominal cramps, diarrhea, bloating and acid reflux.

Long-term anxiety can also cause inflammation and even change the way your stomach digests nutrients. When your sympathetic nervous system is activated, muscle spasms in your stomach occur and can result in various digestive problems. Increased anxiety can also affect acid levels in the stomach which impairs the ability of the stomach to digest food properly. When anxiety continues over an extended period, the bacteria in the gut can become unbalanced, also preventing proper digestion.

In many cases, digestive issues cause further anxiety. For instance, bloating and gas can lead to chest pains, and if you suffer from anxiety attacks, they may be triggered by chest pain. Indigestion causes pain and discomfort that can lead to more anxiety. It’s a vicious cycle, and if anxiety is causing poor digestion, there’s a good chance that this will have long-term adverse effects on your health.

Keeping track of your digestive problems can help you to determine whether anxiety is causing them. Write down what you’re eating, how you’re feeling emotionally and what you’re experiencing physically several times a day. For example, if you’re experiencing symptoms on the days when you have important meetings, they could be caused by anxiety. Eating healthy foods and exercising can improve your digestion, but you will need to find ways to deal with your underlying anxiety.

15. You have aches, repetitive habits, and tics

Certain habits may indicate an underlying level of anxiety. These habits such as hair twisting or pulling, scratching, fingernail biting, knuckle cracking and lip chewing may be clues that you are not dealing with your anxiety as well as you thought you were. You continuously perform these repetitive actions to release your nervous energy – even if you seem quite calm in other ways.

Shoulder and neck pain, as well as a constant knot in the stomach, are common signs of high-functioning anxiety. Your anxiety ‘leaks out’ in the form of physical pain. When you’re experiencing a high level of anxiety, your body is like a car with the engine racing, but it’s not in gear and moving forward. Your body releases adrenaline and your blood vessels constrict which causes tension, and this constant tension has negative side effects.

Anxious people will often fidget or act restlessly. They cannot sit; still, they pace the floor, wring their hands, adjust their clothing, play with their jewelry, or mindlessly tap their fingers on a table. They may play incessantly with objects on their desks, swing their legs or keep tapping their feet up and down on the floor. Some people grind their teeth while they sleep and wake up with a sore jaw.

Many people suffer from these kinds of symptoms, but they have commonly brushed aside and may not even be recognized as being caused by anxiety. If you realize that anxiety causes many of your symptoms, you can get a proper diagnosis and treatment. Early treatment may prevent severe mental and physical complications that may occur when anxiety is experienced over an extended period.

16. It may affect your heart health

Researchers today are trying to establish whether there is a link between anxiety and poor heart health. They think that the hormones released by your body when you are anxious might hold a clue. When you are in a stressful situation, adrenaline and cortisol are released by the adrenal glands, situated just above your kidneys. These hormones are both critical for survival in life-threatening situations, but when they are being released too often due to perceived threats, they have a dark side.

If these hormones are continually being produced due to ongoing anxiety, hormonal dis-regulation can occur. This can lead to increased inflammation and buildup of plaque in arteries. The presence of too much cortisol in the system can lead to weight gain which in turn can trigger diabetes, both conditions being risk factors for heart disease.

A panic attack and a heart attack share similar symptoms. You may end up in the emergency room fearing you have a heart attack. Your blood may be tested for specific heart muscle enzymes to establish if you have a heart attack. If none are found, your symptoms were most likely caused by a panic attack.

One of the most dangerous side effects of the constant release of stress hormones is what this does to the major organs of the body. Adrenaline and cortisol have been tied to abnormal heart rhythms and even to conditions related to the blood vessels and structure of the heart. If you suffer from an anxiety disorder, your body reacts in ways that can put a strain on your heart. If you already have heart disease, this can raise the risk of having a heart attack.

17. You see the world differently

In a study that took place at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, it was found that anxious people were unable to discriminate between an experienced initially, threatening stimulus and a newer, similar one that was safe. Researchers found that emotional experiences induced changes in sensory representations in the brains of patients with anxiety. These plastic changes in the patients’ brain circuits affected the way they responded to new safe stimuli. They over-generalized emotional experiences due to this fundamental difference in their brains.

People are not usually born with anxiety. They form it after a traumatic experience that leaves them with unresolved fears and worries. They often develop triggers that cause these events to resurface. This is why they may proceed very cautiously and overreact in circumstances that do not bother others at all. They may jump when a door slams or keep looking over a shoulder when walking down the street.

For instance, you get on the train, and the person next to you looks suspicious and is wearing a hoodie. He reaches into his pocket, and you expect him to pull out a knife when he is only reaching for his cell phone. You probably can’t even see the damage yourself, and it may be somewhat like an invisible wound that you could bump and tear open at any time.

Your anxiety creates a fundamental difference in the way you perceive things. When you are focused on discerning threats, negative information dominates your consciousness. Developing self-awareness of the way your anxiety may be driving your perception of the world and a bias for threat may be the first step towards preventing it from instilling fear and distorting reality.

18. You can’t just ‘stop it’

You can’t just tell yourself to stop being anxious and expect it to disappear. However, you can learn to cope with anxiety and lessen it. You need to recognize it is an issue because, if it left untreated, the many symptoms could start affecting your mental, emotional and physical well-being. Not only that but if you try to cope with the symptoms yourself, it can also lead to mal-adaptive behavior such as drinking too much, to deal with the painful feelings inside.

Trying to deaden anxiety in unhealthy ways usually leads to greater feelings of anxiety and contributes to the development of depression, sleep disorders and more. Fortunately, it is treatable, and knowledge is power. If you recognized yourself in these 18 consequences of high-functioning anxiety, you could do something about it. Treating it does require time and effort. Various means and modalities may be used to address it because it is likely to have developed over time.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is regarded as one of the best therapeutic approaches for people suffering from anxiety. They are taught to recognize irrational thought patterns and behaviors and learn how to replace them with healthy ones. Psychotherapists may also help to creatively implement real-life actions that support their well-being and help to reduce behavior that contributes to anxiety.

Genetic, social, lifestyle and biological factors were all probably involved in its presence in your life, and this is why you will probably need some support in finding different ways of living with it and treating it. You may also need medication in conjunction with therapy. Your anxiety does not mean that you are ‘broken.’ However, learning to acknowledge it means that you can find ways of coping with it and minimizing its adverse effect on your life.

Did you recognize yourself in these 18 consequences of high-functioning anxiety? Knowledge is power, so now that you know, you can do some self-help. But if you find it hard to stop any of these negative actions, consider seeking some professional help. You don’t have to suffer in silence with high anxiety.