Dizziness due to anxiety: what they are like, symptoms, causes and treatment

Suddenly, you notice a cold sweat that rises up your back, you notice that your pulse quickens, like your breathing is out of rhythm, the cold enters you and turns into cold sweat and you begin to notice how your head is going. That unmistakable feeling that the environment is moving away, the head does not respond to you as normally and you start to distort the images of the environment are symptoms related to dizziness for anxiety.

Is dizziness a cause of anxiety? What does it mean that dizziness is the cause of anxiety? If you are interested in finding answers to these questions, in this Psychology-Online article, we will talk about the dizziness due to anxiety: what they are like, symptoms, causes and treatment.

Index

1. What are anxiety dizziness like?
2. Symptoms of anxiety dizziness
3. Causes of anxiety dizziness
4. Treatment of anxiety dizziness

Anxiety dizziness is one of the most feared symptoms because the patient who suffers from it has no control over it.

In addition, in these cases, the body may also experience a drop in blood pressure or hypoglycemia associated with dizziness, as well as feelings of embarrassment.

How long do anxiety dizziness last?

The duration of dizziness due to anxiety is variable, can last from hours to days. In addition, an uninterrupted feeling of dizziness may also be experienced.

The main symptomatology that we will find in dizziness due to anxiety is the following:

• Altered and shortened breathing.
• Muscle tension.
• Associated respiratory difficulties.
• Irritability.
• State of alertness and hypervigilance.
• Agitation.
• Increased heart rate.
• intrusive thoughts and/or ruminations.
• Feeling weak or tired.
• Panic attacks.
• Physical pains.
• Tremors.
• Palpitations.
• sweating
• Sleeping problems.
• Avoidance of specific situations that generate stress or anxiety.

The consequences of chronic or repeated exposure to stressful stimuli have been extensively studied, since they have a great implication in pathologies associated with stress, which can give rise to anxiogenic responses as a consequence of the activated areas and the hormones involved. Exposure to severe stressful situations is known to produce the following effects:

• Reduced food intake.
• adrenal hypertrophy.
• Increased adenocortical response to adrenocorticotropic hormone.
• Increased basal corticosterone levels.
• Downregulation of corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) receptors.
• Increased response to "in vivo" administration of exogenous CRH.
• Increased expression of CRH and vasopressive arginine (AVP) in the paraventricular nucleus.
• Downregulation of R receptors and not MR receptors hippocampus.
• Increase in excitatory amino acids, activated norepinephrine.
• Chronic exposure leads to neurotoxic effects.
• Decreased GR (glucocorticoid receptors) in hippocampal granule cells.
• Disinhibition of the HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) axis.
• Increased corticosteroids.

So, if you experience a situation with elevated levels of glucocorticoids, our body, to try to defend itself, responds by lowering the levels of the receptor to try not to damage them. In turn, as they are responsible for the feedback mechanism, they prevent these from being activated and disinhibition occurs as a result of the decreased receptor activity corticosteroids, so it increases the anxiety response and affects the different brain and body structures on a physical level.

Ultimately, it has been shown that high levels of stress and anxiety cause physical alterations which, together with breathing alterations, cause less oxygen to reach the different parts of the body. Among other ailments, this process can cause dizziness in the affected person.

Before starting the treatment of dizziness due to anxiety, on the one hand, it is important perform a medical examination to find out if dizziness needs to be addressed with a drug or medical treatment. On the other hand, a psychological clinical interview must be carried out to determine the variables and factors that maintain the anxious symptomatology and which have precipitated it to the point of causing dizziness and headaches. head.

As we see, the treatment has to be multidisciplinary, since it must address physical ailments, such as dizziness and headache, as well as treating symptoms associated with stress and anxiety through psychotherapy. In cases of dizziness due to anxiety, psychological therapy will consist of train relaxation techniques and of stress management, in addition to addressing the associated cognitive alterations and treating problems or social skills if necessary.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Dizziness due to anxiety: what they are like, symptoms, causes and treatment, we recommend that you enter our category of Clinical psychology.

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• Belloch, A., Sandin, B., Ramos, F., (2009). Manual of psychopathology, volume II. Madrid. McGraw Hill / Interamericana de España, S.A.U.
• Ezpeleta, L. and Bull, J. (eds.) (2016). developmental psychopathology. Madrid: Ed. Pyramid.