3 Weird Symptoms of Anxiety Nobody Talks About ðŸ§
Uncommon Anxiety Symptoms and Their Neurological Roots (5min Read)
TL;DR Summary:
Anxiety can manifest in strange and unexpected ways.
Three surprising symptoms: excessive yawning, phantom smells, and cold feet.
Each symptom has a scientific explanation rooted in how the brain responds to stress.
Learn actionable tools to manage these symptoms based on neuroscience.
Discover how understanding these quirky symptoms can help you regain control.
Curious about these weird symptoms and how to tackle them? Read on!
Welcome Back!
Anxiety is the number one thing that I work on with people day to day.
That being said, a lot of people are surprised when they find out that some of the things we’re talking about today are anxiety symptoms!
This is especially true if you're a survivor of an abusive relationship or someone who has experienced trauma!
Let’s dive in.
3 Weird Symptoms of Anxiety
Number One: Excessive Yawning
Picture this: you're sitting in a quiet room, perhaps before a stressful event, and you find yourself yawning repeatedly.
What's going on? This isn't just a sign of boredom or tiredness; it could be anxiety manifesting in your body.
During anxiety attacks, hyperventilation is a common response.
Hyperventilation happens when you breathe too quickly, and your body feels like it isn't getting enough oxygen.
Your brain, particularly the medulla oblongata, which helps control breathing, triggers excessive yawning to balance oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in your blood.
What You Can Do About It
If you’re a long-time reader, you won’t be surprised to hear me say the first thing you should do if this is happening to you, is welcome it!
Fighting it will only make it worse.
Next, do some deep belly breathing!
This is an effective tool to counteract hyperventilation and excessive yawning.
Slow, deliberate breaths can calm the nervous system and regulate carbon dioxide levels.
How to do it:
Inhale deeply through your nose for a count of four, allowing your abdomen to expand.
Hold your breath for a count of four.
Exhale slowly through your mouth for a count of six.
Repeat this cycle for a few minutes or until you feel calmer.
Deep breathing engages the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps counteract the stress response that’s causing the yawning.
Number Two: Phantom Smells
Have you ever caught a whiff of something odd that no one else around you seems to notice?
This phenomenon, known as phantom smells, is another unusual symptom of anxiety.
Chronic stress and anxiety can cause biochemical changes in the body, leading to hyper-stimulation of the olfactory receptors in the brain.
Our olfactory bulbs & receptors are the part of the brain responsible for our sense of smell and taste!
Which is why this hyper-stimulation from stress and anxiety can result in odd tastes and smells, even when there’s nothing unusual around you.
A lot of people who experience this think they’re having hallucinations or worse, but I can assure you, that isn’t the case in this situation!
What You Can Do About It
After realizing they’re not hallucinating, I’ve found that helping my clients ground themselves using their other senses can help them a ton with this symptom!
Grounding techniques can help redirect your attention away from the phantom smells by engaging other senses.
How to do it:
5-4-3-2-1 Technique: Look around you…
5: Name five things you can see.
4: Name four things you can touch.
3: Name three things you can hear.
2: Name two things you can smell (or like to smell).
1: Name one thing you can taste (or like to taste).
This technique engages multiple parts of the brain, helping to shift focus away from the olfactory system's hyper-stimulation.
Number Three: Cold Feet
We’ve all heard the expression "cold feet" when someone is nervous, but for many, it's more than just a saying.
Stress and anxiety can reduce circulation, especially to the extremities, causing cold hands and feet.
When you're anxious, your brain's hypothalamus triggers the body's fight-or-flight response, constricting blood vessels to redirect blood flow to essential organs.
This physiological response, though useful for survival, often leaves the hands and feet feeling cold.
What You Can Do About It
In this case, warming back up the extremities is about blood flow & relaxation.
One of the best ways to do both of these things at once is Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR).
Progressive Muscle Relaxation helps improve circulation and reduce tension by focusing on different muscle groups.
I remember the first time I tried this out in my undergrad.
My professor took us through it in class one day, and I fell asleep during it because it relaxed me so much.
Whoopies…
Here’s how to do it!
How to do it:
Find a quiet place to sit or lie down comfortably.
Start with your toes. Tighten the muscles in your toes, hold for a few seconds, and then relax.
Move upwards through your body, tensing and relaxing each muscle group, including your calves, thighs, abdomen, chest, arms, and face.
Breathe deeply as you tense and relax each muscle group.
PMR not only helps with circulation but also signals the brain that it's okay to relax, reducing the fight-or-flight response!
Getting to the Root Cause
You probably noticed that all three of these symptoms have one thing in common: they're linked to how the brain responds to stress and anxiety.
This is also a great demonstration of how interconnected our brains are and how stress and anxiety can affect us system-wide!
If you've experienced these or other unusual symptoms, know that you're not alone.
As you now know, these responses are often tied to anxiety and the brain’s way of coping with stress.
Understanding this can help you solve the root cause issue instead of just addressing a surface-level symptom!
I hope this was useful and wish you the best of luck on your healing journey.
Until next time… Live Heroically ðŸ§
Supporting Research:
Excessive Yawning and Breathing Exercises:
Kim, H., Lee, S., & Park, J. H. (2017). The Effects of Breathing Exercise on Anxiety, Heart Rate Variability, and Respiratory Rate in People with Anxiety. Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing, 47(3), 350-357. https://doi.org/10.4040/jkan.2017.47.3.350
Jerath, R., Edry, J. W., Barnes, V. A., & Jerath, V. (2006). Physiology of Long Pranayamic Breathing: Neural Respiratory Elements May Provide a Mechanism That Explains How Slow Deep Breathing Shifts the Autonomic Nervous System. Medical Hypotheses, 67(3), 566-571. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2006.02.042
Phantom Smells and Grounding Techniques:
Liu, D., Cai, X., Wang, L., Yi, F., Liao, W., Huang, R., Fang, C., Chen, J., & Zhou, J. (2021). Comparative Proteomics of Rat Olfactory Bulb Reveal Insights into Susceptibility and Resiliency to Chronic-stress-induced Depression or Anxiety. Neuroscience, 473, 29-43. https://doi.org/10.21203/RS.3.RS-586884/V1.
Vaz, R., Cardoso, A., Serrão, P., Pereira, P., & Madeira, M. (2018). Chronic stress leads to long-lasting deficits in olfactory-guided behaviors, and to neuroplastic changes in the nucleus of the lateral olfactory tract. Hormones and Behavior, 98, 130-144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2017.12.006.
Cold Feet and Progressive Muscle Relaxation:
Conrad, A., & Roth, W. T. (2007). Muscle Relaxation Therapy for Anxiety Disorders: It Works but How? Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 21(3), 243-264. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2006.08.001