How can Anxiety Affect You in the Long Run?

Anxiety disorders are mental illnesses that cause unexplainable amounts of stress or fear regarding possible future events, and interfere with one’s daily functioning. This stress is usually very overwhelming and out of proportion to the impact of the future event. 

They are lifelong illnesses, meaning they cannot be “cured”. While they won’t go away completely, there are many ways to manage the symptoms so that it doesn’t affect your daily life.

What are the Symptoms of anxiety

Long-term anxiety can have detrimental impacts on your body and mind. Some of the common physical symptoms of anxiety are: 

• Chronic headaches with no explainable medical reason

• Body aches especially around the joints, shoulders, and lower back, or muscle tension

• Difficulty breathing or an inability to take a full, deep breath. Breathing feels very shallow and rapid.

• Nightmares

• Memory Loss

• Brain fog

• Constantly feeling sleepy and tired

• Unable to eat well: Eating too much, or being unable to eat 

• Poor sleep hygiene: Sleeping too much or being unable to sleep at all

On a mental and emotional level, one will have difficulties concentrating, making decisions, and functioning daily. The anxiety might even cripple them from doing things they enjoy because they simply do not have the energy. 

Anxiety disorders, if left untreated, can result in:

• Depression

• Dysregulation of emotions

• Limited ability to work 

• Poor immunity

• Substance abuse

• Increased risk of self-harm.

According to multiple studies chronic stress and anxiety can alter certain parts of your brain. For example, your hippocampus is in charge of learning and memory. This increases your risk of neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia.

Additionally, neurobiological studies suggest that anxiety not only triggers your limbic system, but also ensures your frontal lobe (the seat of executive decision-making) cannot regulate this dysfunction. Over time, the same pathways get triggered, and this makes them stronger, and it takes more effort to undo it.  

Can anxiety lead to depression?

Anxiety and Depression have a 50% comorbidity, i.e., there is a 50% chance of you developing Depression if you already have a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder, and vice versa. It is possible that long-term anxiety can influence your brain chemistry so much that you develop symptoms of Depression as well. Here are a few ways anxiety disorders can cause depression: 

• Avoiding difficult situations: Those with anxiety disorder have a tendency to completely avoid any situation that stresses them out. For those with social anxiety, this manifests in avoiding any potential social situation, which worsens your ability to cope in social situations and that means you avoid them more, and the cycle goes on and on. Your threshold of tolerance lowers, because you do not know how to cope with stressors. 

In this example, eventually, the feelings of loneliness take over, and you may develop depression over whatever your anxiety is making you miss out on. 

• Changes in the way you see yourself: You feel incompetent, and overwhelmed. You no longer trust your ability to handle triggers that make you anxious, and that changes your self-perception. You may label yourself as ‘weak’, ‘sensitive’ or other harsh words, that lower your self-esteem. This may develop Depression.

• Lack of mental resources: Fighting anxiety can be such a taxing endevour. In the long run, you run out of energy and mental resources to keep going, and this exhaustion could seep into Depression. 

• Learned helplessness: Anxiety disorders have a way of making you feel helpless. When one faces difficult situations, one learn to cope with them. For those struggling with anxiety disorder, difficult situations are overwhelming and triggering. When they cannot cope, they may develop something called ‘learned helplessness’: they believe there is nothing they can do to change the situation and ‘learn’ to give up. Such beliefs can trigger Depression.

Sometimes the factors that cause anxiety or depression tend to overlap. Some of these factors are:

• Childhood abuse

• Stressful environments

• Genetics

• Personality traits

• Neglect

• Another medical concern such as a tumor, or cyst

Amaha has several therapists that can help you navigate chronic anxiety. Reach out to them here!