1249: When Anxiety Feels Physical: Dizziness, Brain Fog, And Feeling Unsteady

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Unknown Speaker (1:18): Welcome to the Anxiety Coaches Podcast, a relaxing and informative show where we explore anxiety, panic, and PTSD, sharing how you can overcome them for life.

Gina Ryan (1:34): Aloha. Welcome back to the anxiety coaches podcast. I'm your host and coach, Gina Ryan, and I am so happy to be with you again today as together we can consider the many ways to bring your mind and body back to its natural peace and calm. In today's episode, I'm talking about something that feels incredibly unsettling when your anxiety is high, and it's that dizzy, lightheaded, or off balance kind of feeling. Maybe you've felt this before.

Gina Ryan (2:09): I don't know. Maybe you felt it when you were standing in the line at the grocery store, or maybe you felt it while you were driving. I used to feel that way when I was driving and I was super anxious. Maybe while walking through a crowded store or even just sitting at home on the couch. You suddenly feel floaty, disconnected, kind of wobbly, or maybe even like you might faint.

Gina Ryan (2:34): And if you've ever experienced this, you already know how quickly your mind jumps to what if something is seriously wrong with me. Right? Immediately, that's what the mind thinks. And, of course, it does because when the anxious mind starts searching for danger, the nervous system responds immediately, and your body says, oh, we're in danger now? Okay.

Gina Ryan (3:01): Let's prepare. Now this is how we get in the cycle. Suddenly, the symptoms begin to intensify. Your heart races more. Your breathing changes.

Gina Ryan (3:15): Right? And your muscles begin to tighten. And, of course, the thoughts begin to spiral. And now you're caught in the anxiety loop. So today, I wanna gently walk through what might actually be happening in the body during these moments because knowledge is power.

Gina Ryan (3:35): If you can understand this more, you can begin to be more gentle with yourself. And let's see why anxiety can absolutely create these sensations, and most importantly, what you can do to help yourself feel safer and steadier again. As always, I want to say this clearly. If symptoms are new, severe, persistent, or concerning, it's important to check with your healthcare provider, whoever that is for you. Anxiety can cause many physical sensations, but we never want to ignore medical concerns.

Gina Ryan (4:17): At the same time, many listeners have already been checked out medically and still continue to struggle with these frightening sensations. And understanding the anxiety connection can be deeply reassuring. So let's talk about it. One of the biggest contributors to anxiety related dizziness is breathing changes. Years ago, we used to focus heavily on you were getting too much oxygen.

Gina Ryan (4:50): I remember that. When I had anxiety, they were thinking that was the issue. Well, today we understand it a little bit more accurately, and I'm sure we'll keep learning more and more as each year goes by. What's often happening during anxiety is that we begin breathing faster, shallower, and more irregularly. And that, especially from the upper chest instead of the diaphragm.

Gina Ryan (5:19): And when that happens, we start blowing off too much carbon dioxide. Now, dioxide gets a bad reputation because we think of it as waste gas, but your body actually needs healthy levels of carbon dioxide for balance. When the CO2 levels drop too quickly, blood vessels can temporarily constrict a bit, and that can lead to symptoms like lightheadedness, tingling in the hands or feet, feeling disconnected or unreal, or as if you are having a dissociated type of feeling, tight chest sensations can come up, feeling unsteady or floaty, vision changes, and even brain fog. And this is one reason panic attacks can feel so physical and convincing. Your body sensations are real.

Gina Ryan (6:24): They are not imagined. They are happening and they are real, but they are often being driven by a dysregulated nervous system rather than a dangerous emergency. And that distinction matters because when we interpret the sensations as catastrophic, the nervous system escalates further. It's like throwing gasoline onto an already roaring fire. One important thing I really want you to remember is this, that I'm about to faint feeling during anxiety is extremely common.

Gina Ryan (7:07): Most people do not faint from panic alone. In fact, anxiety usually raises the heart rate and blood pressure temporarily as the body prepares for action. Now there are exceptions, and certain people can experience fainting responses under specific circumstances, especially with blood injury and phobias or vasovagal reactions, but the general panicky, dizzy, anxiety state is much more commonly associated with overstimulation than actual collapse. And honestly, just understanding that can sometimes take the fear down a notch because fear of the symptoms is often what keeps the cycle going. Now there are other contributors too.

Gina Ryan (8:04): Muscle tension in the neck, the shoulders, your jaw, and scalp can absolutely create sensations of dizziness or imbalance. So many anxious people are unconsciously tightening all day long. Sometimes we're practically walking around bracing against life. And when the muscles around the neck and head stay tense, that can affect how steady and grounded we actually feel physically. Blood sugar swings can contribute too, Not in the simplistic way we used to talk about it years ago, but more in terms of overall nervous system stress.

Gina Ryan (8:51): If you go long periods without eating, if you rely heavily on caffeine, eat very high sugar meals followed by crashes, or are chronically undernourished because anxiety suppresses your appetite, your body can become more vulnerable to shakiness, lightheadedness, and adrenaline surges, and all the other symptoms and sensations that come along with those adrenaline surges. Before we begin, let's hear from the sponsors that support the show. If summer travel brings excitement and a little bit of anxiety, you know you're not alone. Sometimes even learning a few phrases in another language can help you feel more grounded and confident. That's one reason I've been enjoying Babbel for learning Spanish.

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Gina Ryan (15:01): And every course comes with a fourteen day money back guarantee. Here's a special limited time deal for our customers. Right now, get up to 60% off your Babbel subscription at babbel.com forward slash acp. Sleep deprivation can contribute too. Dehydration can contribute.

Gina Ryan (15:24): Scrolling and overstimulation can contribute. This is why anxiety recover is rarely about fixing one isolated symptom. It's about calming and supporting the whole nervous system. So let's move into some practical things that you can do. The first is gentle diaphragmatic breathing, not forcing giant breaths.

Gina Ryan (15:53): That can actually make some people feel more dizzy. Instead, think softer, slower, and lower. Let the belly expand gently on the inhale. That's letting your breath go lower. And then slightly lengthen the exhale.

Gina Ryan (16:14): Even just breathing out a little more slowly than you breathe in can help signal safety to your nervous system. And over time, this helps regulate breathing chemistry and stimulate the vagus nerve at the same time, which plays a huge role in helping the body shift out of fight or flight. Now if you're someone who's constantly checking your breath or over focuses on it, keep this very gentle and non perfectionistic. This is not about doing breathing correctly. Your body knows how to do that.

Gina Ryan (16:56): It's all about allowing the body to settle and do what it knows to do best. The second thing is movement. This is super important. When anxiety energy builds up in the body, movement helps metabolize some of that activation. Sometimes a slow walk outside can help tremendously.

Gina Ryan (17:24): Sometimes stretching helps. Sometimes simply standing up and shaking out your arms can help. You do not need an intense workout. You're not trying to punish your nervous system into calming down. You're trying to reassure it that the energy moving through the body has somewhere to go.

Gina Ryan (17:49): And movement also helps bring the attention back into the body in a grounded way instead of staying trapped inside of fearful thoughts. The third thing is meditation. You knew I was gonna go there. Right? I always do.

Gina Ryan (18:08): Or you can just do a quiet nervous system reset or a nervous system rest, whatever you wanna call it. I know some people hear meditation and immediately think, I can't meditate. My mind is too busy. But meditation is not the absence of thoughts. Nobody's mind is too busy for meditation.

Gina Ryan (18:33): It's the practice of noticing the thoughts and the busyness without immediately following them into fear. That's the practice. That's it. Even sitting quietly for five minutes and observing your breath, the sounds around you or bodily sensations can begin retraining the brain away from the constant alarm mode. It's like strength training for your attention, and consistency matters more than perfection.

Gina Ryan (19:09): The fourth thing is reducing overall nervous system load. This is a big one. Sometimes people desperately want to stop one symptom: the dizziness, the derealization, the tingling, the intrusive thoughts, but all of these symptoms may be growing from the same overstimulated root system. When you begin calming the nervous system overall, many symptoms naturally begin fading together. And sometimes they fade together and they fade gradually out of you, and it's so gradual that you don't even notice it at first.

Gina Ryan (19:58): You suddenly realize one day, wow. I haven't felt symptom x y z in a while. And that is how healing often happens, quietly, incrementally, not overnight. I wanna stress that. Many people have asked me over the years, do you remember when your last panic attack was, or do you remember when you had your last high anxiety times?

Gina Ryan (20:28): And I have to tell you, I don't because this healing happens so quietly, so incrementally that just one day you look back and you say, I haven't felt that symptom for a while or a long time. By the time you're getting so far out in the fading, you're not thinking about it anymore. You're not keeping track anymore. You're just going through your days, practicing your practices, and next thing you know, you don't remember when your last panic attack was. Now the fifth thing is becoming mindful of stimulants and triggers.

Gina Ryan (21:12): So, you know, a podcast would not be complete without me talking about things like caffeine. So here I am gonna jump on the soapbox just for a little while. For some people, too much caffeine can absolutely worsen dizziness and panic sensations. For some people, any caffeine can worsen dizziness and panic sensations. So I want you to pay attention to any of your caffeine intake.

Gina Ryan (21:44): This includes, of course, coffee, my number one one I talk about because I like coffee. I love coffee, and I enjoy coffee. And I enjoy the decaf kind most of the time now. Occasionally, a regular caffeinated one will sneak in there, and I'll tell you, I feel like I've been drugged. So I know that caffeine is real.

Gina Ryan (22:10): It is a stimulant that can cause many different things happening in your body. So if you want to go caffeine, just don't be surprised if you have worsening dizziness, panic sensations, or high levels of stress. You can talk about coffee, let it go, go half and half first, let it go eventually. Same with tea. Tea has caffeine.

Gina Ryan (22:41): It's a different feeling that you get from tea. It's very different actually to me. I can feel the difference between a tea kind of caffeine and a coffee caffeine, but then, again, we don't wanna forget about all of the energy drinks. We don't want to forget where those stimulants might be hiding even in foods and in drugs that we are taking, whether they are street drugs, which I hope you are not taking, and prescription drugs. You wanna double check.

Gina Ryan (23:11): Even over the counter medications can be stimulating, so check into those. They are really causing you to have heightened sensations from your already stimulated nervous system. Another trigger could be lack of sleep. This can really amplify symptoms. Constant doom scrolling can keep the nervous system hyper alert, and this isn't about becoming rigid or fearful of every little thing.

Gina Ryan (23:46): It's about noticing what helps your body feel safer and steadier. Maybe you need more sleep. Maybe you need to have less scrolling. And it's about noticing what helps you feel safer in the moment. Right?

Gina Ryan (24:04): We can find those times. Is it our self talk? What are we saying to ourselves? Are we beating ourselves up? Notice that.

Gina Ryan (24:11): Are you being hard on yourself? Being critical can also be a trigger to make you feel unsafe. Your nervous system is always communicating with you. The sixth thing is practicing non catastrophic self talk during symptoms. This is a huge one.

Gina Ryan (24:31): Now instead of saying, oh, no. Something terrible is happening. Now I know that because I used to say, oh my god. Here we go again. That was like my mantra.

Gina Ryan (24:43): I talk about that was a negative mantra, and no wonder things kept going. I have to change those things. We don't wanna stay stuck in that. Oh, no. Something terrible is happening.

Gina Ryan (24:55): No. Try this instead. This is uncomfortable, but I've felt this before. Or maybe my nervous system is activated right now. I can slow down.

Gina Ryan (25:09): Or try this one. I can support myself through this because you can become your best ally. You're helping teach the brain that the sensation itself is not an emergency and that changes everything over time because the fear of the sensation is often more disruptive than the sensation itself, and I really wanna leave you with some hope today. These symptoms can feel terrifying. I know that firsthand.

Gina Ryan (25:45): They can make you avoid driving, make you avoid stores, travel, can make you avoid social situations, even make you avoid walking alone. But people recover from this every single day, and I know that you can too. Not because you force the symptoms away, but because you gradually teach your nervous system safety again, little by little, breath by breath, step by step. And if this is something you've been struggling with, please know you are absolutely not alone. Your body is not betraying you.

Gina Ryan (26:32): Your nervous system is trying to protect you. It just has become overprotective. And with patience, understanding, and consistent calming practices, it can learn a new pattern. You got this. If what we talked about today feels close to home and you're wanting a little more support, I do one on one work with people who are learning to relate differently to their stress and anxiety.

Gina Ryan (27:05): It's slow, steady, and very human work. You can always find details on my site, anxietycoachespodcast.com, if and when that feels right for you. And now for today's quote. Self compassion is simply giving the same kindness to ourselves that we would give to others. And that's from Christopher Germer.

Gina Ryan (27:36): I'll be back in a few more days with another podcast. Until then, be well and aloha.

Unknown Speaker (27:45): Thanks so much for joining us for today's episode of the anxiety coaches podcast. Find more information at the anxietycoachespodcast.com.