This could reduce the extent of the fight-or-flight response. It helps you feel calmer by increasing chemical messengers in the brain that boost your mood.
Therapy can also help address your emotional numbness and activate your feelings again.Īlthough anxiety medications don’t treat the underlying causes of anxiety, they do help reduce symptoms. The goal of cognitive behavioral therapy is to give you the tools and ability to deal with the root of your anxiety and problems that are initially overwhelming for you. This is a type of psychotherapy centered around the idea that connections exist between your thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, and behaviors. It causes you to have a panic attack and become more anxious, in turn exacerbating the stress response and causing more numbness.ġ9 Strategies That Can Help Distract From Anxiety This can help, as sometimes a vicious cycle is created where anxiety leads to numbness. If you feel anxious, focus on moving the extremities or shaking the limbs of other areas of the body that can become numb.ĭistract yourself and avoid focusing on the numbness itself. Moving and stretching your muscles allows blood and oxygen to be pumped around your body. This could help prevent or stop hyperventilation. You may also breathe through pursed lips³. With these exercises, you breathe with your diaphragm and abdomen instead of your chest wall. Some suggestions that may help include the following.
TINGLING HANDS AND FEET ANXIETY HOW TO
Learning how to cope with your anxiety under stressful situations could help reduce the extent of the numbness and how long it lasts. The numbness and tingling symptoms can last up to 20–30 minutes.Įmotional numbness will probably last for longer than physical numbness and can often be a chronic symptom of anxiety or depression.
The physical sensations of numbness that occur due to hyperventilation or a panic attack are usually short-term. Although we don’t exactly know why this happens, it’s believed that our brain uses emotional numbness or avoidance as a way to cope with the stress it perceives as too much for us to deal with.Įmotional numbness or flatness can be a symptom in conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. If you think your medication might be causing or worsening your anxiety-related numbness, be it physical or emotional, you should speak to your doctor to see if the medication dose or type is the right fit for your needs.Įmotional numbness can occur as a response to trauma or severe stress.
The reduced blood flow to parts of the body not essential for immediate survival such as face, fingers, or toes may cause them to feel tingly or numb.Īlthough anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications can effectively improve symptoms of anxiety such as physical numbness, emotional numbness² is a potential side effect. This is initiated when the brain sends out certain signals. One important part of the fight-or-flight response involves redirecting blood to organs that are essential for survival, such as the heart, muscles, and lungs. In today’s world, however, the fight-or-flight response often activates in situations that are perceived as stressful to us but do not actually threaten our survival. This response evolved to help our early ancestors survive life-threatening situations. As a result, it activates the fight-or-flight response. When you feel anxious, stressed, or scared, your body sees something in your life as a threat. Notably, it can lead to numbness or tingling in the hands, feet, or around the mouth. Hyperventilation can lead to dizziness, lightheadedness, and a feeling that you can't get enough air. This reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in your blood. This can lead to hyperventilation, which is associated with rapid breathing. However, anxiety, emotional upset, and acute stress can cause your rate of breathing to increase. When you feel relaxed and are able to breathe normally, you inhale and exhale adequate amounts of oxygen and carbon dioxide, keeping this in good balance. Various factors can trigger physical or emotional numbness in anxiety.
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