Here Are 7 Weird Symptoms Linked To Stress You Didn’t Know About

The American Institute of Stress states that stress can also cause lesser-known symptoms such as insomnia, a racing heart, and tension headaches. In fact, you don’t suffer from insomnia, a racing heart, or tension headaches. This list of eight unusual signs indicates you may need to de-stress.

Keeping Your Eyes Open Is Impossible

When you feel overwhelmed, do you ever take a nap? There are several possibilities for your exhaustion, but you might also be experiencing stress-based fatigue, which is when your body attempts to shut down stress by resting. Approximately 32% of people experiencing stress reported fatigue as a symptom, according to a 2015 survey by the American Psychological Association.

A person who is excessively tired can show signs of three types of fatigue: A person who is stressed can be emotionally exhausted, just like someone who feels exhausted after an intense argument with a friend; a person who feels physically exhausted can be fatigued; and a person who feels fatigued mentally can have energy fade after a marathon work meeting.

If you find yourself snoozing whenever you feel stressed, it’s important to know the difference between a rejuvenating cat nap and a psychologically unproductive crutch when it comes to napping. You might want to seek therapy if your fatigue feels more like an ongoing form of mental distress than a symptom of depression. Otherwise, enjoy a little rest every now and then.

There’s A Lot Going On Inside You

You may feel overwhelmed when you’re experiencing a lot of emotions at once—rage, frustration, loneliness, fear. It may feel as if your chest is heavy, your thoughts are racing, and you can’t focus on the present. It may be that you’re worried about the future or stuck with past hurts. This is known as flooding. In our everyday lives, we experience many emotions, but those that feel impossible to manage, such as frustration during a heated argument with a spouse, are referred to as flooded. According to Arielle Schwartz, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist in Boulder, Colorado, flooding is when someone feels overwhelmed by their emotional reactivity at any particular moment and cannot respond effectively to it. Focusing on the present is the antidote.

Suddenly, You Find Yourself Frozen

Fear can immobilize us in some stressful situations, leading to a freeze response. A freeze response manifests as stiffness, restricted breathing, and a feeling that one is stuck in a particular area. A severe threat, like a physical attack or a natural disaster, might induce our bodies to go into what’s known as dissociation, in an attempt to block out the reality of life-threatening situations. It is not just extreme circumstances that trigger the freeze response, but also situations in which we perceive a sense of helplessness, for example, when we are still learning to cope with the world as a child or when we are recovering from trauma or where our emotional resources are undeveloped.

You Go With The Flow

Moreover, fawning is another less well-known stress response, as it is the desire to cooperate with a threat or captor, says Curtis Reisinger, PhD, chief of Long Island Jewish Medical Center’s psychiatry and psychological services division. An evolutionary response to robbery is to comply with the requests of the robber. Think about a robbery: we may react to a robber by obeying his or her instructions. The emotional threat of fawning is similar, although it may be less intense.

Fawn traditionally means showing affection or trying to win favor through exaggerated flattery in a situation. You might hide your true feelings in an argument with a loved one in order to avoid conflict. This would be a good example of fawning a loved one. People-pleasing, a behavior many of us are all too familiar with, can be compared to fawning in a watered-down sense.

Feels Like You Might Faint

Symptoms of the faint response are often accompanied by a dizzy fog that blurs vision or causes nausea during an episode of stress. The author says that people who experience faint-like symptoms of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) report experiences that left them shut down in order to survive after long-lasting stressors that are particularly intense.

“Many people learn to disconnect from emotions and needs,” she says. A sense of helplessness can persist even after the intense stressors have passed, she says. She recommends the type of psychotherapy known as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), which is also a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

EMDR therapy could also be effective in treating trauma-associated symptoms in patients suffering from comorbid psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, substance use disorders, and chronic back pain, according to a review published in Frontiers in Psychology in 2017.

You Feel Pain In Your Body

When you wake up, you feel like you just ran a marathon, but you didn’t actually make it to the gym? Yes, it’s common to feel like you need to move around after sitting for a while or to stretch out from everyday tension and stiffness. However, body aches are often physical manifestations of stress more often than not. David Clarke, MD, president of the Psychophysiologic Disorders Association, says that the most common symptoms are headaches, low back pain, muscle aches, and digestive problems. “But there are many more—often several at once.” If you experience lingering body aches, you could be suffering from health-threatening stress, which could benefit from therapy.

Your Teeth Feel Clenched

The Journal of Dentistry published a study in 2017 indicating that excessive teeth clenching is linked to neuroticism. The stress-induced variety of teeth grinding can result in flattened, chipped, or loose teeth as well as headaches, jaw pain, facial soreness, and overall tooth sensitivity. Teeth grinding and clenching are common while you’re sleeping, so it’s easy to miss them. When you feel pressure in your mouth, it’s often a sign that there is pressure in your life. By assessing what’s causing your stress and reevaluating your life, you can prevent this response in the future.