How Anxiety Affects your Daily Life
Having anxiety can affect your daily life in many different ways. Although everyone can experience it, there are some people who experience chronic anxiety which is much worse than your everyday anxieties.
With short-term anxiety, you might experience an increase in your breathing and a faster heart rate. But if it gets worse, you might start to feel nauseous and even lightheaded to the point of passing out.
Having a persistent state of anxiety can negatively affect both your physical and mental health. So, how can it affect your daily life?
Immune System
Anxiety has a negative impact on your entire body, so if you’re becoming sick more frequently than usual, it could be due to your mental health declining. It inhibits the immune system’s ability to fight infections. If you are nervous and stressed on a regular basis or for an extended period of time, your body will never receive the signal to return to normal functioning.
According to studies, those who suffer from persistent anxiety are more prone to contracting the flu, colds, and other diseases.
Body Pains
We typically hold our anxiety in our bodies since both mental and physical tension are often seen together. Sore muscles, back and neck pain, tension headaches, and digestive problems can all occur if you experience it on a regular basis.
Skin Problems
Stress leads your body to produce more hormones, which could also result in an increase in oil production, which in turn causes acne and other skin problems like rashes. Existing skin problems such as eczema, psoriasis, and even rosacea can be worsened if you experience anxiety and stress all the time. You can also break into hives when you’re having an anxiety attack.
Seeing a dermatologist can help, but you should also speak with a mental health expert if you suspect it is causing your skin problems.
Self-Esteem
Anxiety can also have a bad effect on one’s self-esteem. Whether you have social anxiety, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, or other types of it, your worries and doubts are likely to make you question yourself or your capacity to deal with certain situations.
You also start to panic when you have to present a presentation to a larger crowd since you’re overthinking about messing it up. This is a sign of social anxiety.
Speech
As mentioned, when you experience it, you’re self-esteem also decreases. Low self-esteem can also affect your speech. Having it makes you second guess yourself and you might be inclined to speak with less authority.
Anxiety attacks can divert our attention away from what we’re saying, making it harder to present our ideas in a comfortable and confident manner.
Final Thoughts
Short-term anxiety is normal and could be experienced by anyone or everyone. However, dealing with it in the long-term can negatively affect our daily lives and make it harder to go through life every day.
It can also worsen your existing mental health problems. Therefore, it could make it much worse than it already is.
If you’re often experiencing these types of attacks, then it would be best to get in contact with your therapist.
