Stress Hormone Rush; Abdomen Rush
Stress Hormone Rush or Burst; Abdomen Rush can feel like you have a sudden and unexplained burst of stress hormones that feels like an abdomen spasm or “rush” that stimulates the body.
Involuntary Stress Hormone Rushes and Abdomen Rushes and Spasms are common anxiety symptoms, including anxiety and panic attack symptoms.
This article explains the relationship between anxiety, hyperstimulation, and having involuntary stress hormone rush or abdomen rush symptoms.
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Involuntary Stress Hormone Rush or Abdomen Rush Common Symptom Descriptions
- You have a sudden and unexplained burst of stress hormones that feels like an abdomen spasm or “rush” that stimulates the body.
- You have a sudden burst of stress hormone energy that starts in the abdomen and radiates throughout the body.
- You have a sudden rush of nervous energy that radiates from the stomach or abdomen.
- It can also feel like your stomach or abdomen has intensely spasmed, causing a rush of stress hormones to flood throughout your body.
- It can also feel like your body is being flooded with stress hormones originating in the stomach or abdomen.
- Some people also experience a brief shudder or shaking sensation throughout the body.
- Some people react to this symptom with fear and panic.
Involuntary stress hormone abdomen rushes can:
- Occur rarely or frequently.
- Precede, accompany, or follow an escalation of other anxiety symptoms or occur by itself.
- Precede, accompany, or follow a period of nervousness, anxiety, fear, and stress, or occur "out of the blue" and for no reason.
- Range in intensity from slight, to moderate, to severe.
- Come on gradually or suddenly.
- Last for a moment or two, or for more than a minute or more.
- Occur with familiar triggers or randomly with no obvious triggers.
All the above combinations and variations are common.
This symptom can seem more noticeable when undistracted, resting, trying to sleep, or waking up.
To see if anxiety might be playing a role in your symptoms, rate your level of anxiety using our free one-minute instant results Anxiety Test, Anxiety Disorder Test, or Hyperstimulation Test.
The higher the rating, the more likely anxiety could be contributing to or causing your anxiety symptoms, including feeling like impending doom symptoms.
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Causes
Medical Advisory
Talk to your doctor about all new, changing, persistent, and returning symptoms as some medical conditions and medications can cause anxiety-like symptoms.
1. The Stress Response
Anxious behavior, such as worry, activates the stress response, which prepares the body for emergency action.
This survival reaction is often referred to as the fight or flight response, the emergency response, the fight, flight, or freeze response (some people freeze when they are afraid, like a “deer caught in headlights”), or the fight, flight, freeze, or faint response (since some people faint when they are afraid).[1][2]
Visit our “Stress Response” article for more information about the many body-wide changes caused by the stress response.
Some of the stress response changes include:
- Quickly converts the body’s energy reserves into “fuel” (blood sugar) to provide an instant boost of energy.
- Increases heart rate, respiration, and metabolism due to the boost in energy.
- Stimulates the nervous system, increasing nervous system activity to be more sensitive and reactive to danger.
- Heightens most of the body’s senses to be more aware of danger.
- Shunts blood to parts of the body more vital to survival, such as the brain, arms, legs, and vital organs, and away from parts less vital for survival, such as the stomach, digestive system, and skin. It accomplishes this by constricting blood vessels in certain parts of the body and dilating them in others.
- Creates a sudden urge to void the bowels in preparation to fight or flee.
- Causes muscles to tighten to make the body more resilient to injury.
- Suppresses the immune system so that most of the body’s resources are used for emergency action.
To name a few.
The more anxious you are, the more dramatic the stress response changes.
Higher degree stress responses can cause sudden and dramatic physiological, psychological, and emotional changes, resulting in a “warm and spasm-like burst of stress hormones that flow throughout and stimulate the body.”
Acute high anxiety is a common cause of this symptom for some anxious people.
2. Hyperstimulation
When stress responses occur too frequently, such as from overly anxious behavior, the body can remain in a state of semi-stress response readiness. We call this state “stress-response hyperstimulation” since stress hormones are powerful stimulants.
Hyperstimulation is also often referred to as “hyperarousal,” “HPA axis dysfunction,” or “nervous system dysregulation.”[3][4]
Hyperstimulation can cause the body to act erratically, causing erratic and out-of-the-blue bursts of stress hormones that feel like an “abdomen rush” that radiates throughout the body. This is especially true for high and very high degrees of hyperstimulation.
Visit the “Stress-Response Hyperstimulation” article for the many ways hyperstimulation can affect the body.
As the degree of hyperstimulation increases, so can the frequency and severity of this symptom.
3. Behavior
Highly emotional and reactive people can overreact to the strong feelings of anxiety, stress, and hyperstimulation, amplifying their effects and creating involuntary bursts of stress hormones.
Doom and glooming, catastrophizing, and fearing the strong feelings of anxiety, stress, and hyperstimulation are known contributing factors to this symptom.
4. Other Factors
Other factors can create stress and cause anxiety-like symptoms, as well as aggravate existing anxiety symptoms, including:
- Medication
- Recreational drugs
- Stimulants
- Sleep deprivation
- Fatigue
- Hyper and hypoventilation
- Low blood sugar
- Nutritional deficiencies
- Dehydration
- Hormone changes
- Pain
Select the relevant link for more information.
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Treatment
When involuntary bursts of stress hormones are caused or aggravated by other factors, addressing those factors can reduce and eliminate incidences of this symptom.
When involuntary bursts of stress hormones are caused by anxious behavior and an active stress response, ending the active stress response will cause this symptom to subside.
Keep in mind it can take up to 20 minutes or more for the body to recover from a major stress response. But this is normal and shouldn’t be a cause for concern.
When involuntary bursts of stress hormones are caused by hyperstimulation (chronic stress), reducing and eliminating hyperstimulation will eliminate this symptom in time.
You can eliminate hyperstimulation by:
- Reducing stress.
- Containing anxious behavior (since anxiety creates stress).
- Regular deep relaxation.
- Avoiding stimulants.
- Regular light to moderate exercise.
- Eating a healthy diet of whole and natural foods.
- Passively accepting your symptoms until they subside.
- Being patient as your body recovers.
Visit our “60 Natural Ways To Reduce Stress” article for more ways to reduce stress.
Recovery Support members can view chapters 5, 6, 7, 14 and more for more detailed information about recovering from hyperstimulation and anxiety disorder.
As the body recovers from hyperstimulation, it stops sending symptoms, including this one.
Symptoms of chronic stress subside as the body regains its normal, non-hyperstimulated health.
However, eliminating hyperstimulation can take much longer than most people think, causing symptoms to linger longer than expected.
As long as the body is even slightly hyperstimulated, it can present symptoms of any type, number, intensity, duration, frequency, and at any time, including this one.
Even so, since Involuntary Stress Hormone Rushes are common symptoms of stress, including anxiety-caused stress, they are harmless and needn't be a cause for concern. They will subside when unhealthy stress has been eliminated and the body has had sufficient time to recover. Therefore, there is no reason to worry about involuntary stress hormone or abdomen rushes.
Anxiety symptoms often linger because:
- The body is still being stressed (from stressful circumstances or anxious behavior).
- Your stress hasn't diminished enough or for long enough.
- Your body hasn't completed its recovery work.
Addressing the reason for lingering symptoms will allow the body to recover.
Most often, lingering anxiety symptoms ONLY remain because of the above reasons. They AREN'T a sign of a medical problem. This is especially true if you have had your symptoms evaluated by your doctor and they have been solely attributed to anxiety or stress.
Chronic anxiety symptoms subside when hyperstimulation is eliminated. As the body recovers and stabilizes, all chronic anxiety symptoms will slowly diminish and eventually disappear.
Since worrying and becoming upset about anxiety symptoms stress the body, these behaviors can interfere with recovery.
Passively accepting your symptoms – allowing them to persist without reacting to, resisting, worrying about, or fighting them – while doing your recovery work will cause their cessation in time.
Acceptance, practice, and patience are key to recovery.
Keep in mind that it can take a long time for the body to recover from hyperstimulation. It's best to faithfully work at your recovery despite the lack of apparent progress.
However, if you persevere with your recovery work, you will succeed.
You also have to do your recovery work FIRST before your body can recover. The cumulative effects of your recovery work will produce results down the road. And the body's stimulation has to diminish before symptoms can subside.
- Reducing stress.
- Increasing rest.
- Faithfully practicing your recovery strategies.
- Passively accepting your symptoms.
- Containing anxious behavior.
- Being patient.
These will bring results in time.
When you do the right work, the body has to recover!
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Therapy
Unidentified and unaddressed underlying factors cause issues with anxiety. As such, they are the primary reason why anxiety symptoms persist.[5][6][7]
Addressing your underlying factors (Level Two recovery) is most important if you want lasting success.
Addressing Level Two recovery can help you:
- Contain anxious behavior.
- Become unafraid of anxiety symptoms and the strong feelings of anxiety.
- End anxiety symptoms.
- Successfully address the underlying factors that so often cause issues with anxiety.
- End what can feel like out-of-control worry.
All our recommended anxiety therapists have had anxiety disorder and overcame it. Their personal experience with anxiety disorder and their Master's Degree and above professional training gives them insight other therapists don't have.
If you want to achieve lasting success over anxiety disorder, any one of our recommended therapists would be a good choice.
Working with an experienced anxiety disorder therapist is the most effective way to treat anxiety disorder, especially if you have persistent symptoms and difficulty containing anxious behavior, such as worry.
In many cases, working with an experienced therapist is the only way to overcome stubborn anxiety.
You can connect with one of our recommended therapists by checking their availability, making an appointment, and seeing their Rates and Terms of Service.
Recovery Support
The Recovery Support area of our website contains thousands of pages of important self-help information to help individuals overcome anxiety disorder, hyperstimulation, and symptoms.
Due to the vast amount of information, including a private Discussion Forum, many of our Recovery Support members consider it their online recovery support group.
Common Anxiety Symptoms
Additional Resources
- For a comprehensive list of Anxiety Disorders Symptoms Signs, Types, Causes, Diagnosis, and Treatment.
- Anxiety and panic attacks symptoms can be powerful experiences. Find out what they are and how to stop them.
- How to stop an anxiety attack and panic.
- Free online anxiety tests to screen for anxiety. Two minute tests with instant results. Such as:
- Anxiety 101 is a summarized description of anxiety, anxiety disorder, and how to overcome it.
Return to our anxiety disorders signs and symptoms page.
anxietycentre.com: Information, support, and therapy for anxiety disorder and its symptoms, including Involuntary Stress Response Rush or Abdomen Rush anxiety symptoms.
References
1. Berczi, Istvan. “Walter Cannon's ‘Fight or Flight Response’ - ‘Acute Stress Response.’” Walter Cannon's "Fight or Flight Response" - "Acute Stress Response", 2017.
2. Godoy, Livea, et al. "A Comprehensive Overview on Stress Neurobiology: Basic Concepts and Clinical Implications." Frontiers In Behavioral Neuroscience, 3, July 2018.
3. Yaribeygi, Habib, et al. “The Impact of Stress on Body Function: A Review.” EXCLI Journal, Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, 2017.
4. Teixeira, Renata Roland, et al. “Chronic Stress Induces a Hyporeactivity of the Autonomic Nervous System in Response to Acute Mental Stressor and Impairs Cognitive Performance in Business Executives.” Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2015.
5. Hofmann, Stefan G., et al. “The Efficacy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Review of Meta-Analyses.” Cognitive Therapy and Research, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1 Oct. 2012.
6. Leichsenring, Falk. “Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy the Gold Standard for Psychotherapy?” JAMA, American Medical Association, 10 Oct. 2017.
7. DISCLAIMER: Because each body is somewhat chemically unique, and because each person will have a unique mix of symptoms and underlying factors, recovery results may vary. Variances can occur for many reasons, including due to the severity of the condition, the ability of the person to apply the recovery concepts, and the commitment to making behavioral change.