Cold, Chilled, Chilly, Shivery and Anxiety
Feeling cold, chilled, chilly all the time, and shivery, such as suddenly or chronically feeling unusually cold or shivery is a common anxiety symptom, especially anxiety and panic attack symptoms.
Many anxious people feel unusually and uncharacteristically cold due to their anxiety.
This article explains the relationship between anxiety and feeling cold and shivery.
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Common Anxiety Feeling Cold and Shivery Symptom Descriptions
- You suddenly feel cold, chilly, chilled, or shivery for no apparent reason, and it’s not caused by a cold environment.
- You have an area on or in your body that feels unusually cold, chilly, or chilled.
- You feel uncharacteristically cold or chilly all the time, like you are constantly in a draft.
- You feel chilly and tired.
- No matter what you do, you can’t warm up even with blankets, extra clothing, or with the heat turned up.
- You feel unusually cold, chilled, or shivery all the time.
- You feel cold or chilly but don’t have a fever.
- It seems no matter what you do, you feel cold and can’t warm up.
- Sometimes you feel so cold, you shake and tremble.
- It feels like you can’t properly regulate your body temperature, resulting in feeling cold and shivery all the time.
- Sometimes you can feel cold and then suddenly hot and sweaty.
Feeling cold, chilled, chilly, and shivery can:
- Occur occasionally, frequently, or persistently.
- 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" for no reason.
- Range in intensity from mild, to moderate, to severe.
- Come in waves where it’s strong one moment and eases off the next.
- Occur for a while, subside, and then return for no reason.
- Change from day to day, moment to moment, or remain as a constant background during your struggle with anxiety disorder.
This symptom can seem more noticeable when undistracted, resting, trying to sleep, or waking up.
All the above combinations and variations are common.
To see if anxiety might be playing a role in your anxiety 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 it could be contributing to your anxiety symptoms, including feeling cold or chilled.
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Causes: Why Anxiety Can Make You Feel Cold And Shivery
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.
Feeling cold or chilly is a common anxiety symptom. Some of the common causes include:
1. Stress response
Anxious behavior, such as worry, activates the stress response, often referred to as the fight or flight response. The stress response causes many body-wide changes that prepare the body for immediate emergency action – to fight or flee.[1][2]
Visit our “Stress Response” article for more information about the many physical, psychological, and emotional changes it causes.
Many of the stress response changes can cause a cold and chilly sensation. Such as, the stress response:
Shunts blood to parts of the body vital to survival and away from those less vital.
The body accomplishes this “shunting action” by constricting certain blood vessels and dilating others.
For example, blood is moved away from the skin, arms, and legs (so that you won’t bleed to death if cut) and pooled in the brain, hands, and feet (the brain requires more blood while being on alert, and the hands and feet require more blood for the extra demands of physical action).
When blood is moved away from the skin, we can feel cold because areas with less blood feel cold. Blood is what keeps the body warm, which is why humans are often referred to as being “warm-blooded.”
The body, being intricately and well designed, is not without resources to deal with this change.
For example, when blood flow is reduced to the skin, the body produces "goose bumps" to raise the hairs on the skin. Raised hairs on the skin provide a form of insulation by creating a thin layer of static air that keeps colder air at a distance.
Consequently, this action compensates heat loss by keeping the skin warm while blood flow is reduced.
Even so, an active stress response can make a person feel cold, especially in the extremities, when blood is shunted away.
Tightens the body’s muscles.
The stress response also tightens muscles, making the body more resilient to damage.
Tight muscles can restrict blood flow, causing the body to feel cold.
Changes internal body temperature.
As mentioned, stress responses constrict blood vessels. Constricted blood vessels reduce blood flow to the skin, where blood is cooled. Less blood to the skin can raise the body’s internal temperature.[3][4]
A rise in body temperature can make a person feel cold despite increasing body temperature.
Increases heart rate, respiration, and perspiration.
Increasing perspiration can cool the body, making a person feel cold while a stress response is active.
Increases sensory perception
Increased sensory perception can increase a person’s awareness of bodily sensations, including feeling unusually cold, especially with the mentioned stress response changes.
Any combination of the above can cause a person to feel cold while the stress response and its changes are active.
Many anxious people feel cold due to an active stress response.
2. Hyperstimulation
Frequently activating the stress response, such as from overly anxious behavior, can leave the body in a state of semi-stress-response-readiness, which we call “stress-response hyperstimulation” since stress hormones are powerful stimulants.
Hyperstimulation is also often referred to as “hyperarousal,” “HPA axis dysfunction,” or “nervous system dysregulation.”[5][6]
Visit our “Hyperstimulation” article for more information about the many ways hyperstimulation can affect the body and how we feel.
Hyperstimulation can cause the changes of an active stress response even though a stress response hasn’t been activated.
Hyperstimulation is a common cause of chronically feeling cold, chilled, chilly, and shivery.
Furthermore, hyperstimulation can cause the nervous system to act erratically,[5][6] causing a wide range of odd sensations and symptoms, including suddenly feeling cold or chilled.
For instance, the body’s nervous system sends and receives sensory information to and from the brain. A main component of the nervous system is specialized cells called neurons (nerve cells), which communicate with each other using an electrochemical process (the combination of electricity and chemistry).
When nerve impulse information is received from one of the body’s senses, neurons relay this nerve impulse information through the nervous system network to the brain for interpretation.
If we want to move a particular muscle or group of muscles, nerve impulse information is sent from the brain through the nervous system network to the particular muscle or groups of muscles to bring about movement (muscles move through a combination of nerve impulse-triggered muscle contractions and releases).
This system of communication and reaction works normally when the body and nervous system are healthy. Problems can occur, however, when the body and nervous system become hyperstimulated.
For instance, the body’s nervous system sends and receives sensory information to and from the brain. A main component of the nervous system is specialized cells called neurons (nerve cells), which communicate with each other using an electrochemical process (the combination of electricity and chemistry).[5][7]
These abnormalities can cause many sensory and physical anomalies, including making a person feel “cold” or “chilled” for no apparent reason.
Furthermore, because hyperstimulation can cause an increase in the electrical activity in certain parts of the brain, which can cause neurons to become even more unstable, neurons can fire even more erratically when the body and nervous system become hyperstimulated.
Consequently, feeling cold or chilled or having spots on or in the body that feel unusually cold is a consequence of an active stress response or hyperstimulation.
Many anxious people get episodes of feeling cold or chilled due to an active stress response of hyperstimulation.
3. 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: How To Get Rid Of Feeling Cold Anxiety Symptoms
When feeling cold and shivery is caused or aggravated by other factors, addressing those factors can reduce and eliminate this common anxiety symptom.
When this symptom is caused by an anxiety-triggered stress response, calming yourself will end the active stress response and its changes. Feeling cold and shivery will subside as your body recovers from the active stress response.
Keep in mind that 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 this symptom is caused by hyperstimulation, eliminating hyperstimulation will end this anxiety symptom.
You can reduce and eliminate hyperstimulation by:
- Containing anxious behavior.
- Reducing stress.
- Regular deep relaxation.
- Relaxed diaphragmatic breathing.
- Regular light to moderate exercise.
- Getting regular good sleep.
- Eating a healthy diet of whole and natural foods.
- Avoiding stimulants.
- 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.
As the body recovers from hyperstimulation, it stops sending symptoms of hyperstimulation, including feeling cold, chilled, chilly, and shivery.
However, eliminating hyperstimulation can take much longer than most people think, causing symptoms to linger longer than expected.
As long as the body is hyperstimulated, even slightly, it can present symptoms of any type, number, intensity, duration, frequency, and at any time, including this one.
Even so, since feeling cold and shivery is a common symptom of stress (acute and chronic), including anxiety-caused stress, it's harmless and needn't be a cause for concern. It will subside when unhealthy stress has been eliminated and the body has had sufficient time to recover and stabilize. Therefore, there is no reason to worry about this common anxiety and hyperstimulation-caused symptom.
Since worrying and becoming upset about anxiety symptoms stress the body, these behaviors can interfere with and stall 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.
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.
Therapy
Unidentified and unaddressed underlying factors cause issues with anxiety. As such, they are the primary reason why anxiety symptoms persist.
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 give 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.[8][9][10]
In many cases, working with an experienced therapist is the only way to overcome stubborn anxiety.
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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 feeling cold, chilled, chilly, and shivery anxiety symptoms.
References
1. Chu, Brianna, et al. “Physiology, Stress Reaction.” StatPearls, 7 May 2024.
2. 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.
3. Olivier, Berend. “Psychogenic fever, functional fever, or psychogenic hyperthermia?” Temperature (Austin). 2015 Jul-Sep; 2(3): 324–325
4. Takakazu Oka. "Psychogenic fever: how psychological stress affects body temperature in the clinical population." Temperature, 2015.
5. Kinlein, Scott A., et al. “Dysregulated Hypothalamic–Pituitary–Adrenal Axis Function Contributes to Altered Endocrine and Neurobehavioral Responses to Acute Stress.” Frontiers In Psychiatry, 13 Mar. 2015.
6. Patriquin, Michelle A., and Sanjay J. Mathew. “The Neurobiological Mechanisms of Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Chronic Stress.” Chronic Stress (Thousand Oaks, Calif.), U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2017.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. Leichsenring, Falk. “Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy the Gold Standard for Psychotherapy?” JAMA, American Medical Association, 10 Oct. 2017.
10. 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.