Excess Energy, Energized, Nervous Energy and Anxiety
Excess energy, feeling overly energized, and having nervous energy are common anxiety symptoms, especially anxiety and panic attack symptoms.
Many anxious people feel overly energized due to their anxiety and hyperstimulation. The inability to rest or sleep is a common symptom of having excess energy.
This article explains the relationship between anxiety and having excess energy.
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Excess Energy Common Anxiety Symptom Descriptions
- Feel revved up or “pumped up” as if you have abundant energy to burn.
- Your mind is constantly racing with seemingly a million ideas and thoughts.
- So stimulated that relaxing seems impossible.
- So stimulated that you never feel tired.
- So energized that you are constantly on the go.
- Because you feel so energized, you have many tasks and projects on the go. Once one is completed, you immediately jump to the next project or look for other projects.
- So much energy that you desire to get many things done. As a result, you create a long list of “To Do” items and then want to get at all of them right away.
- Feel like you have to run or do something right away just to burn off the excess energy.
- Always busily running around and getting things done.
- Can’t sit still or relax; when you do, you constantly tap your fingers or feet or fidget.
- When you want to relax and rest, you can’t because your body and mind are so revved up.
- Even slowing down for a few moments is difficult.
- You believe you feel better when you are busy and always doing things, so you don’t slow down or rest.
- The energy you feel may be so strong that you are constantly tapping your fingers or feet, twiddling your thumbs, shifting or shuffling in your chair or when standing, or have difficulty containing your fidgeting.
- Feels like your body and mind are going a million miles an hour.
Excess energy 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.
Some people notice having a higher craving for sugar, sweets, and chocolate when they are experiencing the excess energy anxiety symptoms.
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 having excess energy.
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What causes the excess energy anxiety symptoms?
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. Anxiety-Activated Stress Response
Anxious behavior, such as worry, activates the stress response, which secretes stress hormones into the bloodstream, where they travel to specific locations to immediately prepare the body for emergency action – to fight or flee. This instinctual survival reaction is often referred to as the Fight or Flight Response.[1][2]
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 sympathetic 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.
- Increases activity in the amygdala (the brain’s fear center) and decreases activity in the pre-frontal cortex (the rationalization area of the brain) so that our attention is focused on the threat and away from thoughts that could be distracting.
- Tightens muscles to make the body more resilient to injury.
- Increases respiration to accommodate the increase in heart rate.
- Increases perspiration to keep the body cool and expel toxins.
To name a few.
Visit the “Stress Response” article for the many ways the stress response can affect the body.
Due to the stress response changes, the body can feel energized as long as the stress response is active.
Since stress responses push the body beyond its internal balance (equilibrium), stress responses stress the body. As such, anxiety stresses the body.
Therefore, anxiety symptoms are symptoms of stress. They are called anxiety symptoms because anxious behavior is the main source of the stress that stresses the body, causing symptoms.
An active stress response is a common cause of acute excess energy.
2. Hyperstimulation
When stress responses occur infrequently, the body recovers relatively quickly from its changes. However, frequently activated stress responses, such as from overly anxious behavior, can prevent the body from completely recovering. Incomplete recovery 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.”[3][4]
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.
Just as an active stress response can cause acute excess energy symptoms, hyperstimulation can cause chronic excess energy symptoms.
As long as the body is hyperstimulated, even slightly, it can cause symptoms of any type, number, severity, frequency, duration, and at any time.
Chronic excess energy is a common symptom of hyperstimulation.
Hyperstimulation can cause chronic excess stimulation in other ways, too. For example:
- Nervous System Excitation and Dysregulation: A chronically stimulated nervous system can act erratically and cause all kinds of nervous system problems, such as feeling chronically stimulated, inhibiting rest and sleep.
- Homeostatic Dysregulation: Homeostasis is the body’s ability to automatically maintain a stable internal environment despite changes in the external environment. Hyperstimulation can cause homeostatic dysregulation, leading to internal regulation problems, which can affect the nervous system, causing excess energy problems.
- Hormone changes: Hormones play a crucial role in homeostasis and many bodily functions, which can affect the nervous system. Since stress hormones affect other hormones, hyperstimulation can cause nervous system and hormone regulation problems, resulting in excess energy.
3. Sleep disruption
Hyperstimulation often leads to sleep impairment. When restful sleep is cut short, the body increases the level of circulating cortisol to compensate for feeling tired.[5] Elevated cortisol stimulates the body.
This extra stimulation can also set up a negative cycle where stress causes issues with sleep, and sleep issues cause an increase in circulating cortisol, which can cause an increase in stimulation and sleep issues, and so on.
Any combination of the above factors can create the “energized,” “wired,” and excess of energy symptoms.
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
- 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 the excess energy anxiety symptoms?
When other factors cause or aggravate this anxiety symptom, addressing the specific cause can reduce and eliminate excess energy.
When an active stress response causes this symptom, ending the active stress response will cause this acute anxiety symptom to subside.
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 needn’t be a cause for concern.
When hyperstimulation (chronic stress) causes excess energy, eliminating hyperstimulation will end this anxiety symptom.
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 excess energy is a common symptom of stress, 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. Therefore, there is no reason to worry about it.
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.
When you do the right work, the body has to recover!
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Short-term strategies
While eliminating hyperstimulation should be the main focus in eliminating the “excess energy” symptom, there are some more immediate ways to eliminate this symptom.
For example, reducing stress, increasing rest, and getting good sleep can reduce and eliminate this symptom even though the body is somewhat hyperstimulated.
Furthermore, containing anxious behavior can shut off unnecessary stress responses, reducing the body’s overall level of stimulation.
Going for leisure walks, spending quiet time in the country, spending time with your hobbies, and many other stress reduction strategies can gradually reduce the body’s stimulation. As the body’s stimulation diminishes, this symptom subsides.
Slowing down your daily activities can also contribute to eliminating the “excess energy” symptom.
Teaching your body to be calmer can eliminate this symptom and lead to the elimination of hyperstimulation overall.
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.[6][7][8]
In many cases, working with an experienced therapist is the only way to overcome stubborn anxiety.
Research has shown that therapy is the most effective treatment for anxiety disorder, and distance therapy (via phone or the Internet) is equally, if not more effective, than face-to-face in-person therapy.[9][10][11]
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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 Excess Energy, too much energy, and feeling overly excited anxiety symptoms.
References
1. Chu, Brianna, et al. “Physiology, Stress Reaction.” StatPearls, 7 May 2024.
2. Godoy, Livea, et al. "A Comprehensive Overview on Stress Neurobiology: Basic Concepts and Clinical Implications." Frontiers In Behavioral Neuroscience, 3, July 2018.
3. Hannibal, Kara E., and Mark D. Bishop. “Chronic Stress, Cortisol Dysfunction, and Pain: A Psychoneuroendocrine Rationale for Stress Management in Pain Rehabilitation.” Advances in Pediatrics., U.S. National Library of Medicine, Dec. 2014.
4. Justice, Nicholas J., et al. “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder-Like Induction Elevates β-Amyloid Levels, Which Directly Activates Corticotropin-Releasing Factor Neurons to Exacerbate Stress Responses.” Journal of Neuroscience, Society for Neuroscience, 11 Feb. 2015.
5. Leproult, R, et al. “Sleep Loss Results in an Elevation of Cortisol Levels the next Evening.” Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports., U.S. National Library of Medicine, Oct. 1997.