Dropping or Falling Sensation and Anxiety

Written by Jim Folk
Medically reviewed by Marilyn Folk, BScN.
Last updated October 28, 2024

falling dropping anxiety symptoms

A sudden dropping or falling sensation, like you suddenly dropped as if in an elevator going down or an airplane descending, is a common anxiety symptom, including anxiety and panic attack symptoms.

Many anxious and stressed people experience a dropping or falling sensation when anxious or stressed (hyperstimulated).

This article explains the relationship between anxiety and getting a sudden and unexpected dropping or falling feeling.

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Dropping and Falling Common Anxiety Symptom Descriptions

  • You experience a sudden dropping or falling feeling, as if in an elevator, airplane, or exhibition/fair ride, yet you are standing, sitting, or lying on a firm surface.
  • It feels like your entire body dropped as if in an elevator that was going down.
  • You feel as if your body suddenly dropped a few feet, yet you are standing, lying, or sitting on a solid surface.
  • It feels like the floor beneath you has suddenly and unexpectedly dropped or moved lower even though it hasn’t.

This dropping/falling sensation can affect the head only or as if the entire body has dropped.

This symptom typically lasts for only a moment or two and then subsides. However, some episodes can feel longer before they subside.

The Dropping/Falling sensation 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 and moment to moment.

All the above combinations and variations are common.

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 falling dropping anxiety 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.

Additional Medical Advisory Information.

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]

Visit the “Stress Response” article for the many ways it can affect the body.

Some stress response changes can cause an acute dropping/falling sensation. For example, the stress response:

  • 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.
  • Shunts blood to parts of the body 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.
  • Tightens muscles to make the body more resilient to injury.
  • Increases respiration to accommodate the increase in heart rate.

Any combination of the above can cause an acute dropping/falling sensation.

An active stress response is a common cause of an acute dropping/falling sensation.

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][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.

Just as an active stress response can cause acute dropping/falling sensations, hyperstimulation can cause chronic dropping/falling symptoms.

Frequent dropping/falling sensations are common symptoms of hyperstimulation.

But that’s not all. Hyperstimulation can cause this symptom in other ways, too. For instance, hyperstimulation can cause:

  • Nervous System Excitation and Dysregulation: A chronically stimulated nervous system can act erratically and cause all kinds of nervous system, sensory system, and equilibrium problems, such as dropping/falling sensations.
  • 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, sensory, and vestibular systems, causing dropping/falling sensations.
  • Hormone changes: Hormones play a crucial role in homeostasis and many bodily functions, which can affect the nervous, sensory, and vestibular systems. Since stress hormones affect other hormones, hyperstimulation can cause nervous, sensory, and vestibular system anomalies, such as dropping/falling symptoms.
  • Sleep disruption and fatigue: Hyperstimulation taxes the body’s energy resources harder than normal, leading to sleep deprivation and fatigue, which can also cause dropping/falling sensations.

As long as the body is hyperstimulated, it can exhibit frequent dropping/falling symptoms.

Fortunately, this symptom generally lasts only for a few brief moments and isn’t harmful. Nevertheless, it can scare you when it first occurs and can trigger the body’s involuntary stress response to the feeling of suddenly and unexpectedly dropping or falling backward.

Other Factors

Other factors can create stress and cause anxiety-like symptoms, as well as aggravate existing anxiety symptoms, including:

Select the relevant link for more information.

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How to get rid of the falling dropping sensation?

When a dropping or falling sensation is caused or aggravated by other factors, addressing those factors can reduce and eliminate this common anxiety and hyperstimulation symptom.

When a dropping or falling sensation is caused by an anxiety-triggered stress response, calming yourself will end the active stress response and its changes. This common anxiety symptom 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.

Recovery Support members can read chapters 5,6, 7, and 14 for more ways to reduce stress.

As the body recovers from hyperstimulation, it stops sending symptoms of hyperstimulation, including a dropping or falling feeling.

Since worrying and becoming upset about anxiety symptoms stress the body, these behaviors can interfere with and stall recovery, causing symptoms to linger.

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.

Eliminating hyperstimulation will bring results in time!

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.

Join Recovery Support

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.[7][8][9]

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.[10][11][12]

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FAQ

Can a sudden and unexpected dropping or falling sensation cause anxiety?

Anxiety is caused by anxious behavior, such as worry. If the sudden dropping or falling sensation scared you and you believed it might be a sign of a serious medical condition, yes, experiencing a sudden dropping or falling sensation can cause anxiety.

Furthermore, since the body can involuntarily react to a perceived threat, such as unexpectedly dropping or falling, you can experience an involuntary sudden burst of anxiety due to this symptom.

Is anxiety-caused dropping or falling sensation serious?

No, anxiety-caused dropping or falling sensations aren’t serious or dangerous. They indicate you have experienced a stress response or your body is chronically stressed (hyperstimulated). This symptom will subside when you end the active stress response and recover from chronic stress.

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Prevalence

In an online poll we conducted, 50 percent of respondents said they had dropping/falling sensations due to their anxiety and hyperstimulation.

While this sensation can be unnerving when it first occurs, it is a common anxiety and hyperstimulation symptom. It is NOT an indication of something more serious.

Common Anxiety Symptoms

The combination of good self-help information and working with an experienced anxiety disorder therapist, coach, or counselor is the most effective way to address anxiety and its many symptoms. Until the core causes of anxiety are addressed – which we call the underlying factors of anxiety – a struggle with anxiety unwellness can return again and again. Dealing with the underlying factors of anxiety is the best way to address problematic anxiety.
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Additional Resources

Return to our anxiety disorders signs and symptoms page.

anxietycentre.com: Information, support, and therapy for anxiety disorder and its symptoms, including sudden and unexpected Dropping or Falling 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. Elbers, Jorina, et al. "Wired for Threat: Clinical Features of Nervous System Dysregulation in 80 Children." Pediatric Neurology, Dec 2018.

4. 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.

5. Z, Fatahi, et al. "Effect of acute and subchronic stress on electrical activity of basolateral amygdala neurons in conditioned place preference paradigm: An electrophysiological study." Behavioral Brain Research, 29 Sept. 2017.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. Leichsenring, Falk. “Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy the Gold Standard for Psychotherapy?” JAMA, American Medical Association, 10 Oct. 2017.

9. 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.

10. Kingston, Dawn.“Advantages of E-Therapy Over Conventional Therapy.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 11 Dec. 2017.

11. Markowitz, John, et al. “Psychotherapy at a Distance.” Psychiatry Online, March 2021.

12. Thompson, Ryan Baird, "Psychology at a Distance: Examining the Efficacy of Online Therapy" (2016). University Honors Theses. Paper 285.