Feel Wrong, Odd, Strange – anxiety symptoms

Causes

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 of the stress response changes include:

• Quickly converts the body’s energy reserves into “fuel” (blood sugar) to instantly boost 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.
• 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.
• Suppresses digestion so that most of the body’s resources are available for emergency action.
• Creates a sudden urge to void the bowels in preparation to fight or flee.
• 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.
• Increases a sense of urgency to take action to fight with or flee from the perceived threat.

These sudden physical, psychological, and emotional changes can make it seem like something is “wrong.” The higher the degree of stress response, the more dramatic the changes.

It’s not that there is something “wrong” with the body, but that some parts can feel “strange” due to the sudden changes caused by the active stress response and, then, anxiously worrying that something is wrong.

An active stress response is a common cause of acute episodes of feeling like something is “wrong,” “odd,” or “strange.”

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 episodes of feeling like something is “wrong,” hyperstimulation can cause chronic episodes of feeling like something is “wrong.”

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, sensory, somatic, vestibular, and limbic system problems, including feeling like something is “wrong.”

• 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 all the body’s regulatory systems, leading to a host of odd sensations and symptoms, including feeling like something is “wrong.”

• 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 many odd sensations and symptoms, including this one.

• Sleep disruption and fatigue: Hyperstimulation can interfere with sleep and tax the body’s energy resources harder and faster than normal. Sleep disruption and fatigue can also cause a host of sensations and symptoms, including feeling “wrong.”

As long as the body is hyperstimulated, it can exhibit chronic symptoms, including this one.

When I (Jim Folk) first experienced this symptom, it scared me. I was convinced something serious, like a complete mental and physical collapse, was causing this feeling because it was so bizarre and “odd.”

I thought I was doomed when the feelings changed from one “wrong” feeling to another and grew more intense.

As my fear about this symptom increased, so did the degree of hyperstimulation increase. Consequently, so did my bizarre sensations and their intensities and frequency, including this symptom, increase.

It truly became a vicious cycle of anxiety, stress, symptoms, fearing my symptoms (more anxiety), more stress, more symptoms, more fear, etc.

This is a common scenario for many anxious people. Concern (worry, fear) about anxiety sensations and symptoms typically fuels them. As worry and stress increase, so does the likelihood of increasing symptoms in type, number, intensity, duration, and frequency of anxiety symptoms.

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
• Hyper and hypoventilation
• Low blood sugar
• Nutritional deficiencies
• Dehydration
• Hormone changes
• Pain

Select the relevant link for more information.