Hair Loss, Hair Thinning, Balding – Anxiety Symptoms
Hair loss, thinning, bald spots, and balding, such as noticing you are unexpectedly losing your hair or developing uncharacteristic bald spots, can be symptoms of anxiety, including anxiety and panic attacks symptoms.
While not as common as other anxiety symptoms, hair thinning and loss can occur, especially after a few weeks of elevated anxiety, stress, or sleep loss.
This article explains the relationship between anxiety and unexpected hair thinning and loss.
Article Menu
Hair Thinning, Loss, and Balding Common Anxiety Symptom Descriptions
- Your hair is thinning.
- Your hair is falling out in clumps.
- You have unusual hair loss.
- You uncharacteristically have patches of missing hair.
- You have bald spots seemingly for no reason.
- Your hair is falling out or thinning more than usual.
- You are uncharacteristically going bald.
- You are losing hair on your head or other body parts.
- There is more hair in your comb or brush, on your pillow, or in the tub or shower than usual.
- There is an increase in the amount of hair coming out when you comb or brush your hair or when washing or rubbing your scalp.
- You are pulling out clumps of hair at a time.
Hair loss can affect any area of the body.
You can experience hair loss on one area of the head only, many areas of the head, and the entire head. You can also experience hair loss on any other part of the body.
Hair loss 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 you lose a lot of hair one time and hardly any the next.
- Occur for a while, subside, and then return for no reason.
- Change from day to day or become chronic.
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 feeling like impending doom symptoms.
---------- Advertisement - Article Continues Below ----------
---------- Advertisement Ends ----------
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.
When hair loss is caused by anxiety:
1. Stress and hyperstimulation (chronic stress)
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 to learn about the many ways it can affect the body.
The degree of stress response is proportional to the degree of anxiety. The more anxious you are, the more dramatic the stress response changes.
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.
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.
Hyperstimulation can cause the changes of an active stress response even though a stress response hasn’t been activated. Consequently, hyperstimulation chronically stresses the body.
Stress, including anxiety-caused stress, can cause hair thinning and loss.
There are many reasons why stress causes hair thinning and hair loss, including:
- Stress activates neuroendocrine-immune circuits, which terminate hair growth [5].
- Stress induces adaptive immunity cytokine-imbalance characterized by a shift to Type 1 T-helper cell cytokine, which can affect hair growth [5].
- Stress increases apoptosis of epithelial cells, which can also affect hair growth [6].
- Stress hormones affect other hormones: Hormonal changes can cause hair thinning and loss. For example, androgenic hormones (such as testosterone and its related hormone DHT) affect hair growth. The presence of androgens can cause some hair follicles to regress and die.
- Telogen effluvium (TEL-o-jun uh-FLOO-vee-um): chronic stress causes hair follicles to enter a resting phase. Affected hairs can fall out suddenly within a few months when combing or washing hair.
- Alopecia areata (al-o-PEE-she-uh ar-e-A-tuh): stress can cause the immune system to attack hair follicles, which can cause hair loss.
- Trichotillomania (trik-o-til-o-MAY-nee-uh): stress can also cause “hair pulling” disorder. Pulling hair can create balding [7].
To name a few.
Any combination of the above factors can cause stress-related hair loss and balding symptoms, including anxiety-caused stress.
Hair can thin and fall out as long as the body is stressed. Consequently, overly anxious behavior is a common cause of hair thinning and loss.
2. Other Factors
Other factors can stress the body, causing and aggravating this anxiety symptom, 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.
---------- Advertisement - Article Continues Below ----------
---------- Advertisement Ends ----------
Treatment
When hair thinning and loss is caused by other factors, addressing the specific cause will alleviate this symptom. However, it might take time for you to notice a change since it takes time for the body to readjust after a stressful period.
When hair thinning and loss are caused by stress, including anxiety-caused stress and 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, symptoms subside, including hair thinning and loss.
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.
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.
Short-term remedies:
Even though eliminating hyperstimulation will eliminate this symptom, reducing your stress can help slow, stall, and even reverse this symptom.
Recovery Support members can read our “Tips and Reassurance” section (chapter 14) for many natural and practical ways to reduce stress.
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.
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.[11][12][13]
---------- Advertisement - Article Continues Below ----------
---------- Advertisement Ends ----------
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 hair thinning, hair loss, and balding anxiety symptoms.
References
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. 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. Peters, Eva, et al. "Hair and stress: A pilot study of hair and cytokine balance alteration in healthy young women under major exam stress." PLOS ONE, 19 Apr 2017.
6. Hadshiew, Ina, et al. "Burden of Hair Loss: Stress and the Underestimated Psychosocial Impact of Telogen Effluvium and Androgenetic Alopecia." Journal of Investigative Dermatology, Sep 2004.
7. Grant, Jon, and Chamberlain, Samuel. "Trichotillomania." American Journal of Psychiatry, 1 Sep 2016.
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.
11. Kingston, Dawn.“Advantages of E-Therapy Over Conventional Therapy.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 11 Dec. 2017.
12. Markowitz, John, et al. “Psychotherapy at a Distance.” Psychiatry Online, March 2021.
13. Thompson, Ryan Baird, "Psychology at a Distance: Examining the Efficacy of Online Therapy" (2016). University Honors Theses. Paper 285.