Hyperreactive and Anxiety

Causes

Anxiety can cause hyperreactivity in many ways. For example:

1. Anxiety-Activated Stress Response

Anxious behavior, such as worry, activates the stress response, which secretes stress hormones into the bloodstream that 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 the stress response can affect the body and how we feel.

Some of the stress response changes include:

• Converts the body’s sugar storage into blood sugar, which gives the body a sudden increase in energy.
• Heightens our senses.
• Stimulates the body into action.
• Stimulates the nervous system, increasing nervous system activity.
• Stimulates the amygdala (the fear center of the brain), which also plays a major role in our emotions.
• Increases heart rate, respiration, and metabolism to accommodate the boost in energy.
• Increases most of the body’s senses.

To name a few.

Any combination of the above stress response changes can make a person more reactive to stimuli, including those we normally wouldn’t overreact to.

The stress response is supposed to make us more reactive so that we can quickly defend ourselves or escape when danger is detected.

The more anxious we are, the higher the degree of stress response and the more dramatic the stress response changes.

Consequently, an anxiety-activated stress response can cause acute hyperreactivity.

2. Hyperstimulation

Infrequent activation of the stress response allows the body to recover relatively quickly from the effects of the stress response after it has ended. However, frequent activation, such as from overly anxious behavior, can cause the body to remain 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. As long as the body is hyperstimulated, even slightly, it can cause chronic symptoms, including hyperreactivity to normal situations, circumstances, and stimuli.

As the degree of hyperstimulation increases, so can the degree of hyperreactivity.

Furthermore, hyperstimulation can exacerbate this symptom for the following reasons:

• Nervous System Excitation and Dysregulation [4]: A hyperstimulated nervous system, which can also affect neurotransmitter levels, can cause the nervous system to act erratically, causing all kinds of nervous system symptoms, including physical, psychological, and emotional hyperreactivity.

• Homeostatic Dysregulation [5]: Hyperstimulation can cause problems with homeostasis (how the body internally regulates and balances itself). Homeostatic dysregulation can also cause many physical, psychological, and emotional symptoms, including hyperreactivity.

• Hormone changes [6]: Stress hormones affect other hormones, which can also cause many odd physical, psychological, and emotional symptoms, including hyperreactivity.

As long as the body is hyperstimulated, even slightly, it can cause symptoms of any type, number, severity, frequency, duration, and at any time, including hyperreactivity.

I (Jim Folk) experienced hyperreactivity, too, during my many years of struggle with anxiety disorder. I was so overly reactive that I had to stop most normal things to avoid the overreaction.

For example, TV programs and movies elicited super-strong reactions. I remember being so wired with nervous energy that I could barely sit still during the program or movie, and it took hours to calm down afterward.

Even my emotional reactions were off-the-charts strong. I remember saying, “Wow, I can’t believe how strong my body and emotions are for such a little thing.”

Even conversations with loved ones caused such a dramatic reaction that I could barely stand it, and again, it took hours afterward to try and calm down.

It was also disconcerting to go from overly reactive for a period and then to no reactions at all for a period when the flipside (emotional numbness and hypo reactivity) occurred.

I had so many rollercoaster symptom events that I truly thought I was losing my mind. But this is “normal” for how hyperstimulation can affect us physically, psychologically, and emotionally.

Hyperstimulation is a common cause of chronic hyperreactivity.

3. Behavior

Behavior can also play a role in feeling hyperreactive.

For instance, many anxious people are “emotional sponges,” meaning we absorb and feel the emotions of others.

Many of us are also overly expressive, meaning we react to situations and circumstances in an overly emotional manner. We truly feel the hurts, sorrows, and joys of others as if they are our own.

Other behaviors can play a role, too, such as:

• All or nothing thinking
• Catastrophizing
• Imagining and dwelling on the worst (worry)
• Crisis living
• Overly sensitive (physically, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually)

To name a few.

While these behaviors can play a role in hyperreactivity, hyperstimulation fuels and accelerate all of it, making our reactions “over the top.”

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

Select the relevant link for more information.