Feel Weird About People or Things

Causes

There are many ways anxiety can cause this symptom. Here are some of the most common:

1. Anxiety-Activated Stress Response

Anxious behavior, such as worry, activates the stress response, causing many body-wide changes that prepare the body for immediate action. This 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 prefrontal 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.
• 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.

Any combination of these changes can affect how we think and feel, including how we think and feel about people, things, places, and animals.

For instance, the amygdala is part of the limbic system, primarily responsible for emotional responsiveness. Increased amygdala fear reactivity can affect our emotions, making them feel indifferent, unnatural, and “weird.”

The higher the degree of stress response, the more dramatic the changes.

Furthermore, fear can be traumatic. Some people dissociate from traumatic experiences to protect themselves psychologically and emotionally. Dissociation can alter our emotions, causing them to feel unnatural and “weird.”

 Visit the “Dissociation” anxiety disorder symptom for more information about this common symptom.

Any combination of the above can make a person feel “weird” about people, things, places, and animals. This is especially true when stress responses occur in the high to very high degree ranges.

An active stress response is a common cause of acutely feeling odd about people, things, places, or animals.

2. Hyperstimulation (chronic stress)

Since stress responses push the body beyond its balance point, stress responses stress the body. As such, anxiety stresses the body.

When stress and anxiety occur infrequently, the body can recover relatively quickly from the stress response and its changes. When stress and anxiety occur too frequently, such as from overly anxious behavior, the body doesn’t completely recover.

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 [3][4][5].

Visit our “Hyperstimulation” article for more information about the many ways hyperstimulation can affect 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 feeling weird symptoms, hyperstimulation can cause chronic feeling weird 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, including feeling weird about people, things, places, and animals we once felt good about.

In fact, hyperstimulation can cause all kinds of odd feelings and emotions, including how we feel about people, things, places, and animals. Here are some of the reasons why:

The Limbic System

The limbic system, which includes the amygdala, supports many functions, such as adrenaline flow, behavior, long-term memory, motivation, and our emotional life [6].

The limbic system is stimulated by stress [6]. As the degree of stress increases, so does Limbic System activity.

When the limbic system becomes chronically stressed (hyperstimulated), our emotions and feelings can become erratic, from a strong sense of euphoria to people and things feeling “weird.”

Feeling weird about the people, things, places, and animals in your life is a common indication of an overly stimulated Limbic System.

Stress hormones affect other hormones

Hormones, such as serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins, often called our “feel good” hormones, play an important role in our feelings (emotional well-being).

Since stress hormones affect other hormones, including causing a reduction in our “feel good” hormones, chronic stress (hyperstimulation) can cause many emotional symptoms [7], including feeling “weird” about people and things we once felt good about.

Chronic stress (hyperstimulation) is a common cause of feeling psychologically and emotionally “weird.”

Cortisol insensitivity

Cortisol is a powerful stress hormone stimulant that creates energized, focused, and emotionally upbeat feelings.

However, chronic activation of the stress response can reduce cortisol sensitivity [8], causing feelings of apathy and emotional weirdness, especially toward people and things we normally feel good about.

Chronic stress (hyperstimulation) is a common cause of cortisol insensitivity and feeling “weird.”

Fatigue

Stress quickly drains the body’s energy. Chronic stress (hyperstimulation) can tax the body so much that it becomes exhausted.

Fatigue can affect our emotions, making them feel odd.

As long as the body is exhausted, our feelings can seem unusual.

Fatigue can also be caused by recovery. As your anxiety and hyperstimulation recovery efforts cause a reduction in stimulation, circulating stress hormone levels diminish, which can cause fatigue.

Sleep deprivation

Chronic stress (hyperstimulation) is a common cause of sleep problems. A lack of regular good sleep can cause sleep deprivation.

Sleep deprivation affects the reasoning (prefrontal cortex) and emotional (amygdala) parts of the brain [9].

Research has shown the first signs of sleep deprivation are unstable emotions.

Sleep deprivation is a common cause of feeling emotionally unusual or odd.

These are just a few of the ways anxiety, stress, and chronic stress (hyperstimulation) can affect our emotions, including causing weird emotions and feelings about people and things we once felt good about.

There are other factors to consider:

3. Medication

Medications, prescription and over-the-counter, can also affect mood because of how they affect brain function [10]. Side effects of medications are another common cause of feeling emotionally weird.

More specifically, SSRI antidepressants can cause emotional swings as a side effect [11]. Many people taking SSRI antidepressants report feeling emotionally flat and “weird.”

4. Behavior

Research has shown a tight mind and body connection. Since our emotions are primarily caused by how we think and the body's physical health can influence how we think, our emotions are caused by a complex combination of biological and psychological factors.

We mentioned some of the biological factors earlier.

Some psychological factors that influence our emotions include our beliefs, preferences, attitudes, how we behave (think and act), and habituated patterns of behavior.

Dr. David Burns coined the phrase, “We feel how we think,” meaning our thinking drives our emotions.[12] If we behave in anxious and depressed ways, that can affect our emotions, including creating feelings of being emotionally “weird.”

For instance, anxious behavior, such as questioning everything, can create odd feelings.

Because the states of our physical and psychological health influence each other – our psychological well-being can influence our physiological well-being, and vice versa – many variables influence how we feel about people, things, places, and animals.

Nevertheless, when the body and mind are healthy, we typically experience feelings within the “normal” range of stability and predictability. But if the body, mind, or both become unhealthy, it can impact our feelings.

Feeling “weird” about life really scared me (Jim Folk) when I first experienced it. Because everything felt “weird,” I feared I was on the verge of a complete mental and emotional breakdown. As you know, fearing your symptoms and what you think they could do only makes matters worse.

Unfortunately, this is a common scenario for many anxious people. In fact, many anxious people place a high value on how they feel (often referred to as “emotional reasoning”).

When a person worries about feeling “weird,” it doesn’t take long to become more symptomatic and concerned, fueling the entire anxiety disorder problem.

The good news is that while this symptom can be unsettling, it isn’t harmful and generally doesn’t indicate something more serious.

Feeling “weird” is just another symptom of anxious behavior, stress, and chronic stress (hyperstimulation).

Normal feelings return when you faithfully practice your recovery strategies and give your body sufficient time to recover.

5. Other Factors

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

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

Select the relevant link for more information.