Why Can People With Anxiety Disorder Have Different Symptoms?

Video Transcript

I have a friend who has anxiety, and her symptoms are different than mine. She also has a friend who has anxiety, and his symptoms are different than both of ours. Why can people with anxiety disorder have different symptoms?

Apprehensive behavior, such as worry, activates the stress response. The stress response secretes stress hormones into the bloodstream, where they travel to targeted locations to bring about specific physiological, psychological, and emotional changes that prepare the body for immediate emergency action—to either fight or flee.

This survival reaction is often referred to as the fight or flight response.[1][2]

Visit “The Stress Response” article for more information about the many body-wide changes caused by the stress response.

Even though the stress response causes similar changes in all humans, it can affect each person in slightly different ways since each body is somewhat physically and chemically unique.

For example, the actions of the stress response might cause a strong sensation in the stomach for one person, whereas another person might experience muscle tension as their strongest reaction.

Or, one person might feel lightheaded and out-of-breath as the strongest reaction to the stress response, whereas another might experience numbness and tingling.

And so on.

Furthermore, one person might have multiple strong reactions to the stress response, such as profuse sweating, trembling, upset stomach, and racing thoughts. In contrast, another person might get only one or a few symptoms, such as smelling an unusual smell or muscle twitching.

It’s not that the stress response causes different body changes but that each body can respond uniquely to the stress response.

Moreover, the degree of stress response can also account for a difference.

For instance, higher-degree stress responses typically cause more dramatic changes and affect the body in more ways than a lesser-degree stress response.

And since the degree of stress response is determined by the degree of perceived threat, which will also vary from person to person, again, each person can have a unique anxiety symptom experience even though stress hormones affect the body in similar ways.

These differences can be compounded when the body becomes hyperstimulated.

Hyperstimulation can also cause a unique symptom experience for each person. The degree of hyperstimulation can also make a difference – higher degrees of hyperstimulation typically cause an increase in the number, type, frequency, and severity of symptoms.

Moreover, hyperstimulation can cause the body to behave erratically. This erratic behavior can vary based on the degree of hyperstimulation and from person to person.

Other factors can cause symptom differences, too. For instance:

• Individual physical fitness level.
• Diet.
• Sleep habits.
• The physical makeup of the body.
• The chemical makeup of the body.
• Nervous system reactivity can vary from person to person.
• The activities each person regularly engages in (one person might prefer regular physical activities whereas another might prefer a more sedentary lifestyle).
• The medications and recreational drugs each person take.
• Some people are more sensitive to pain than others.
• Increases in stress can cause an increase in pain regulation.
• Some people perceive their symptoms differently than others (one person might call their symptoms pain or burning, whereas another might describe it as a tinging or effervescent feeling).
• Some people are less reactive to their symptoms, whereas other people might be overreactive and describe their symptoms in more dramatic ways.

And so on.

There are many reasons why people describe their symptoms in different ways, even though the symptom is the same from person to person.

Again, it’s not that the stress response brings about different changes in each body, but that each body can respond uniquely to the stress response changes. And each person can have a different interpretation of the symptoms they experience.

It’s also common for people to like and dislike different symptoms.

For instance, one person might severely detest their numbness and tingling and call them burning or pain, whereas another person is barely bothered by them and brushes them off as slight numbness and tingling.

Or, one person might strongly react to ringing in the ears as if it’s the worst symptom on earth and describe it as horrendously painful, whereas another person couldn’t care less about it and calls it a minor nuisance.

While there aren’t medical tests to verify most anxiety symptoms, working with anxious people over 30+ years has shown us these differences and why.

In fact, we regularly hear different descriptions for the same symptom, which is why you see this reflected in the many descriptions for each symptom in our Anxiety Symptoms section.

Even though you might see a symptom described differently from person to person, that doesn’t mean the symptom is different. People tend to describe them differently for many reasons.

Based on the above, it’s common for anxious people to experience different symptoms, react to them in unique ways, and describe them using different terms. We see this all the time!