When worrying becomes excessive, it can lead to feelings of high anxiety and even cause you to be physically ill.
Overthinking can be an early indicator or symptom of depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions. To stop overthinking, you can try challenging your thoughts, reaching out to loved ones for support, or talking to a mental health professional for extra help.
When you are under stress or anxious, this system kicks into action, and physical symptoms can appear — headaches, nausea, shortness of breath, shakiness, or stomach pain. "Doctors see it all the time — patients with real pain or other symptoms, but nothing is physically wrong with them," says Dr.
While overthinking itself is not a mental illness, it is associated with conditions including depression, anxiety, eating disorders and substance use disorders.
GAD is characterized by the tendency to worry excessively about several things. “Someone can develop GAD due to their genes. Or it could be personality factors like the inability to tolerate uncertainty in life.
While both mental health conditions involve repetitive worrying, people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) often engage in unwanted and repetitive behavior in response to their worry. People with anxiety, however, tend to overthink their worry, but don't act in specific responsive manners.
Anxiety Can Cause Feelings of Illness
Feeling sick may be a sign that you've fallen ill, but it can also be a sign of anxiety. While feeling sick may be the only physical symptom of anxiety, there are often others including breathlessness, dizziness and fatigue.
Though some stress is good for us, too much can be detrimental to your health. Extended periods of negativity slows digestion, and decreases the immune system's ability to fight inflammation. This is also why negative people are more likely to get more sick than optimists.
A lack of sleep, poor diet, anxiety, or stress can often cause a person to feel sick. These factors can make a person more susceptible to infection and illness. However, always feeling sick can also signify pregnancy or chronic illness. When sick, a person may experience stomach discomfort and vomiting.
In addition, medications originally designed for depression, the SSRIs (Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Lexapro, Effexor, Cymbalta, and others), are also capable of lowering the underlying level of anxiety which takes a lot of steam out of this phenomenon.
Everyday fatigue that is not illness-related starts with a baseline of health. You may feel sleepy, you may in fact be sleep-deprived, or your body and mind may be worn out from long hours, exertion, or unrelenting stress — but you don't feel sick. Your muscles and joints don't ache like when you have the flu.
Fatigue and nausea are symptoms that commonly occur together. In some cases, they are the result of lifestyle habits, such as poor sleep or diet, or lack of exercise. In other instances, they may signal an underlying mental or physical health issue that requires treatment.
Several conditions can cause nausea, including stress, anxiety, infections, and motion sickness. Occasional temporary nausea is also common but typically not cause for concern. Nausea is a sensation that makes a person feel they need to vomit. Sometimes, individuals with nausea do vomit, but not always.
Negative thoughts can make you feel sad and anxious. They take the joy out of life-and they can take a toll on your physical health. That's why it's so important to learn how to deal with them.
A: Negative thinking makes you feel blue about the world, about yourself, about the future. It contributes to low self-worth. It makes you feel you're not effective in the world. Psychologists link negative thinking to depression, anxiety, chronic worry and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
The short answer is yes, worry or anxiety can cause a person to experience physical symptoms, including stomach aches, nausea, and even vomiting.
People who overthink things regularly, psychologists believe, are often those who may have larger self-esteem or acceptance issues, Dr. Winsberg explains. If you're constantly overthinking (more on that later), however, it may be a symptom of clinical anxiety and depression or even obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Overthinking can be an all-natural process, it can also be the result if the creative and overly active ADHD brain. While most believe overthinking to be a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder, it' actually relates more to ADHD.
Physical symptoms could include: feeling tired and drained, frequent headaches or muscle pain, frequent illnesses due to a lowered immune system, and a change in appetite or sleep habits.
So can lack of sleep cause flu-like symptoms? A lack of sleep can compromise your immune system, making you more susceptible to viruses like the flu. Research has shown that a lack of sleep causes stress hormones to inhibit the effectiveness of T cells in the body.
Don't try to change them
One of the most important things to remember when dealing with an overthinker is that you cannot change them. They are who they are, and no amount of coaxing or cajoling is going to change that.