When we are more susceptible to stress, depression, or anxiety, our brains may be playing tricks on us. A cycle of continuing to look for what is wrong makes it easier to find what is wrong out there. It's called a confirmation bias.
You might notice frightening sounds or things moving in the corner of your eye, only to realize when you look closer that it was something harmless, like a leaf blowing in the wind. You might have a sense of constant anxiety but can never really pinpoint what you're worried about.
Our scary thoughts make our bodies respond as though we're actually in danger. Our brains release stress hormones, our heart races, we're ready to fight or flee. And when we feel our bodies do these things, our minds can get even more afraid. So if a gazelle is chased by a lion, once it escapes it goes back to grazing.
In each of them, our eyes send signals to our brain that our brains misinterpretfor us, leaving us with false impressions that can be hard to detect even with scrutiny. So, while not exactly a technical term, cognitive distortion is a way your mind is "playing tricks" on you.
There are a number of mental illnesses out there that can make you believe things that aren't necessarily true, including bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder and paranoid personality disorder.
Health anxiety can actually have its own symptoms because it's possible for the person to have stomachaches, dizziness, or pain as a result of their overwhelming anxiety.
Anxiety can both cause weird thoughts and be caused by weird thoughts. Some types of anxiety, including obsessive compulsive disorder, are based on these strange and unexpected thoughts. Chronic anxiety can also alter thinking patterns, as can sleep loss from anxiety related insomnia.
The two most common diagnoses associated with intrusive thoughts are anxiety and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). They can also be a symptom of depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Bipolar Disorder, or Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
Stress can cause hallucination symptoms. Since the stress caused by anxiety can affect all our senses, including hearing, yes, anxiety can cause auditory hallucinations, including hearing things that aren't real.
In many cases, our thoughts can be deceiving, faulty, or even unhelpful. These distorted thinking patterns cause negative feelings, which can enhance some issues ranging from depression and anxiety to concerns such as eating disorders.
Anxiety can also affect your behaviour. You may withdraw from friends and family, feel unable to go to work, or avoid certain places. While avoiding situations can give you short-term relief, the anxiety often returns the next time you're in the situation.
Try this: Place a hand on your heart and feel its rhythm. Breathe in deep for 4 seconds, then take a long, slow breath out. Repeat this pattern until you can feel your heartbeat slow down. Your thoughts should soon ease up as well.
“A brief mental vacation can break the cycle of anxious thoughts.” To try this on your own, set a timer for a few minutes, close your eyes, and picture yourself somewhere you feel peaceful or happy. “Just letting your mind wander can work well if your anxiety comes from feeling controlled or managed,” Henderson says.
Why does my brain feel like it's vibrating? Vibrating brain feeling can have two main causes. The effects of chronic stress, which we call hyperstimulation. Hyperstimulation can cause body-wide tremors and trembling symptoms, including causing the brain to feel like its vibrating.
If something is on your mind, you are worried or concerned about it and think about it a lot. This game has been on my mind all week. I just forgot.
Why? Because your brain is an unreliable narrator. It doesn't understand truth as we often define it—aligning with fact or reality. Instead, it functions on personal truth: facts and reality that sift through the filter of our personal biases and perceptions about the world.
It is possible for anxiety to lead to psychosis symptoms when a person's anxiety is particularly severe. However, such an instance of psychosis is different from an actual psychotic disorder in the cause and treatment approaches.
Anxiety doesn't just show up in your thoughts. For some people, anxiety proves more physical than anything else. Commonly recognized physical signs of anxiety include a nervous stomach, sweaty hands, or a pounding heart. But that's not all anxiety can do.
Some common mental symptoms of anxiety include:
Feeling nervous, restless or tense. Having a sense of impending danger, panic or doom. Trouble concentrating or thinking about anything other than the present worry. Having difficulty controlling worry.
Some unwanted intrusive thoughts consist of repetitive doubts about relationships, decisions small and large, sexual orientation or identity, intrusions of thoughts about safety, religion, death or worries about questions that cannot be answered with certainty. Some are just weird thoughts that make no apparent sense.
Unwanted thoughts are one of the most common examples of false anxiety. Often time we as humans tend to be cynical, thinking about worst case scenarios, 'what if' thoughts so to speak. We tend to get so caught up in our thoughts that we end up getting trapped by them.
One of the horrible hallmarks of any type of anxiety disorder is the tendency to overthink everything. The anxious brain is hypervigilant, always on the lookout for anything it perceives to be dangerous or worrisome.