CalmClinic: How Anxiety Can Create Hallucinations
Intense anxiety can cause not only fear, but symptoms that create further fear. In many ways, intense anxiety can cause the feeling of going crazy - as though you are losing touch with reality. Sometimes this is nothing more than a feeling or thought. Other times this is caused by additional anxiety symptoms that resemble those of true psychosis. One such symptom is hallucinations.
Hallucination Causes and Anxiety
Anxiety can play tricks on the mind, and anxiety itself can cause you to fear or think the worst about issues that are otherwise fairly normal. Severe hallucinations, especially visual hallucinations, are extremely rare for those with anxiety, but that doesn't mean that there aren't similar and related hallucinations that are attributed to anxiety symptoms.
Types of Hallucinations
During intense anxiety, your brain is highly active, and that high activity can lead to a lot of unusual issues. For example:
Daydream Sounds: Some people find that something they're thinking about or daydreaming about actually becomes an auditory sound. They may be zoning out to their own thoughts, and then somehow hear someone within their thoughts yell something to them that they are sure they heard out loud.
Light Changes: The activation of the fight or flight system during an anxiety attack can also open up the pupils. This type of activation can cause your eyes to play tricks on you, which in turn may seem like a type of hallucination.
Distraction: Anxiety can also make you so distracted that you are essentially unable to pay attention to the world around you. That distraction can overload your senses, so that normal information isn't able to be processed, and cause you to genuinely see, hear or feel things that are otherwise not there.
Floating/Disconnection: During panic attacks, some people find that their brain "shuts down" in many ways. It starts to see the world as unusual, and loses its grip on reality temporarily. This may cause you to believe that you are hearing noises or seeing things that don't make sense until you get back to reality.
Read the full article here!
Reflection: Have you, during a moment of intense anxiety, ever experienced: Daydream Sounds, Light changes, Distraction and/or floating/disconnection? Share your experiences!
#Hallucinations #Anxiey #Causes
@professionalVision2624 THIS! I've been feeling this like crazy recently and it's scary because you can feel like you're going insane and it's so overwhelming. I want to tell my doctor, but I'm scared he'll think I'm going nuts too haha 😂 Thank you for sharing this because it made me feel a little bit less alone!
@fruityPond7887
Awwww, I’m sorry to hear that :( I’ve also experienced a feeling like “I’m going crazy” during high periods of intense anxiety. I think your doctor would understand if you tell him about this experience. I’m happy you found this article interesting and that it made you feel less alone. Well if anything, atleast there is two of us 😂
@professionalVision2624 Two is better than one! Thank you for sharing your experience with me!❤️
@fruityPond7887
I'm the one who should thank you for shairng your experience and raising even more awarness and understanding about this topic!
@professionalVision2624 Aw thank you so much for your kind words! 💛
@professionalVision2624 I've experienced dissociation. It was so soothing to me at the time of heightened anxiety but everyone else around me was quite freaked out.
@comfortableNight4463
Yes, I know what you mean. It works as a coping mechanism and can feel quite relaxing when we are in a hightened state of anxiety but can be scary for those people around us that sees us enter that state. Thank you so much for sharing!
