Anxiety Symptoms. Why So Many? Why Just One?

In the last post, we talked about the common and understandable fixation many of us have on one anxiety symptom. In the course of our day, we all tend to have certain things that bother us more than others. And in some cases, people can experience so much trouble with a particular symptom that they end up defining their whole anxiety disorder by that one thing. Depersonalization. Dizziness. Fatigue. You name it.

But in the world of anxiety symptoms, it is much more accurate, and much more helpful to recovery, to identify them all as part of the same process. That process is sensitization.

With that in mind, I recently stumbled upon a piece by Dan Buglio over at Pain Free You that related very well to what we discussed. Dan did an excellent deep dive into what he called whack-a-mole. You remember the old arcade game. You have a little soft mallet, and you try to bang down the little critters as they pop up, one at a time, randomly, and quite often hectically.

Of course, that is the perfect analogy for many of us when we are going through true disorder-level anxiety and sensitization.

But what about the rest of us?

So yes, it is true, as we discussed, that some people become so fixated on chasing away one symptom, or their main or only symptom, that it becomes counterproductive.

But what about those of us who have shifting symptoms? Several symptoms? Or even, like some of us lucky ones with creative nervous systems, dozens of them?

How do we explain the body producing so many varied symptoms at one time?

Well, as with most things when it comes to anxiety disorder, it can all be traced back to a sensitized nervous system. We discussed this at great length in the book, but in short, a sensitized nervous system means the body's control center has become worn down, overtaxed, and hyperstimulated, and because of that, hyper-reactive. During that process, the body can become not just overreactive, but seemingly unpredictable and chaotic.

It is easy to understand why people in the throes of anxiety or panic disorder stop trusting their bodies.

While some of us may have one symptom, others can wake up with multiple symptoms that grow into ten or more by noon, then morph and change as the day goes on. Some people start the day with a certain set of symptoms, only to finish with a completely different set, or focused on a different symptom entirely.

Or some people, like myself back during my struggle, would start the day with a myriad of intense symptoms, only to have things settle out so much by nighttime that you would begin to gain hope for the next day. Only to have the cycle start all over again the following morning.

One of the most reassuring things I eventually learned was that the number of symptoms I had said nothing about how broken I was. I wasn't experiencing dozens of symptoms because I had dozens of illnesses. I was experiencing dozens of symptoms because I had one sensitized nervous system, expressing itself in dozens of different ways.

The spoiler you already know

So how is it possible that the body can produce so many different responses in so many different people? And how is each symptom important?

Well, as we often discuss, the spoiler here is that the symptoms are, in fact, not important. What matters is not which symptom appears, but why it is appearing.

They can certainly capture our attention, and cause varying degrees of discomfort, or even lead to real suffering. But the truth is, they are not important. All symptoms boil down to how our nervous system decides it wants to address high levels of stress, worry, and sensitization. And for everyone, that can look completely different.

We are all so biochemically different, and wired in our own unique way, that one person may experience only one symptom while another experiences dozens. And yet it is all coming from the same underlying source.

The Symptom Imperative

In Dan's piece, he also talked about a theory by Dr. John Sarno called the Symptom Imperative. This is a term Dr. Sarno made popular with regard to the body's ability to shift and change symptoms as time goes on.

It is why some people may struggle with something like shortness of breath for months, and then suddenly that gets better and their focus turns to a brand new symptom, like dizziness, or literally any anxiety-related symptom that can occur.

In Dr. Sarno's version of the theory, not only can an overtaxed nervous system behave erratically, but the brain can, to some degree, shift your attention toward the symptoms it believes will most effectively get your attention.

Why would the brain do this? Well, remember, everything the brain does is to protect you, even though it may not feel like that at all times. If we have a brain that is mired in anxiety disorder, that means it believes we are in danger at all times. And when the brain believes we are in danger, it sets signals in place and sends messages to let us know, because its job is to protect us.

So shifting or changing symptoms may simply be the result of an erratically behaving, stressed nervous system. Or it may be a combination of that and a brain that is moving symptoms and your focus around to try to keep you safe.

Dr. Sarno's larger theory was called TMS, or Tension Myositis Syndrome. And while there are many areas where it overlaps with what we teach here, that one is worth a deep dive on a future podcast all its own.

So, why so many? Why just one?

To recap. Why do you have so many symptoms? Or why do you only have this one?

The answer is that we are all constructed differently on the inside, and yet we all share the commonality of having our bodies managed by the central nervous system. That means the possibilities are almost endless. One symptom. Many symptoms. On-and-off symptoms. Or even symptoms that change occasionally or daily.

The best thing we can do is to not read into any of this, and to accept it as yet another admittedly strange, and yet simple and common fact about anxiety and panic disorder, set in place by a sensitized nervous system.

And the good news, as always, is this. All symptoms, no matter how many or how few, can be relieved and eventually eliminated by doing the right work, and by staying the course with patience and discipline, through the simple (not always easy) process outlined in the book.

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