If you’ve ever had a racing heart, tight chest, or just felt off for no obvious reason, then it might be anxiety trying to get your attention… because physical anxiety symptoms are real, common, and much more manageable once you understand what’s actually driving them. So, Let’s Talk About Mental Health!

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Episode Overview:

Physical anxiety symptoms can feel terrifying, especially when anxiety and stress start showing up in your body with chest tightness, nausea, a racing heart, or panic attack symptoms that seem to come out of nowhere. So, we need to talk about how to identify and deal with anxiety symptoms.

In this episode of the Let’s Talk About Mental Health podcast, I explore what happens when anxiety stops feeling like ‘just worry’ and starts showing up physically, as well as why anxiety happens and how the body can get stuck in a feedback loop. We’ll also explore how nervous system anxiety can leave you dealing with heart palpitations anxiety, anxiety nausea, anxiety exhaustion, and other anxiety physical effects that make everyday life feel harder than it needs to. I break down anxiety vs panic attack symptoms, look at what somatic anxiety can actually feel like, and share practical mental health tips to help you respond more calmly, understand the pattern beneath your symptoms, and start finding real anxiety relief instead of feeding the fear. 

This episode is for anyone dealing with anxiety symptoms, a panic attack, an anxiety attack, or the exhausting confusion of wondering whether what you’re feeling is stress, burnout, an anxiety disorder, or something more serious. 

👉 Ready to understand your anxiety symptoms better and find peace? Then let’s talk!

💡 TL;DR: Think your symptoms are random? This episode breaks down physical anxiety symptoms and the hidden link between anxiety and stress, so you can understand what your body is trying to tell you and what to do about it. 🙂

New here? Hi! Let’s Talk About Mental Health is your weekly dose of practical mental health advice for real life. I’m Jeremy Godwin (hello! 👋) and I keep things simple, honest, and doable so you can feel more in control of your life and your mental wellbeing. If you’re not already a free subscriber, sign up below to have episodes and transcripts land in your inbox every Sunday:

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Episode Transcript:

How to deal with physical anxiety symptoms

Your body has been trying to tell you something. But are you actually listening?

When your heart races for no obvious reason, or your chest feels tight, or you feel nauseated, or just ‘not quite right’ for ages, you might not think, “Hmm, this is anxiety”… because it’s much easier to think, “Something is seriously wrong with me!”

And that fear makes everything worse.

In this episode, we’re going to look at what your body is actually trying to tell you and what to do about it.

So let’s talk about… physical anxiety symptoms.

Hello! I’m Jeremy Godwin and this is the Let’s Talk About Mental Health podcast, full of practical advice to help you understand and improve your mental health. Today I want to talk about what happens when anxiety doesn’t just stay neatly in your thoughts; when it moves into your body and starts expressing itself in ways that can feel unpleasant, confusing, and sometimes genuinely frightening. Because a lot of people don’t realise that anxiety is not just a mental experience. It’s a full body experience. And it can be incredibly easy to spend a lot of time chasing the wrong explanation for what’s happening to you.

And that’s something that I’m saying to you from personal experience, not just as a counsellor. Before my breakdown in late 2011, I spent many, many months dealing with physical symptoms that I just couldn’t explain: racing heart, constant gut issues, feeling ‘on edge’ in a way that seemed to have no obvious cause. And so I had tests done; lots of tests. I worried. I Googled like my life depended on it.

And it wasn’t until I finally told my doctor honestly what was actually going on in all of my life at the time that he connected the dots for me… and his response was basically, “A-ha! That explains everything.” It turned out it wasn’t a mystery illness. It was anxiety that had been living in my body for years, while my mind kept trying to push through and just pretend everything that was… was completely fine. But everything was not fine.

And I’m sharing that because I suspect that some of you might be in your own version of that kind of place right now… and so this episode is all about what physical anxiety symptoms actually are, why your body goes and responds the way that it does to anxiety, and why not understanding that response actually makes everything so much harder. And we’re also going to talk about what you can do to start calming your system rather than accidentally making things worse. We’ll also talk about when it’s time to stop managing this stuff alone and actually get proper support, because some of this really does need professional attention… and as much as we hope it does just sitting on it and wishing it to go away really doesn’t help.

Now, before we get into all of that, if you hit play on this episode because you feel a bit overwhelmed or on edge right now I want to give you something quick and simple first. So… close your eyes if it’s safe to do so, and breathe gently and just notice where you’re holding tension in your body at the moment. Is it your jaw? Your shoulders? Your chest? Take one slow breath in and a slightly longer breath out. Put both feet flat on the floor if you can. And just let yourself be here in this moment, for 30 seconds; a minute if you can. Because the more settled your nervous system is while we talk about this stuff, the more useful it’s going to be.

So take that moment, pause me for a bit if you need to, and then when you’re ready let’s get into it. And so we’re first going to talk about…

What anxiety does to your body

So… what are physical anxiety symptoms? And why does anxiety affect your body in the first place?

Well, in plain English, anxiety is not just a thinking problem. It’s a nervous system response; a full mind and body extravaganza, if you will! When your brain perceives a threat, whether that threat’s real, or imagined, or remembered, or anticipated, it then triggers a surge of physical changes that are designed to protect you in an emergency or a life-threatening situation. So your heart rate increases, your breathing shifts, your muscles tighten, your digestion slows to reroute energy elsewhere, your senses sharpen. This is your fight or flight response, and it isn’t a flaw in your system… it’s doing exactly what it was designed to do: keep you alive.

The problem is that your nervous system can’t always tell the difference between a genuine physical threat versus a difficult conversation that you might be dreading, or a pile of unread emails, or a relationship that’s quietly draining you, or years of stress that you’ve been just pushing through without ever properly addressing it. Your system responds to all of it. And when that pressure goes on for weeks, or months, or years, the physical responses don’t just show up in moments of obvious stress. Oh, no, no, no! They start showing up all the time… and often when you least expect them. And that’s when things get confusing.

Because what does that actually feel like? Well, it can feel like a heart that races or pounds for no obvious reason. A chest that feels tight or heavy, sometimes enough to make you wonder whether there’s something seriously wrong. It’s shortness of breath, or the sense that you can’t quite get a full breath in, or nausea, or stomach cramps, or gut issues that seem to have no clear physical cause. Dizziness, lightheadedness, trembling, shakiness, excessive sweating, headaches, muscle tension, fatigue that sleep doesn’t seem to fix, feeling disconnected from yourself or your surroundings. And sometimes, all of this builds into what feels like an overwhelming physical wave of panic.

Now I do just want to pause here and say something that’s really important: if you are experiencing physical symptoms and you haven’t spoken to a doctor about them, please do. Don’t use a podcast to diagnose! It’s not because I want to alarm you, but some of these symptoms can have physical causes that do need to be checked out… and you should never, ever self-diagnose based on a Google search or a podcast. What I’m talking about in this episode is what happens when those physical causes have been ruled out, or when the pattern of your symptoms strongly points to your nervous system being the issue and what it’s been carrying. Right? A good doctor will help you to connect the dots on those. Mine certainly did, even if it took a while to get there because I wouldn’t or couldn’t admit to myself just how stressed out and traumatised I was at the time.

Now… probably the most common misunderstanding that we tend to have about physical anxiety symptoms is that we think that they mean that something’s wrong with us, right? Like we’re weak, or broken, or not able to cope, or… and this is where it can get really tricky… or we think that the symptoms themselves are the problem. But they’re not. They’re the signal. They’re your body communicating to you in the only language it has… and it’s telling you that something in your life needs attention. The symptoms are not the enemy. They’re the messenger.

The other thing I want to clarify here, because I know a lot of people wonder about this, is the difference between an anxiety attack versus a panic attack. They can feel very similar, and the line between them isn’t always perfectly clean, but broadly speaking anxiety symptoms tend to build gradually in response to ongoing stress or worry… whereas a panic attack tends to come on quite suddenly and intensely, and it often peaks within a few minutes and it can feel completely overwhelming even when there’s no obvious trigger. Now both of them involve physical symptoms, they’re both very real, and they both deserve to be taken seriously. And this episode is relevant to both, although there is a lot more to explore there, and we are going to come back to that topic in a future episode in a few months so subscribe or follow to never miss an episode.

For now what I want you to remember is this: your body is not betraying you, it’s responding to something. And once you understand what it’s responding to and why, that’s when things start to shift.

So with that in mind, let’s talk about…

Why your body and mind gets stuck in a loop

So why does this matter so much for your mental health? Like, why isn’t it enough to just know that anxiety can cause physical symptoms and leave it there? Well, unfortunately, knowledge is great… but knowledge alone does not break the cycle.

And there is a cycle here. It’s a very specific one, and if you don’t understand it then you’re almost certainly going to keep on feeding it without realising that that’s what you’re doing. Here’s how it works. A physical symptom shows up. You have a racing heart, or your chest tightens, or you feel that wave of ‘not quite rightness’ that you can’t name. And because it’s physical, because it feels urgent and real and alarming, your mind immediately tries to make sense of it. Understandable.

But if you don’t realise that what you’re experiencing is an anxiety response, your mind will almost always land on the most frightening available explanation. Something’s wrong. Something’s seriously wrong. And that then generates more anxiety. Which generates more physical symptoms. Which your mind then reads as further evidence that something really is wrong. And around and around it goes. That’s a feedback loop, and it’s exhausting and frightening and incredibly hard to interrupt when it’s happening, when you’re inside it… especially if you’ve been inside it for a long time without being aware of what’s been driving it.

That’s precisely why I spent months getting tests done before anyone connected the dots for me, even me… because from the outside, the symptoms looked medical. And from the inside, they felt medical. It felt like it was just a coincidence that I was dealing with all of this other stuff. And every time a test came back clear, instead of feeling reassured I’d feel even more confused… because if nothing’s wrong, then why does my body keep on doing this?

That confusion is its own kind of anxiety fuel, and it keeps the loops spinning around and around like Wonder Woman on Go-Go Juice.

Here’s the fundamental truth that I want you to really sit with for a moment. Fear of your symptoms is one of the most powerful ways to make those symptoms worse. It’s not because you’re being unreasonable, or because you’re weak. It’s because fear is itself an anxiety trigger. When you’re frightened by what your body is doing, you’re adding more threat signals to a nervous system that’s already in protection mode. Without meaning to, you’re telling your system that there really is something to be afraid of… and your system believes you every single time.

That’s what sits underneath all of this. It’s not just anxiety causing physical symptoms. It’s the fear of those symptoms causing more anxiety, causing more symptoms, causing more fear. And the longer that loop runs without interruption, the more entrenched it becomes… and the more your nervous system starts to treat that state as its new normal.

And that has real consequences. It affects your sleep, your concentration, your mood, your relationships, your ability to feel safe in your own body. It can make you hypervigilant, where you’re constantly scanning for the next symptom or the next sign that something’s wrong. It can make you avoid situations or activities that you associate with the symptoms… which quietly shrinks your life. And it has huge effects on you physically. And it can also chip away at your confidence in a massive way, because when you don’t trust your own body it’s really hard to feel stable and balanced in anything else.

There’s also a bigger picture piece here that’s worth naming. So physical anxiety symptoms are not just a nervous system glitch that needs to be managed. Very often they’re a clear signal that something broader needs your attention. Maybe you’ve been under pressure for much longer than you’ve acknowledged. Maybe you have trauma that you haven’t worked through and addressed. Maybe there are things in your life that your mind’s been trying to push through, or push away, while your body has been quietly keeping the score; things like relationship issues, or work problems, or patterns of behaviour, or unresolved stuff. Your body isn’t being melodramatic, and it usually sends these types of signals for a very good reason.

But… if you only ever focus on managing the symptoms without looking at what’s actually underneath them, then you’ll probably find yourself managing those symptoms indefinitely. Your body keeps the score. Because when anxiety lives in your body, it isn’t about asking, “What’s wrong with me?” but instead, “What has my nervous system been carrying? And for how long?” Being able to reframe that matters because it moves you out of self blame and into something much more helpful, which is honest self-awareness. And that’s where real change begins.

And so we’re going to talk about how to actually do all of that right after this quick break.

[AD BREAK]

And welcome back! Now let’s get into the ‘how to’ part of this episode, and let’s talk about…

How to calm the anxiety loop, not feed it

So let’s explore what to actually do. And as always, the full transcript is at ltamh.com/episodes, and it’s linked in the description… so you can just listen for what resonates with you, and then use that transcript to come back to the detail later.

Right, so… I want to give you some things that work in the moment and also some things to work on over time, because you need both. So let’s do the ‘in the moment’ stuff first, starting with…

Stop Googling your symptoms.

When something feels wrong in your body, the instinct to search for an explanation is completely natural. But… Googling physical symptoms from inside an anxious nervous system is like asking someone who’s already panicking to talk you down off a ledge, right?! You’ll find the most alarming possible explanations, your nervous system will then treat them as confirmation, and the loop will get faster. So… if you have ongoing physical symptoms that worry you, go and see a doctor. Not WebMD. Not Reddit. And not a podcast, including this one! Look, a podcast can help you understand patterns and build tools… but it’s general information; it cannot assess your individual situation, your history, or what’s actually going on for you specifically. That requires a real conversation face-to-face with a real professional. So if you’ve been struggling through something, please stop managing it alone and go and get it properly looked at. If you can’t physically go see a doctor, organise to see one over a telehealth service. And if you don’t like your regular doctor, find a new one. OK, next…

Lengthen your exhale.

When you’re dealing with physical anxiety symptoms, this is the fastest evidence-based way to activate your parasympathetic nervous system. And that’s the part of you that’s responsible for rest and recovery, and also for telling your mind and body that you’re safe. And doing this is a lot simpler than you might think. You don’t need some magic breathing technique, or an app, or a special timer. You just need your exhale to be longer than your inhale. Even doing a ‘four counts in’ breath and then a ‘six counts out’… if you do that three or four times at least, that’s going to start to send a genuine safety signal to your nervous system. This is not a distraction technique. It’s a physiological intervention; you are quite literally changing the chemistry of your stress response in real time… and by doing that, it calms you. Really simple. Next…

Name it, without calling it ‘a catastrophe’.

When a symptom shows up, your mind is going to immediately try to write a story about what it means. And if that story starts with, “Something is seriously wrong!” then your nervous system will of course treat that as being confirmation of a threat… and things are going to escalate.

So before the story gets out of control, name what’s actually happening instead: “My chest is tight. This is a stress response. I am not in danger.”

Keep it simple, honest, and specific. Now, I’m not just saying this for the fun of it: research shows that putting your feelings into words, that naming an experience, actually activates the decision making part of your brain, and it reduces activity in the amygdala, which is the brain’s alarm centre… so in other words, naming it really does start to tame it! It’s not instant, but it has a measurable impact. And look, one more thing here. Don’t try to just talk yourself out of it by saying, “I’m fine,” when you’re clearly not. Right?! That’s not reassurance, that’s self-gaslighting… and your nervous system knows the difference! Next…

Stop treating your symptoms as the problem.

A lot of people spend a huge amount of time and energy trying to manage, suppress, or eliminate physical anxiety symptoms… and look, while that’s totally understandable, all it does is keep you locked in conflict with your own body. The more you treat symptoms as something to be defeated, the more vigilant your nervous system becomes. It’s constantly on high alert, constantly scanning, and constantly bracing for the next symptom. What does actually help over time is shifting from symptom management to pattern recognition.

So, start tracking when your symptoms tend to show up. Don’t be obsessive about it, but do be honest, right? Do they show up around certain people? Or after interacting with certain people? Is it during particular kinds of pressure? After poor sleep? Or emotional overload? Keep a note of those things, because physical anxiety symptoms are rarely ever random. They have a logic behind them. And once you can see that logic, once you can see the pattern, you’re no longer reacting to the symptoms… you’re understanding the pattern. That’s a fundamentally different position to be in… and it’s much more empowering! Next…

Reduce your baseline load.

Now let’s talk longer term focus, and this is a step that I think a lot of people tend to skip because it requires the most honesty. Physical anxiety symptoms that keep recurring are almost always telling you that your nervous system’s baseline level of activation is just too high. And so that means the solution is not just better ‘in the moment’ tools; it’s not ‘a bit of breathing’, right? The solution is to reduce what’s keeping your system on high alert in the first place.

Now… that might mean if you’ve been under sustained pressure and you’ve been normalising it, it might mean addressing it. Or maybe you need to look honestly at the relationships or situations in your life that are quietly draining you. Or perhaps you need to build more genuine recovery time into your life, instead of just ‘resting’ but having time that doesn’t actually restore you; scrolling on your phone doesn’t restore you, just to be clear!

Remember, rest is stopping… but recovery is what actually brings your nervous system back down. And a lot of us are resting without recovery… which is exactly the reason why we still feel exhausted and on edge even after a full night’s sleep. I did talk about anxiety and exhaustion and what drives that cycle in Episode 331 if you’d like to go deeper on that, and it’s linked in the description. Next…

Know when self-management isn’t enough.

Alright, let’s be real here: if your symptoms are frequent, or severe, or significantly affecting your daily life… in other words, if you’re avoiding situations because of them… if panic attacks are a regular experience, if you’ve been managing this sort of stuff alone for a long time without seeing much improvement, then none of that is a cue for you to try harder. That’s a cue to get proper support. Actually, it’s your body screaming into a megaphone.

See a doctor. Talk to a mental health professional, like a counsellor or a therapist. Do something. Don’t just ignore something that deserves real attention. Because symptoms that are left unaddressed have a way of getting louder, rather than quieter. Seeking help is not weakness. It’s the most self-respecting thing you can do when something is beyond what you should be managing alone.

Conclusion

So here’s what I want you to take away from this episode. Anxiety isn’t just something that happens in your thoughts. It’s a full body experience… and it’s a sign that your nervous system has been carrying something for too long and it’s run out of quieter ways to get your attention. Understanding that is the thing that starts to break the cycle.

So, what has your nervous system been telling you? And have you actually been listening? Because when you boil it all down, anxiety affects your entire body… and healing begins the moment you understand what’s actually going on.

Because when you boil it all down, your life will not feel more meaningful unless you begin treating it like something you’re actively part of.

Each week I like to finish up by sharing a quote about the topic, and I encourage you to take a few moments to really reflect on it and consider what it means to you. This week’s quote is by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and it is…

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let me repeat that:

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Alright, that’s it for this week! If you found this episode helpful, please follow or subscribe wherever you’re listening or watching and share it with someone who might need it right now. And if you’d like to help me keep on creating practical advice for better mental health every week, join my Patreon; it’s linked in the episode description.

Thank you very much for joining me today. Look after yourself and make a conscious effort to share positivity and kindness out into the world… because you get back what you put out. Take care and talk to you next time!

Join me next week when I talk about the basics of better mental health, and check out my episode on emotional regulation when you’re overwhelmed next. It’s linked in the description. I release new episodes every Sunday, so follow or subscribe to never miss an episode.

Let’s Talk About Mental Health is an independent program. Discover more at ltamh.com.

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Find more content at www.ltamh.com

Let’s Talk About Mental Health.
Making Mental Health Simple.

Let’s Talk About Mental Health. © 2026 Jeremy Godwin.

The information provided in this episode is for general awareness on the topic and does not constitute advice. You should consult a doctor and/or mental health professional if you’re struggling with your mental health and wellbeing. You’ll find additional information on the Resources page of this website.