It is not uncommon for people suffering from chronic anxiety to experience certain physical symptoms. These can include chest pain and heart palpitations or heart fluttering. Other symptoms can include nervous trembling, headaches, nausea, severe tiredness or lassitude and muscular tension. Other unusual and worrying symptoms can include aches and pains, numbness, even dizziness and hot and cold flushes.
Many sufferers from severe anxiety may experience feelings of depression and/or a strange feeling of loss of reality.
Sufferers are not going insane although many often feel that they are. These experiences are part of the normal process of coping with severe anxiety.
Some other symptoms can include feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. People can have serious concerns about dying, having a heart attack, losing control in public and embarrassing themselves. These are very real feelings that cannot be dealt with through pure logic. Often sufferers will feel that they desperately need to get somewhere safe before they fall apart. It is in such times that a partner, spouse or close friend can be the only source of comfort and release for them although the challenge here is that in reality there is no safe place for them because THEY are the only person who can stop themselves being anxious.
It is very important to realize and fully appreciate and respect that to a sufferer of chronic anxiety these experiences ARE real and no less so than if they stubbed their toe on a chair or broke a leg.