Can Anxiety Make You Dizzy, Lightheaded, or Faint? *FULL EXPLANATION*

Can anxiety really cause lightheadedness, dizziness, and fainting? That seems like a strange symptom of anxiety, doesn’t it? Well, the short answer is yes, anxiety can create all of these things. But let’s unpack this fully so you understand exactly what’s going on and give you the right way to approach it. 

 Alright, before we dive in, I want to let you in on a secret. Anxiety doesn’t need to be just managed. You hear people all over the place talk about trying to manage their anxiety. They do breathing techniques, meditation, incorporate exercise, and clean up their diet. These things can be helpful for anxiety, but they aren’t going to allow you to overcome anxiety forever. To truly recover from anxiety and never have to worry about it again for the rest of your life, you need to learn how to lose your fear of anxiety and desensitize your nervous system. That is how you obtain freedom from anxiety and get your life back. If you want to know more about how to do that, I’ve put the framework in the link below. It’s called the 5-Step Cure to Anxiety and Panic Attacks and it's completely free. It’s my gift to you for joining me here today.

OK, one of the most common and distressing symptoms of anxiety is feeling dizzy, lightheaded, or even fearing that you are going to faint. These sensations can be incredibly frightening, but why does anxiety cause these symptoms?

If you’re new to this channel and don’t already know, the cause of your anxiety and panic attacks is an overactive fight-or-flight response. I talk about this all the time, but your nervous system is in an overactive and sensitized state, so your fight or flight response is engaging unnecessarily. That is what is producing all these strange and intense sensations that you're experiencing. 

OK, now that you understand that, there are two reasons you are feeling lightheaded, dizzy, or faint, and both are related to how our body reacts when it engages in our fight or flight response. 

So, when you’re faced with a threat, your brain hits the panic button and it floods your system with adrenaline and other stress hormones. This sudden surge prepares you to either confront the danger head-on or flee away. Your heart races, your breathing becomes faster, and all your senses sharpen. All these help you react quickly to the perceived threat or danger.

Alright, so when your body goes into fight-or-flight mode, one of the first things that happens is that your breathing rate increases. Your body is trying to take in more oxygen in preparation for either fighting off a threat or running away from it. However, this rapid breathing can cause a decrease in the levels of carbon dioxide in your blood and cause symptoms like lightheadedness and dizziness. So, in other words, it can be the rapid breathing that makes you feel lightheaded or dizzy. That’s one way that anxiety can cause these symptoms.

But I can hear you saying, “Peter, sometimes I feel dizzy and lightheaded and I know that I’m not breathing heavily.” Well, that’s because there’s another reason that anxiety can create these sensations. When your fight or flight response is engaged, your body is redirecting your blood flow and sending more blood toward your muscles to prepare for immediate action. As a result, your brain can receive slightly less blood flow and that can actually make you feel dizzy or lightheaded. To reiterate, what I’m saying is that your brain can be getting less blood when you are anxious and this can create the sensation of being lightheaded or dizzy.

When you are feeling this way it might seem like the room is spinning or that you’re about to lose your balance. This is very alarming because you can feel like you might fall down or even faint. For me, personally, I didn’t feel dizzy as much as I felt light-headed. Feeling lightheaded would make it seem like I was unsteady on my feet and there’d be times I’d swear I was about to faint. I can even remember that if I stood up from a chair too quickly, I’d get really light headed and sometimes have to sit back down. So, I started to get up from chairs really slowly. 

One other thing worth noting is that it wasn’t just my balance that it affected. My lightheadedness also affected my ability to concentrate and focus. This lightheaded sensation made it feel like my brain wasn’t working. I’d try to do a work project or have a conversation and everything felt difficult and challenging.  

Ok, let’s talk about fainting for a second. Fainting from anxiety is very rare, and despite feeling like I was going to faint hundreds of times, I never did. That’s because fainting only happens when you experience a drop in blood pressure. However, with anxiety and panic, your body's response is to increase blood pressure, which is designed to keep you alert and conscious. So, I want you to know that it’s very, very unlikely that you would faint when you are anxious or having a panic attack.

Alright, now you know why your anxiety can make you feel lightheaded or dizzy. That’s the first step. Although I could tell you that you need to make sure to take deep breaths when you're feeling lightheaded or dizzy, that will provide little to no help. So, instead, what I’m going to tell you is that you need to work on recovering from anxiety itself. Don’t spend time trying to make yourself less dizzy, spend your time and focus working towards a full recovery. That’s where the true freedom is from all the symptoms of anxiety. You can be back to living a normal life. I know because I’ve done it myself and mentored countless clients back to a full recovery. So, if you want the step-by-step guide on how to do that, make sure you download the 5-Step Cure to Anxiety and Panic Attacks in the link below.