How anxiety can create hallucination.

[beyond_that]

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. While it's rare for someone with anxiety to truly hallucinate, it's not rare for those with intense anxiety to have various types of mild hallucinations that can cause additional fear over your mental stability.

You are NOT Losing Touch With Reality!

The fact that you are reading this indicates that you still have a grasp of reality, and it's highly unlikely that your hallucinations are anything to worry about. You need to combat your anxiety.

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. Also, make sure you've ruled out other issues. Drug abuse can cause hallucinations, for example.

While it's always a good idea to visit a doctor or psychologist if the hallucinations are strong, the reality is that those that are truly hallucinating from some type of mental health problem rarely have enough of a grasp on reality to recognize it's a hallucination. Those that are genuinely hearing voices or seeing things that aren't there usually suffer from such intense reality loss that they are unaware what they're seeing isn't really there.

Types of Hallucinations

Hallucinations are generally broken down into subcategories based on the sense that is experiencing the unseen stimulus. The most common hallucinations are:

Visual

Auditory

Olfactory

In other words, the eyes, ears, and nose. Visual hallucinations are less common in those with anxiety. However, anxiety makes someone more likely to think that some visual problem is a hallucination. For example, the person may see a shadow out of the corner of their eye – something very normal that happens to those with or without anxiety – but because their anxiety causes them to assume the worst, they think the shadow means they're hallucinating.

It's a similar problem with auditory hallucinations. There are often noises that our brains decipher incorrectly, like when you hear a noise and think that it is someone calling your name. These are completely normal responses, but the anxious mind has a tendency to believe that you are hallucinating, rather than simply mishearing.

But that's not to say that hallucinations don't occur with anxiety. They do, and they can. 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.

It's also important to note that any type of extreme stress can activate areas of your brain that may lead to some types of hallucinations. It's not clear exactly how this occurs or why, but it's something that many people claim to have experienced.

How to Reduce the Feeling of Hallucinating

The most important thing that you can do is remind yourself that if you really were hallucinating because you are "going crazy," it would be unlikely that you would stop the hallucinations when your anxiety dies down. Most people that hallucinate with anxiety either have the briefest of hallucinations (ie, hearing a single noise that isn't there) or have their hallucinations occur when they're extremely anxious only to go away when the anxiety dies down. That indicates it's anxiety, and not the loss of touch with reality.

Seeing a therapist can also be helpful. A cognitive-behavioral therapist can help diagnose your anxiety disorder and reduce any of the fears you have about what your hallucinations "mean." Therapy isn't for everyone, but those that worry about hallucinations may benefit more than others.

Finally, make sure that you start committing to a treatment that will control your anxiety. If you suffer from anxiety at all – even if you have convinced yourself that anxiety is not the cause of your hallucinations – then curing that anxiety is important. If it does cause your hallucinations, those hallucinations will decrease fairly quickly once your anxiety goes away.

I've worked with hundreds of those that believe they are suffering from anxiety related hallucinations.

This was taken from the website calmclinic.com

When I started having anxiety disorder I thought I was going crazy or I might have other serious mental health like schezophrenic or bi polar but I dont. So reading this was helpful enough for me.

[daisymay70]

Hi.I think that trying to be involved in something pleasurable and entertaining could be the way to move your anxious thought to something you like to do, sometimes too much information in a person already anxious means worsting the process of healing.I agree with you on the importance to have someone who can guide during the process of recovering exploring different issues during psychotherapy or counselling,but discovering hallucinations even in a mild degree is something to be valued more in the deeper instead of attributing that to anxiety.I also agree that the use of drugs can alter the perception of the reality and the functionality of the brain due by the use of toxic substances for re creative purposes.If people were more aware about the consequences of the use of drugs on their mental well being,I think there is no need to investigate on other factors related to anxiety and if supported by the idea to be connected to hallucinations.Take care dear.

[Dorachka in reply to daisymay70]

Totally agree. we are the ones who create our anxiety and we want someone else to cure us from it. i understand that in a beginning we want all help we can get. but on a second look understanding that anxiety is a deep seated individual chemical reaction of the body-mind. the issue may not be just the previous use of recr. drugs. it could be meat, alcohol, smoking, luck of breath or water, just simple things. may be we have to go back to spiritual, not religious, teachings and watch our reactions and our behavior.. everything counts.