Anxiety Will Not Kill You (Even if It Feels Like It Will)

Source: Nopphon/ Shutterstock

During acute periods of anxiety or panic, many people report feeling like their heads might explode, they might have a heart attack, or they’ll lose control of their bodies. They may even have very real sensations of impending death.

Naturally, there is an urge to rid ourselves of such uncomfortable and distressing feelings. We even feel as though we must quash our anxiety before it kills us.

However, no one has ever died from anxiety. Truly, your anxiety will not kill you, even though it feels like it will.

Why does anxiety make me feel like I am about to die?

The reason it feels like you might die when you panic is simple: The brain misinterprets your natural (and healthy) fear response as a life-or-death situation, which leads to an anxiety spiral.

Let me explain: When faced with a stressful or fear-inducing situation, our sympathetic nervous system is activated—this is known as the fight-or-flight response. Adrenaline secretes into our bloodstream to give us greater strength, faster reaction time, and increased agility to protect ourselves from threats.

Adrenaline increases our heart rate and breathing rate, shunts blood to our muscles, and dilates our pupils. Many people find the sensations associated with these changes to be unpleasant, but they serve an essential function: To protect us from danger. If you were attacked or truly in peril, you’d benefit from a surge of oxygenated blood and an increased field of vision, since these would help you to either escape quickly or fight for your life.

However, if we interpret these non-threatening symptoms as dangerous signs of our heads or hearts exploding, it triggers catastrophizing, worst-case scenarios, and thoughts such as, “I must be dying!” When this happens, the fight-or-flight response itself makes us afraid.

If left unchecked, over time these catastrophic thoughts can amplify self-judgment (i.e., “What’s wrong with me that I’m so anxious?”), which in turn boosts our adrenaline even higher. Eventually, we can develop a hair-trigger response and automatically enter the spiral of physical symptoms and negative thoughts, which increases the severity and frequency of panic over time.

Stress can kill you, but anxiety cannot

It is important to clarify the difference between anxiety and stress: Stress occurs when your demands exceed your resources. For example, if you do not have enough time, money, good enough health, or the social support to complete a required task, you will feel stressed.

Anxiety, however, is a misfiring of the fight-or-flight system and is not related to the amount of resources that we have. You can be anxious and not stressed, or vice versa.

Chronic stress, which occurs when your resources are continually depleted, has been linked to health conditions including cardiac disease, high blood pressure, cancer, autoimmune disease, metabolic syndromes, and general all-cause mortality. To deal with stress, many people turn to maladaptive coping strategies such as drinking and overeating, which can create additional health concerns.

Anxiety, of course, can also lead to behavioral problems such as alcohol or substance misuse, self-injury, or suicidality. However, anxiety itself is not dangerous, and it does not correlate with the same medical conditions as chronic stress.

Accepting anxiety

Once we realize that our anxiety is not inherently dangerous, we can work on accepting that it is a natural aspect of life.

Taking things one step further, anxiety is positive. Think about it: If you have a working fight-or-flight response, it means you’re more likely to survive a threat.

So, rather than trying to rid ourselves of anxiety, try harnessing it to face challenging situations more quickly and with more drive.

Don’t fight your anxiety. Use it to thrive. For more see my book, Thriving with Anxiety: 9 Tools to Make Your Anxiety Work for You.