Coping When You’re Paralyzed by Anxiety

Key Takeaways

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) can be helpful in managing anxiety.
• Meditation and mindfulness can reduce anxiety symptoms.
• Maintaining regular health check-ups can help rule out other health problems.

One symptom of an anxiety disorder is feeling as if you are paralyzed with anxiety. This paralyzing anxiety may leave you feeling unable to move, speak, and think. Your arms and legs may feel heavy and immobile, you may be unable to form words, and you may struggle to process what is happening around you.

Anxiety can paralyze you both physically and emotionally, explains Paula Zimbrean, MD, a psychiatrist at Yale Medicine. 

Zimbrean describes what emotional and physical paralysis can feel like and how they can impact your life.

Physically Paralyzed With Anxiety

While the experience can differ somewhat from one person to the next, the physical symptoms you experience when you feel paralyzed with anxiety can be particularly disconcerting.

Anxiety can cause multiple physical symptoms, and one of them is the sensation of being unable to move physically, to the extent where you feel like you cannot walk or move your arms and legs.

—
PAULA ZIMBREAN, MD, YALE MEDICINE

You may experience physically paralyzing anxiety in the wake of a clear stressor, a major life change, a disaster, or a traumatic event. However, it can sometimes occur without you being aware of the cause. 

Impact of Being Physically Paralyzed by Anxiety

Being paralyzed with anxiety can have significant effects on your ability to function normally in different areas of your everyday life.

The immediate impact of physically paralyzing anxiety is the inability to perform certain everyday tasks, work-related assignments, or social activities.

It can also cause you to believe that something is physically wrong with you. People sometimes seek medical attention in this case, undergoing several healthcare visits and medical investigations, which may not lead to any significant findings and may even put them at risk for adverse reactions. 

For instance, someone who suddenly cannot move and goes to the emergency room may be recommended to undergo a lumbar puncture procedure, which is invasive, painful, and unnecessary.  

One study found that there were an estimated 1,247,000 emergency department visits each year for anxiety-related symptoms.

Emotionally Paralyzed With Anxiety

In addition to the physical feelings of anxiety, you may also feel emotionally paralyzed by anxiety. This can make it difficult to cope with what you are feeling and can interfere with relationships and other areas of life.

When you are emotionally paralyzed by anxiety, you might avoid all anxiety-provoking situations and limit your life to a significant extent.

An example is a person with agoraphobia, who due to anxiety becomes homebound and never leaves the house or needs a companion to do so. 

A more literal version of emotionally paralyzing anxiety is severe anxiety that takes over all your other emotions, making you unable to react to either good or bad events that may happen. 

Impact of Being Emotionally Paralyzed by Anxiety

Emotionally paralyzing anxiety can be more subtle, causing people around you to perceive you as aloof, inappropriately afraid, or preoccupied.

It can affect other areas of your life such as social interactions, intimate relationships, or work performance, causing them to suffer. In some cases, people are so anxious that they avoid going for their healthcare appointments, and their health can suffer as well.

Other Characteristics of Paralyzing Anxiety

When you are paralyzed with anxiety, you may also exhibit several other physical, cognitive, and behavioral symptoms. Some of these include:

• Avoiding any situation that may trigger feelings of anxiety
• Feeling unable to make decisions, a phenomenon sometimes known as decision paralysis
• Social withdrawal and isolation
• Problems concentrating and thinking clearly
• Muscle tension that makes moving difficult
• Negative thoughts
• Shaking, trembling, and numbness
• Rapid, shallow breathing, 
• Nausea and stomach upset
• Rapid heart rate

Treatment for Paralyzing Anxiety

Zimbrean shares some treatment options and coping strategies that can help you deal feeling paralyzed by anxiety.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

CBT can teach you to break the relationship between the emotion of the anxiety and the particular behavior that is getting in your way, such as the inability to move or do things that cause anxiety. 

CBT is considered a first-line treatment for anxiety. It is effective in treating different anxiety-related disorders, including panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder).

Medication

Medications may sometimes be necessary to reduce the severity of your anxiety and prevent the recurrence of anxiety attacks. Benzodiazepines work quickly, which is why they are typically used to relieve anxiety symptoms in the short term. Antidepressants can help people who require long-term treatment but usually take a few weeks to begin working.

Benzodiazepines are usually used only as a short-term treatment due to the increased risk for dependence and tolerance with long-term use.

Coping When You Feel Paralyzed With Anxiety

In addition to seeking professional treatment, Zimbrean also explains that there are a number of self-help techniques that can help ease feelings of paralyzing anxiety. Some of these tactics include the following:

Identify Your Triggers

Identifying the factors that trigger your anxiety can be helpful. However, this is not always possible; sometimes, it is not always easily removed even if the element is identified. 

Utilize Mindfulness Practices

Meditation and mindfulness techniques can help you focus on the present and keep the anxiety at bay. Mindfulness is a practice that involves nonjudgmental awareness of a person’s sensations, thoughts, and consciousness in the present moment.

A 2018 study found that mindfulness-based interventions for anxiety were comparable to cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) in terms of efficacy.

Care for Your Health

Maintaining your health and undergoing regular health check-ups can help rule out physical health conditions. This makes it easier for healthcare providers to determine that the symptoms you are experiencing are due to anxiety. This is not always easy, as it is often counterintuitive that an emotional condition may cause a physical reaction. 

Other tactics that can be very helpful when you feel yourself becoming paralyzed with anxiety include deep breathing and grounding techniques. Regular exercise can also be a highly effective tool for managing anxiety.

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

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By Sanjana Gupta

Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

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