Did you know that one of the common side effects of anxiety is distorted vision? Yes, it’s quite unbelievable that an eye problem is caused by anxiety; however, if your Calgary Optometrist has ruled out the well-known eye causing problems, then your anxiety can be the culprit.
There are different ways anxiety can affect your eyes, including:
- Mildly blurred vision
- Watery eyes
- Light sensitivity
- Eye discomfort and pain
- Eye floaters (spots that float across your eye)
During intense times of extreme anxiety, the mentioned symptoms happen, and the period extreme anxiety is present is during an anxiety attack.
How Anxiety May Affect the Eyes
Tension prompts the stress response. This stress response instantly leads to particular emotional, psychological and physiological changes that improve the capability of the body to deal with a danger – either fighting it or fleeing from it – which is why the stress response is sometimes known as the flight or fight response.
Changes coming from the stress response include stimulating the nervous system, as stress hormones are known stimulants, and they increases the senses, which include the eyes for they are sensory organs.
If the stress response occurs rarely, the body has the capability to recover from the emotional, psychological and physiological changes that result from the stress response. However, if the stress response occurs more frequently, the body will have a hard time to recover, which will result to the stress-response hyperstimulation.
Stress-response hyperstimulation pertains to the body remaining in a semi-emergency state. A body that is under stress-response hyperstimulation doesn’t only show the same symptoms and sensation of an active stress response but also shows symptoms of a body that are under extreme stress.
Furthermore, since stress responses have a great effect on the nervous system and sensory organs of the body, sustained stress can result to different irregularities of the sensory organ like those associated with eyes and vision.
How to Relieve Eye Problems Caused by Anxiety
If eye problems are due to stress response hyperstimulation, the body may have to take more time to recover from the problem.
However, if the body recovers from the stress response, the symptoms from the eye problems will totally discontinue.
You can accelerate the process of recovery by:
- Not stressing yourself
- Performing breathing exercises
- Promoting rest and relaxation
- Stop worrying about your anxiety
Though it can be upsetting and sometimes inconvenient, however, after your body recovers from the stress, all the symptoms will go away.
If you have a problem with how to contain your anxiety, you can always ask the help from anxiety disorder therapists, counselors, or medical professionals.
Thanks to Dr Wilson Associates for these tips.