Takeaway: Feeling paralyzed by anxiety can feel debilitating. It can hold you back from living your life in many ways. In this post, I will talk about potential reasons you feel paralyzed. I will also share ways you can try to manage when you feel frozen.
Table of Contents:
What are symptoms related to feeling paralyzed with anxiety?
Why am I feeling paralyzed by anxiety?
What ways can emotional paralysis impact me?
What can I do when I’m paralyzed with anxiety and fear?
How can therapy help me when I often feel paralyzed by fear and anxiety?
It is the end of the weekend and you have a bad case of the Sunday scaries.
You are sitting on the couch stressed by all the things you have to do this week. Your mind keeps replaying all the things you have failed to do over the weekend.
You begin to beat yourself up for not being more productive. Your fear of failure of the future things you need to do skyrockets. You feel frozen. You can’t get out of bed. You feel like you can’t move because all you can think about are your failures and the ways you don’t measure up.
All you want to do is be able to enjoy your last bit of freedom and relaxation. You want to go for a walk, bake cookies, or go to that workout class. But instead you feel crippled by anxiety. You scroll your phone or put on a tv show to try and avoid your thoughts. The next thing you know, it’s 5 pm and you feel like you wasted your day.
This is one example of what it can feel like to be paralyzed by anxiety.
If you struggle with anxiety, there may be times where you feel paralyzed to the point it is hard to do anything. This may increase your sense of frustration at yourself. You know there are so many things you need to get done but can’t help but feel stuck in place. It feels like you can’t move. Or you feel like crawling into a hole and hiding from the world. Your thoughts are telling you all that you need to do and why, but you can’t get off the couch.
All you know is that you want this to stop. It is keeping you from doing things that are important to you but you aren’t sure where to start.
Hi, I’m Dr. Ann Krajewski, a Therapist in VA, DC and WA. In this post, I’ll talk about what it feels like to be paralyzed with anxiety, potential reasons you struggle with paralyzing anxiety, what to do about it, and how therapy can help.
Symptoms Related to Feeling Paralyzed with Anxiety
While feeling paralyzed can be seen on a spectrum, here are some common symptoms you may experience if you feel emotionally paralyzed, as well as how they show up physically.