Anxiety and Essential Tremors: Can Anxiety Trigger or Worsen Tremors?
Having your hands or body shake during anxiety is not just a physical response — it can get overwhelming, especially for people living with essential tremor (ET). Lifelong ET symptoms such as anxiety tremors and internal shaking anxiety are worsened for many individuals when placed under stress, making day-to-day life difficult. But can anxiety bring on internal shaking? And could this trigger or worsen the symptoms of essential tremor? In this blog post, we are going to discuss in detail the association between anxiety and essential tremors, the underlying mechanisms for such association, and the ways to manage both of them.
What Is Essential Tremor and How Does It Differ from Anxiety Tremors?
Essential tremor is a neurological disorder that causes involuntary shaking, often in the hands. Unlike the tremors caused by Parkinson’s disease, ET isn’t generally linked to other movement or neurological deficits. Essential tremor tends to worsen with specific movements, such as lifting a glass, writing, or using utensils.
By contrast, anxiety-induced tremors result from increased activity on the part of the nervous system and usually happen when someone is under a lot of stress emotionally. Even though both types of tremors may be associated with shaking hands, their underlying causes and treatments are different.
Distinguishing Features of Essential Tremor and Anxiety Tremors
People with anxiety-related tremors typically find that their symptoms are associated with distressing or intimidating emotions. These tremors, sometimes called psychogenic tremors, may appear and subside depending on mental state, while essential tremor is more consistent, even when emotional triggers are absent. But for people with essential tremor, anxiety can dramatically increase symptoms.
Understanding whether your tremors are due to anxiety, essential tremor, or both is important for good treatment. A doctor can determine the cause by examining you and talking to you about your symptoms.
The Relationship Between Anxiety and Essential Tremors
Anxiety can exacerbate essential tremor symptoms by overstimulating the nervous system. When a person feels anxiety, their body responds to an imagined threat by pumping out stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones raise heart rate and tense muscles, and ramp up overall nervous system activity, aggravating tremors and making them harder to suppress.
What Is It About Stress That Makes Tremors Worse?
When you are stressed, your body’s natural stress response turns on. This fight-or-flight response protects you from danger by increasing awareness and priming your body to respond quickly. However, in non-threatening circumstances, this heightened awareness could result in noticeable shaking or internal tremor anxiety, especially in people with underlying disorders like essential tremor.
Anxiety aggravates tremors, which in turn aggravate anxiety, starting a vicious cycle through a positive feedback loop. This cycle is triggered by chronic stress. The key to controlling our symptoms is ending this cycle.
Symptoms of Essential Tremor Flare-Ups Due to Great Anxiety
Apart from tremors, anxiety can also result in several physiological symptoms, including:
- Elevated heart rate
- Tension in the muscles
- Sweating
- Breathlessness
- Lightheadedness
- Feeling queasy
- Weariness
These symptoms can significantly disrupt daily functioning if not properly managed.
Can Anxiety Cause Tremors in Non-Essential Tremor Individuals?
Yes, anxiety-related tremors may happen even in those without essential tremor or other neurological diseases. These tremors are usually temporary and closely linked to moments of anxiety. Called psychogenic tremors, they’re not the product of physical nerve damage but rather the way the brain reacts to stress and fear.
Tips to Cope with Anxiety and Essential Tremor
Often, managing anxiety-related tremors and essential tremor involves combining techniques that help calm the nervous system, lower stress, and increase physical control.
Anxiety Tremors: How to Stop Shaking from Anxiety Naturally?
Some natural methods you can try to help reduce the tremors caused by anxiety are:
- Deep Breaths: Deep, slow breathing stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system to counterbalance the fight-or-flight response.
- Progressive Muscle Relaxation: To relieve tension and promote calm, progressive muscle relaxation entails tensing and then relaxing various muscular groups.
- Methods of Grounding: When you utilize Sensory Awareness to focus on your environment, your mind returns to the here and now, eliminating nervous thoughts and reducing anxiety trembling.
Lifestyle Changes to Reduce Stress and Tremors
Making lifestyle adjustments can also help you control your anxiety and the symptoms of essential tremor. Among the recommendations are:
- Steering clear of stimulants, such as caffeine, and limiting alcohol consumption, which can both increase anxiety hand shaking and disrupt nervous system balance.
- Establish a regular sleep pattern to avoid sleep deprivation-related anxiety, which may cause your body to shake.
- Exercise regularly to decrease baseline levels of anxiety and stabilize the nervous system.
How Can Therapy Help With Anxiety and Tremors?
Psychotherapies like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) may help re-frame anxious thoughts that trigger or worsen tremors. People can learn to cope with emotional triggers and, therefore, treat both the psychological as well as the physical symptoms of anxiety and tremor.
When to Reach Out to a Medical Professional?
You should check in with a healthcare provider if tremors occur often, are severe or interfere with your ability to function. A doctor might be able to tell whether your tremors are related to anxiety, essential tremor or some other condition.
Signs That You Should Seek Medical Care
Call for urgent medical care if you have:
- Chest pain
- Severe dizziness
- Loss of feeling or strength in the arms or legs
These symptoms may indicate a more serious concern.
VILIM ball: A Valuable Device for Essential Tremor Management
While therapy and lifestyle changes can be helpful, the non-invasive device VILIM ball can also offer relief. It provides neuromodulation therapy and is able to temporarily reduce hand tremors caused by essential tremor and Parkinson’s disease.
Portable and simple to integrate into day-to-day living, VILIM ball offers support when you need it most at home, in the office or traveling. This device implements artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, which analyze tremors and adapt to each patient individually.
Find out more about how VILIM ball can assist you in managing tremors in your daily life here.
Conclusion
There is a strong association between anxiety and essential tremor, where anxiety can trigger or flare up tremor symptoms. Recognizing this relationship and taking steps to cope with both conditions can help you lessen their impact on your life. You’re empowered to take back and enhance your life, whether through relaxation techniques, therapy, or breakthroughs that the VILIM ball offers.
Photo by: Natalia Olivera and Taryn Elliott
