Hi, I’m Dr. Tom McDonagh, a psychologist at Good Therapy SF. You might feel restless, edgy, or drained and assume it’s anxiety, but sometimes what you’re experiencing is actually overstimulation. This can feel very similar to anxiety, but the causes and what helps can be quite different.
So let’s explore how to tell the difference.
So what overstimulation actually looks like, it’s when your brain or your body takes in more input than it can comfortably process. Some common triggers are crowds, screens, noise, multitasking, socializing for long periods, that type of thing. It may lead to irritability, zoning out, or a strong urge to withdraw.
So this is how it mimics anxiety is through the physical symptoms like tension, restlessness, and a quickened heartbeat. And emotionally you might feel like you’re on edge, snappy, or like something is just off. So the overlap between the two can make it easy to confuse them.
So here’s how we tell the difference.
Anxiety is often future oriented. It’s often linked to fear, worry, or imagine outcomes of the future. Whereas overstimulation is typically more present-focused, more about the sensory or emotional feelings that are happening right now. So try to check in with your recent inputs: have you been on all day with no breaks? It could be overstimulation.
So what to do if it’s overstimulation. Try some quiet time. Dimming the lights, gentle movements, or just being alone for a little while.
For anxiety. Try tools like reframing your thoughts. Deep relaxation breathing, or talking to someone else to try to help.
Regardless, you wanna try to honor what’s going on inside your mind and try not to judge yourself for feeling off.
So why does it matter between the two? Because mislabeling overstimulation as anxiety, can cause you to use sometimes the wrong tools and add to your frustration. So the more you understand your own system, the better you can take care of it. So try to remember. You don’t need to fix yourself, you just need to listen more closely and try to be more aware about what’s going on. And knowing whether you’re anxious or overstimulated as a powerful first step towards finding what truly helps.
