Anxiety is one of the most common and difficult mental health conditions to deal with. It causes you to feel a sudden surge of negative emotions and can cause physical symptoms that affect your life.
Anxiety can also lead to urinary incontinence. This condition is especially common in people with severe phobias or anxiety disorder.
Identifying the Symptoms
When anxiety reaches its highest levels, you may find yourself losing control of your bladder. This can be one of the most distressing and embarrassing feelings.
Bladder problems are often more common in people with anxiety, especially women. This is because the anxiety can trigger the stress response, which usually only affects our bowel and bladder during times of threat or fear.
This is when the body sends out stress hormones to activate your fight or flight system, causing a range of physical, emotional and psychological changes. These include increased heart rate, muscle tension and more.
It can also cause stress urinary incontinence, which is when urine leaks out with sudden pressure on the bladder and urethra, like during exercise, laughing, coughing or sneezing. This can be mild or moderate, and can occur during any type of activity.
Managing the Symptoms
Anxiety is a very hard condition to live with. It can lead to so many different symptoms, from rapid heartbeats and nervousness, to muscle tension and more.
Fortunately, most of these anxiety symptoms are caused by your body’s natural reaction to stress. This is known as your “fight or flight” response and is activated when you feel nervous or threatened.
The good news is that you can control these symptoms with a few simple measures, such as limiting the amount of caffeine you consume and cutting down on alcohol.
You may also find it helpful to keep a diary or track your bladder leakage and see if there are certain things that trigger it. If so, you can work out how to prevent it from happening again. Wearing Incontinence underwear is recommended and makes it easier to keep track of your leakage amounts.
Studies have shown that anxiety can be associated with a wide range of urinary and bowel symptoms, including overactive bladder (OAB), urge incontinence and stress incontinence. These symptoms can have a negative impact on your quality of life and self-esteem.
Managing Your Anxiety
Anxiety is your body’s natural response to stress or danger, causing your heart to race, butterflies in your stomach and a rush of energy. It can be useful when there is a real threat, but can be harmful when it’s constant and unchecked.
Getting help to manage anxiety is the best way to deal with it. A mental health specialist can help you develop coping skills that work for you and teach you ways to avoid stressful situations.
There are also a range of self-help resources available, including self-help books, online courses and workbooks that can help you deal with your anxiety at a pace that works for you. They can also be combined with medication if needed.
Other treatments for anxiety can include cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). This is a type of counseling that changes problematic thinking patterns. It includes behavior therapy and a technique called 'desensitisation', which exposes you to feared situations slowly to reduce your anxiety.
Treatment
Anxiety can have a number of physical effects on the body. One of these is the loss of bladder or bowel control.
This symptom can be mild, moderate or severe and it can occur from time to time or in waves. This can be accompanied by the recurrence of other anxiety-caused feelings and symptoms, including nausea, sweating, heart palpitations, and muscle tension.
Managing this symptom is a matter of being patient and allowing it to settle down. In most cases, this symptom will resolve as your body heals from the stress response it has triggered.
If you continue to experience this symptom after addressing the underlying factors of your anxiety, we recommend talking to a doctor. This is because there are a wide range of medical conditions that can cause anxiety-like sensations and symptoms, including this loss of bladder or bowel control symptom.
