How to Stop Heart Palpitations Due to Anxiety: What You Need to Know

It is important to learn how to stop heart palpitations due to anxiety. This can be done by first learning about anxiety and heart palpitations separately.

What are heart palpitations? 

Heart palpitations refer to the feeling of your heart beating too fast or too intensely. It may also refer to the feeling of your heart skipping a beat or fluttering. These palpitations may be observed by putting your attention to your neck, throat, and your chest, or by feeling your pulse and heartbeat.

Heart palpitations may be a sign of a more serious health condition. Thus, it is important to have yourself checked by a doctor in case you experience heart palpitations.

What is anxiety?

Anxiety is the body’s natural, though sometimes harmful response to stress. It is identified with feelings of being frightened and worried about unforeseen circumstances or events that are yet to come.

Your anxiety may be a disorder if you exhibit extreme changes in behavior, or experience extreme forms of the anxiety itself. To be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder (based on DSM-5), feelings of excessive anxiety and worry should occur often within a span of at least 6 months. Other symptoms such as fatigue, restlessness, and impaired school or work performance can also occur.

How to stop heart palpitations due to anxiety

Part of learning how to stop heart palpitations due to anxiety is understanding how your heart palpitates when you feel anxious. Feeling anxious from time to time is normal. However, anxiety disorders can cause you to feel anxious more often and more intensely which can take a toll on your mental and physical health.

How to stop heart palpitations due to anxiety: The nervous system

The autonomic nervous system (or ANS) is responsible for taking care of the body’s functions when feeling anxiety and stress, as it regulates functions such as your breathing, digestion, and your heart rate.

The ANS is composed of the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system:

Sympathetic nervous system

This is responsible for activating the body’s fight or flight response when a threat or danger is perceived by the body

Parasympathetic nervous system

This is responsible for relaxing the body after stressful situations by restoring the body to a calmer state by any means necessary.

The sympathetic nervous system gets its job done by releasing the epinephrine and norepinephrine hormones, which accelerates a person’s heart rate. The parasympathetic nervous system on the other hand releases acetylcholine, a hormone that is responsible for lowering a person’s heart rate.

How to stop heart palpitations due to anxiety: Anxiety disorders

Triggers and responses to anxiety disorders vary from person to person. However, there are specific types of anxiety disorders that are known to affect one’s heart rate and cause palpitations.

These types of anxiety disorder include:

• Generalized anxiety disorder
• Panic disorder
• Agoraphobia
• Separation anxiety disorder
• Social anxiety disorder

It is important to rule out that the heart palpitation experienced is not caused by other factors such as drastic lifestyle changes, hormone shifts, medicine intake, fevers, or inherent heart problems.

Treatment

Treatment options include:

• Psychotherapy
• Medicines such as SSRIs or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors

You may also explore complementary approaches to help address your stress, in addition to your primary treatment approach. These include:

• Self-management. This is a core element to help contain anxiety
• Activities such as yoga

Learn more about Heart Arrhythmias here.