CAN BLURRED VISION ANXIETY CAUSE? - ARTE - 2025

The blurred vision can often arise in people who suffer from anxiety. Normally this symptom is interpreted with anguish and fear, not knowing if it is a manifestation of the anxiety that is being suffered or if it is a different disease.

Likewise, not knowing if the worsening of vision is a momentary situation and will disappear at the same time as the anxiety or if it will last and the previous quality of vision will never be recovered.

In this article I will explain to you the relationship between blurred vision and anxiety, and we will spread the doubts about whether this symptom is part of the manifestations of anxiety.

How can anxiety cause blurred vision?

Anxiety has such a direct effect on the functioning of our body and our mind that it can cause a great number of physical symptoms, among which is blurred vision.

There is no conclusive data today on how many people with anxiety suffer from blurred vision. However, it seems to be a symptom that occurs frequently among those people who suffer from high levels of anxiety.

Blurred vision is a sign of visual acuity loss that can be caused by various diseases such as eye injuries, diabetes, glaucoma, cataracts, myopia, etc.

However, anxiety, through hormonal alterations, changes in blood sugar levels, increases in blood circulation and ocular tension that it causes, can also cause the typical symptoms of blurred vision.

In this way, people with high levels of anxiety may find it more difficult to focus their vision, visualize objects at a long distance or see things as clearly as they did before.

Likewise, anxiety can cause photophobia, a feeling of irritability in the face of intense light stimuli, as well as eye pain due to the direct effect of increased pressure in that area of ​​the body.

Thus, despite the fact that blurred vision is often not included as one of the typical symptoms of anxiety, high levels of stress can cause this type of alterations.

How should blurred vision from anxiety be treated?

First of all, it should be noted that the blurred vision caused by anxiety will only remain as long as you experience high levels of stress. When you stop suffering from anxiety your vision will be restored and you will stop seeing in a blurry way.

However, secondly, it should be noted that if you suffer from blurred vision due to anxiety, it will not disappear until you manage to control and reduce your anxiety state, and if it increases, your vision will also worsen.

In these cases, blurred vision and anxiety go hand in hand, and one will not go away without the other. This makes it clear that the first therapeutic intervention to remedy this situation is to carry out those treatments that allow you to eliminate anxiety.

Depending on the type of anxiety you suffer, the treatments are very diverse, although anxiety disorders are usually resolved effectively through the combination of medications and psychotherapy.

However, it is clear that as long as you cannot fully combat your anxiety, blurred vision will be a more than annoying symptom that will prevent you from living normally. In this way, you can also perform a series of actions that, to a certain extent, can help you improve your vision. These are:

• Do not spend a lot of time watching television, computer, smartphone, etc.
• Perform a good hydration to avoid eye pain.
• Keep your eyes closed for 5 minutes while applying a gentle massage with your finger using circular movements.
• Apply cold water to the eyes on a recurring basis.
• Use moisturizing eye drops when your eyes are dry.

What happens in our body when we are anxious?

Anxiety always appears with a very clear objective: to activate both our body and our mind so that they are alert and are able to respond quickly and effectively to threats.

This function of anxiety is valid both for adaptive anxiety, when it appears before a real threatening stimulus, and for pathological anxiety, when it appears without any stimulus that motivates its presentation.

Release of hormones

In this way, before any state of anxiety, our body undergoes a series of changes in its functioning. More specifically, our mind is responsible for releasing a greater number of hormones to the body such as adrenaline and noradrenaline.

These hormones are excitatory substances that increase the heart rate, dilates the breathing systems and activates the immediate response processes of our brain.

This is explained because when we release these substances in abundance, our body becomes overexcited, to be able to respond properly and be sufficiently activated.

If what we are experiencing is "normal" anxiety, this over-excitement of the body will last a few seconds or minutes, and as soon as the threat disappears, the levels of adrenaline and norepinephrine will return to normal and the anxiety will disappear.

High levels of anxiety

However, when there are very high levels of these substances in our body and mind for a long time, we tire more quickly, our attention decreases, we are unable to sleep and, of course, our state of anxiety increases.

This is explained because our mind is overexciting the entire body in an excessive way for too long, so it begins to not respond well to such high levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline.

Normal response vs pathological anxiety

If it is a normal response, our body will be activated appropriately through the mechanisms we have discussed, our body will be excited for a certain period of time and after a few minutes everything will return to normal.

However, if we suffer from pathological anxiety (or any anxiety disorder) the mental and bodily arousal that derives from our state will not be present only for a short period of time.

On the contrary, our activation and our feeling of anxiety will last and we will not be able to eliminate it and return to a state of normality, with much less activation of both our body and our mind.

This prolonged over-activation over time that causes anxiety, causes our body to start not working properly, since it is more activated than it should.

At the same time, this malfunction (or overfunction) of our body, is automatically translated into a series of symptoms, both psychological and physical.

References

1. Bhave, S. and Nagpal, J. (2005). Anxiety and depression disorders in college students. Pediatric Clinics of North America, 52, 97-134.
2. Kaplan H. I, Sadock BJ Synopsis of psychiatry. 8th ed. Ed. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins-Panamericana. 1998. Pages 324 and 683.
3. Kandel ER, Schwartz JH & Jessell TM Principles of Neuroscience, 4th Edition. McGraw-Hill Interamericana, 2001, 1395 pages.
4. World Health Organization. International classification of mental and behavioral diseases. Research diagnostic criteria. CIE 10 chapter V (F). Meditor, Madrid, 1993.