Recovery Guide

Anxiety and Heart Palpitations — Why Your Heart Races and How to Stop It

For many people with anxiety disorder, heart palpitations are the most frightening symptom of all. The sudden awareness of a racing, pounding, or irregular heartbeat triggers immediate fear — usually fear of a heart attack — which intensifies the palpitations, which intensifies the fear. Breaking this cycle requires understanding exactly what is happening, and why it is completely harmless.

What Causes Anxiety Palpitations

When the amygdala triggers the fight-or-flight response, it signals the adrenal glands to release adrenaline into the bloodstream. Adrenaline's job is to prepare the body for rapid physical action — and one of its most immediate effects is to increase heart rate and the force of each heartbeat. This is experienced as palpitations: a pounding, racing, fluttering, or skipping sensation in the chest or throat.

Types of Anxiety-Related Heart Sensations

Racing heart (tachycardia) — heart beating fast, often 100–130 beats per minute
Pounding heart — awareness of each forceful heartbeat
Fluttering sensation in the chest — often felt as 'butterflies' or vibration
Skipped beats or extra beats (ectopic beats) — often felt as a thump followed by a pause
Heart 'turning over' — sudden sensation of the heart flopping or twisting
Awareness of heartbeat when lying down or in quiet moments

Reassurance

"Anxiety palpitations are not dangerous. Your heart is working normally — it is simply responding to adrenaline in the way it is designed to. Palpitations caused by anxiety cannot cause a heart attack, cardiac arrest, or any permanent cardiac problem. If you have been medically assessed and no cardiac cause found, the palpitations are anxiety."

Why Checking Your Pulse Makes Palpitations Worse

Checking your pulse, wearing a heart rate monitor, or constantly monitoring your heartbeat are forms of safety behaviour that maintain anxiety. Each check is a signal to the amygdala: 'This situation is dangerous enough to require monitoring.' The amygdala responds by maintaining elevated adrenaline levels — which continues the palpitations. Stopping checking behaviour is an important step, but it must be accompanied by genuine amygdala recalibration to produce lasting relief.

Permanently Stopping Anxiety Palpitations

Palpitations resolve completely as part of anxiety disorder recovery. When the amygdala no longer fires inappropriate threat responses, adrenaline is not released unnecessarily, and the heart returns to its normal resting pattern. This is not something you manage — it is something that resolves as a natural consequence of recovery. Users of The Linden Method consistently report that palpitations cease within the first weeks of the program.