Dizziness Under Stress in Adults: How to Cope

Louise Hartnett
November 19, 2025
Authored by: Louise Hartnett, B.A.
Edited by: Jemma Strain, B.S. Psychology
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Stress can have a significant impact on our bodies, often causing restlessness, a fast heart rate, and a loss of appetite. However, stress can also have unexpected symptoms such as tingling in the body and recurring dizziness.

If caused by stress, dizziness may be accompanied by fatigue, migraine, and poor concentration. Naturally, physical anxiety sensations can create further stress, causing many to worry they have a serious health problem.1 However, as dizziness is a neurological symptom with many possible causes, it’s important to rule out other medical conditions that may be relevant. 

A healthcare provider can determine if your dizziness is caused by a physical issue. However, if there are no physical concerns contributing to symptoms, a mental health professional can help you uncover any potential underlying mental factors. 

This page can help you better understand potential causes of dizziness, as it explores:

  • What dizziness is and what distinguishes it from other health conditions
  • How stress can cause dizziness 
  • Tips for coping with dizziness in daily life and counseling options 
  • Where to find professional support 
woman sitting on sofa with hand on forehead due to dizziness under stress in adults

What Is Dizziness?

Dizziness can feel different to each person. Depending on the description of their symptoms, we can typically discern what the underlying cause may be. 

Some people will have a mixture of the following four types of dizziness, but they are a good starting point for understanding symptoms:1 

  • Lightheadedness: Some people describe feeling lightheaded, as though they’re about to faint. It usually happens when someone’s stood up quickly, having blood taken, feeling too hot, or eating a meal. Feeling faint can also happen during stress and anxiety as a result of hyperventilating during panic attacks.
  • Vertigo: Others describe feeling that they’re moving even though they’re still. For instance, this could be a rocking or spinning sensation. Vertigo may be caused by problems in the ear structures that control balance or by migraines. It can result in a great deal of “dizziness anxiety” for people and prevent them from carrying out their daily activities.
  • Unsteadiness: Some people describe an unsteadiness in their bodies, as though they’re on ice skates. This is usually something other than dizziness, even if it feels like an inner wobbling. 
  • Dissociation: Some people feel dizzy when experiencing dissociation. They feel distant or detached from their bodies or surroundings, resulting in a bizarre sense of “unrealness.” Some may even have visual disturbances in which things appear overly large, too small, undulating, or 2D. This can be caused by stress and anxiety, as well as trauma and drug use.

Noticing which type of dizziness you’re experiencing may help your healthcare provider determine its cause. However, dizziness does tend to be subjective and difficult to describe, so it’s important to look for other evidence, which we’ll explore later in this article. 

When Is Dizziness a Serious Condition?

Sometimes, dizziness is a symptom of a more serious problem. When it’s caused by a problem with your nervous system, it’s known as “persistent postural perceptual dizziness” (PPPD). This condition is defined by persistent dizziness for three months or more. 

Healthcare providers will also look for whether your symptoms are:1 

  • Present most days, often increasing as the day goes on
  • Worse when you’re upright, exposed to moving or complex stimuli, or moving your head
  • Occurring after other balance-related problems (for example, inflammation in the ear)

PPPD happens when our brain’s movement sensors are disturbed and can no longer filter movement properly. It can be treated with a combination of physiotherapy and medication.1 

Further, your dizziness is more likely to be caused by stress if it’s temporary and correlated with your anxiety response.

Can Stress Cause Dizziness?

Yes. Research finds definite links between dizziness and mental health concerns. In fact, studies have found that nearly half of people complaining of dizziness also report some kind of psychological problem. Further, more than a quarter of people with dizziness describe panic or agoraphobia. This link is found in walk-in, emergency, primary care, and referral centres, suggesting dizziness occurs along the spectrum of mild to severe mental health problems.2 

Those with dizziness are also more likely to experience other somatic symptoms such as high blood pressure, migraines, and diabetes.3 These people may be interested in somatic psychotherapy, which we’ll explore later in this article.

How Does Stress Induce Dizziness?

There are a couple of ways that stress, anxiety, and panic can cause dizziness.

Firstly, anxiety and panic attacks cause us to breathe differently. People may either hyperventilate (when we exhale more than we inhale) or hypoventilate (when our breathing is too shallow or slow). Both of these result in the reduction of blood flow to our brains and cause feelings of faintness and dizziness.4 

Another way stress can cause dizziness is through the fight or flight response, which is overactive in people with anxiety. This is our body’s survival mode for coping with highly threatening situations, equipping us with what we need to stay safe. Therefore, during the fight or flight response, stress hormones are released into our bloodstream and can cause rapid breathing and dizziness.4 

It’s important to note that it’s not just those on the verge of a panic attack who can breathe differently. Chronic stress can influence our blood oxygen levels or cause us to “forget” to breathe properly in certain moments throughout the day.

How Long Does Dizziness From Stress Last?

How long bouts of dizziness from stress last can vary from person to person. 

For instance, some people will only experience short bursts of dizziness during acute moments of anxiety or panic. For others, chronic anxiety and stress may cause dizziness that comes and goes throughout the day. 

Regardless of how long it lasts for you, dizziness can be resolved by regaining control of your body’s stress response. We explore ways of doing so in this article’s final section.

When Is Dizziness Not Caused By Stress?

To determine if your dizziness has another cause, it can be useful to spot other symptoms and recent lifestyle changes. For instance, dizziness can be triggered by a change in your diet, a lack of important vitamins and minerals, or variations in your posture or neck alignment.5 

Another condition that could be overlooked is vestibular migraines, which involve dizziness and vertigo. These affect up to 3% of people, and don’t always come with a headache. As well as dizziness, people with vestibular migraines report a fullness in their ears, sensitivity to light, visual auras, nausea, fatigue, and tinnitus. Though stress can be a trigger, vestibular migraines can also be caused by ear infections, head injuries, and genetics.6 

As mentioned earlier, dizziness could be PPPD if it’s present most days, lasts three months or more, and begins after a medical trigger such as ear inflammation, head injury, or stroke.1 

Frustratingly, dizziness can clearly be a symptom of many conditions. Therefore, it’s always important to speak to your primary healthcare provider to rule out any potential serious illnesses.

Coping With Dizziness From Stress

There are a few ways you can approach treating stress-induced dizziness and coping with other panic symptoms, including personal strategies, medication, and psychotherapy. The following sections explore some of these options.

Ways to Control Your Stress Response

As we’ve indicated, your stress response has a large role to play in breathing issues and dizziness. Fight-or-flight may feel automatic most of the time, making us believe that we’re at the mercy of our bodies’ instinctive responses. However, it is possible to gain control over our stress response and reduce symptoms of anxiety, like dizziness.4 

Controlling our breath is the first step to managing our stress response. Whether your breath is too fast or too slow, you could first try to focus on the sensation of breathing in whatever rhythm feels natural. For instance, by noticing the pattern of breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth.

Then, you could do either one of these two techniques:

  • Tempering fast breathing by making the out breath longer than the in breath. Depending on your capacity, this could be three seconds in and six seconds out or five seconds in and ten seconds out. 
  • “Waking up” slow and shallow breathing by making your in and out breaths equal; for example, five seconds in and five seconds out. Allow your breathing to become natural after doing this a few times.

Another way to gain control of the stress response is through grounding. This is when you purposely pay attention to your surroundings and sensations to feel more “grounded”. One way to do so is the 3-3-3 method: name three sounds you can hear and three things you can see, then move three parts of your body. You could also get creative by challenging yourself to name three blue items (then green, and so on) if one round of practice isn’t long enough.4 

Psychotherapy for Stress and Anxiety

Controlling your stress response is good for in-the-moment panic and everyday stress check-ins, but it may not get to the root of your anxiety. Counseling and psychotherapy come in many forms, each with its own unique approach to treating mental health difficulties. 

Here are some of the main therapy types to help you with dizziness, stress, and anxiety:

    • Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT): This therapy can focus on the thoughts and behaviors influencing your stress and dizziness. It may help you build a sense of control, develop coping strategies, challenge unhelpful thoughts, and form confidence through exposure.4 
    • Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT): Rather than aiming to eliminate difficult experiences, ACT helps people increase their tolerance of uncomfortable sensations, thoughts, and emotions. Its radical foundations prioritize acceptance, mindfulness, commitment to behavior change, and living in accordance with your values.7 
    • Somatic therapy: This form of therapy values the mind-body connection, using both to treat someone as a whole. Somatic therapists will enquire about emotions, thoughts, and bodily sensations in order to release and understand stress, anxiety, and dizziness. As well as psychotherapy, practitioners may also use dance, massage, and yoga in sessions to treat the mind-body anxiety response.8 
    • Psychodynamic therapy: This option may be best if your stress and anxiety are coming from past experiences, trauma, or historical patterns. Psychodynamic therapy is less action-based but provides a deep understanding of yourself, your emotions, and your relationships.9  
  • Attachment-based therapy: Distinct from the potentially harmful “attachment therapy,” attachment-based therapy is informed by theories about our early experiences with caregivers. This option may be ideal if your stress or anxiety stems from relationship issues, as it aims to repair relational wounds, sense of self, and ability to trust in relationships.10 

Mission Connection: Get Support for Symptoms of Stress Today

Dizziness can be a very uncomfortable symptom of anxiety and stress, especially if it’s accompanied by things like fatigue or brain fog. If your healthcare provider has ruled out other medical conditions and you suspect your symptoms are coming from stress, you may be thinking about your next steps.

Therapy is one dizziness treatment you could choose, especially if personal stress management strategies aren’t working. To take the first step towards treatment today, you can browse our self-tests, facilities, or approaches to treatment. 

Alternatively, get in touch with Mission Connection’s team to inquire about a mental health evaluation. We’re available 24/7 to discuss which therapies could be a good fit for your needs and how they can be modified to suit your circumstances. 

man in park with trees behind him practising yoga after treatment from dizziness under stress

References

  1. Neurosymptoms.org (n.d.). Functional Dizziness (PPPD). https://neurosymptoms.org/en/symptoms/fnd-symptoms/functional-dizziness-pppd/ 
  2. Yardley, L. (2000). Overview of psychologic effects of chronic dizziness and balance disorders. Otolaryngologic Clinics of North America, 33(3), 603–616. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0030-6665(05)70229-2 
  3. Wiltink, J., Tschan, R., Michal, M., Subic-Wrana, C., Eckhardt-Henn, A., Dieterich, M., & Beutel, M. E. (2009). Dizziness: Anxiety, health care utilization and health behavior: Results from a representative German community survey. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 66(5), 417–424. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2008.09.012 
  4. Drescher, A. (2023, October 9). Can a Panic Attack Cause Fainting? Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/can-you-pass-out-from-a-panic-attack.html 
  5. Bonior, A. (2021, June 30). 8 Hidden Health Effects of Chronic Stress. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/friendship-20/202106/8-hidden-health-effects-chronic-stress 
  6. Stollznow, K. (2025). Vestibular Migraine: It’s Not Just in Your Head. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/speaking-in-tongues/202511/vestibular-migraine-its-not-just-in-your-head 
  7. Guy-Evans, O. (2024, April 22). Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/acceptance-and-commitment-therapy.html
  8. ‌Psychology Today. (2022, June 2). Somatic Therapy. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/somatic-therapy 
  9. Vigliotti, A. (2024, December 30). How Psychodynamic Therapy Can Help You Heal from Trauma. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-now/202411/how-psychodynamic-therapy-can-help-you-heal-from-trauma 
  10. Psychology Today UK. (2015). Attachment-Based Therapy. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/therapy-types/attachment-based-therapy