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By ALEXA LARDIERI, US HEALTH EDITOR
Published: 14:55 GMT, 10 March 2026 | Updated: 15:02 GMT, 10 March 2026
Amelia seemingly had it all - a loving fiancé, a fulfilling job and a booming social life. So, when she began experiencing crippling anxiety and strange delusions, she truly felt like she was going crazy.
Routine trips to the dentist's office would leave her crippled in fear as 'my brain would perceive the lights, chair, lab coats and tools like a "lab" and I would feel like I was in a twisted science experiment.'
She told Daily Mail that 'hospitals would also make me feel panicky for similar reason, like I was going to be taken or institutionalized' and in everyday life, familiar people's faces began looking like 'cartoon villains.'
Amelia said: 'I remember really honing in on people’s facial features... Large pupils, dark circles and crooked teeth would appear menacing and sinister, almost like a cartoon villain.'
Other times, the 31-year-old who works in media in New York, said she felt detached from her body and reality, her hearing sharpened so much she could hear people's hushed conversations and most days she felt like she was moving underwater and her body was extremely heavy.
On top of her physical symptoms, she also experienced all the hallmark signs of anxiety and depression , including nervousness, irritability and low mood.
Amelia had gone to traditional talk therapy, but the go-to methods of talking about her issues and taking antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications did nothing to make her feel better.
She also went to medical doctors to get her balance, heart and hormones checked, thinking her symptoms were stemming from something physically wrong with her. She received clean bills of health from all of them.
Then in February 2025, Amelia reached a breaking point. She felt like her body was in constant fight-or-flight mode and her symptoms became so severe she thought she would have to quit her job.
Sensitization occurs when 'the brain’s threat system becomes overactive after repeated or prolonged stress,' anxiety coach Rose Thompson explained (stock image)
That is when Amelia took to social media to see if anyone else was experiencing her symptoms, which felt like anxiety and depression, but didn't fit the traditional mold and weren't getting better with medication and therapy.
The Daily Mail is allowing Amelia is use a pseudonym to protect her privacy.
Tens of millions of people are familiar with these mental health conditions - and millions more suffer from others, such as obsessive compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
While these have long been recognized, diagnosed and treated the same way for decades, there is a newer practice of mental health 'coaches' who are working to raise awareness of a lesser-known disorder that often gets overlooked or misdiagnosed: sensitization.
EXCLUSIVE Patients accuse BetterHelp therapists of dishing out bad advice
The more Amelia read about sensitization, sometimes called nervous system dysregulation, the more she felt this was what she had. Then, she connected with Rose Thompson, an anxiety recovery coach.
Thompson, who founded F*** Off Anxiety, told Daily Mail that sensitization is a 'blanket statement' for many anxiety disorders, such as generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, body dysmorphia, OCD and PTSD.
These can all fall under the umbrella of 'sensitization,' which describes when the body is in a heightened state of fight-or-flight.
Thompson, who is not a therapist and does not diagnose her clients, said: 'Sensitization is literally waking up in doom and gloom, fight or flight; when there's no danger, there's no stressful event, it's just life. Your body's in this state because of chronic stressors that have built up because of behaviors and bad thinking patterns that people follow.'
She does not believe in anxiety as a lifelong mental illness. Instead, she said it is a 'micro situation - whether it's your thinking patterns or actual lifestyle, that creates chronic stress in the body,' which is what leads to sensitization.
Because sensitization encompasses multiple disorders and doesn't have specific diagnostic criteria of its own, it is not known how many people suffer from it.
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