Long term (now worse) health anxiety / panic disorder

[romeomikepapa]

Hello all (my first post),

I feel like I have lived my whole life with anxiety. When I was a little boy, I would wake my parents up screaming, night after night. But my anxiety morphed into health anxiety when I was about 12. I started to worry about my heart, and started giving myself panic attacks. This was before the Internet, so my parents just kept taking me to the doctor. It took months, but eventually I got over it.

Things were quiet for a while until 2009, when I had just finished my PhD. I started to think there was something terribly wrong with me: first I had a brain tumour, then after an MRI discounted that, I started to worry about my heart. For several months I could barely function, with really bad panic attacks. Eventually, after consultations with GPs, cardiologists, neurologists, I finally got sick of being anxious. It seemed like my worries just faded away.

Fast forward 8 years. My daughter was born traumatically, and a week after her birth I had a HUGE panic attack that put me in the hospital. But the doctors there just thought my symptoms were anxiety and exhaustion.

Since then, I have been much more fragile. I worry constantly about my heartrate and my BP. My GP recommended strongly that I go see a therapist, so I've been having CBT since September. For the first three months, things got better. Then, coming back from Christmas holidays this January, my whole family got sick with gastroenteritis. The stress and the virus sent me to the hospital in an ambulance with tachycardia (120s). At the hospital they did lots of tests, and couldn't find anything wrong, and decided it was the virus plus my anxiety that did it. They discharged me the same day.

Since then I've felt so, so fragile. And my panic attacks seem more frequent now. I try not to check my pulse (I know enough that this will set me off) but sometimes you can't help but hear or feel your pulse. If it seems fast (and it often does, even the day after an attack) then I get worried all over again.

Honestly, I don't know what to do. I feel like the CBT has been useless, and that I've become super-sensitized to anxiety triggers. I feel like medication is the only route left, but pills don't sound great to someone with health anxiety. Can anyone offer any advice?

[Marc787]

Hello, I can relate with you, with anxiety, with constant worry with high blood pressure, hb and your experience with tachycardia. Don't give up on your cbt. We all need as much coping skills to keep our attacks under control. Meditation has been very helpful for me calming down and lowering heart rate and bp. Ive been there when my anxiety attacks gotten to a full blown attack. That's when it's impossible to bring it back down, like your going too die. I can suggest to you to close your eyes lay down or be in comfortable quite spot, focus on very slow deep breathing with your diaphragm. Repeat, I am ok. I am in no danger. What I am feeling is only temporary, it will pass, I am ok, I will be fine. Do this until you have calm down, be patient, it does work. Our nervous system is always stuck on the ON switch. That makes us sensitive to any high emotional events and we overreact. The trick is to learn how too not overreact and retrain our brain. I'd stay away from any anti anxiety meds. They work but it can be very addictive. You don't want to be in that situation. I hope some of these advise can help you. 😀 God bless.

[brokenlight]

Thank you for sharing this post ✨

I don’t have any advice but I’m glad you’re here.