You feel bewildered and confused. Some awful malaise has descended on you and you don't know why.
What is happening to you is perfectly normal. It is the normal reaction of your nervous system to a long period of worry, overwork, stress, disappointment, grief without closure, money worries and/or trauma. Only you know which of these apply to you.
Eventually your nervous system decided enough was enough. It became over sensitised, a perfectly normal response and one that has been experienced by many hundreds here.
Over sensitised nerves then start to malfunction. Everything seems ten times more serious than it really is. Small problems easily overcome become impossible tasks. Aching muscles become symptoms of heart failure or terminal cancer.
It is normal not to want to die early. But health anxiety exaggerates this into a feeling of imminent death. Our blurry vision is surely the harbinger of impending blindness?
All of these negative reactions release more fear hormones which continue to maintain the over sensitisation of our nerves. So symptoms cause fear which causes more symptoms which cause more fear. You have entered a vicious circle which perpetuates your condition.
Your actions follow a pattern most familiar to us. You see your doctor, you see specialists, you have every test in the book. But nothing is found. Of course it isn't - anxiety doesn't show up in a scan or an x-ray. All these dreadful symptoms aren't for real: your nerves are on the blink and are sending out fake symptoms that imitate Irritable Bowel Syndrome, angina, brain tumours, vertigo and every other illness in the book.
Despite the tests and the specialists finding nothing you become convinced they've got it wrong. They've missed something. Suddenly you have acquired the ability to diagnose illness far better that doctors who went to medical school for 5 years.
This, then, is the perfectly normal way your mind and body react to unbearable stress. If you want to recover you must be prepared to practice self-help procedures and be persistant. But first you must neutralise the thing that has been causing the nervous distress. You must put yourself first and be prepared to be ruthless in removing that cause.
You've been fighting these bad feelings for months and it's done you no good. Fighting causes stress and tension, the very things that are keeping your nerves over sensitised.
So stop fighting the symptoms and do the opposite. Surrender completely to your health anxiety. Utterly accept the symptoms for the time being. Agree to coexist with them.
Recovery lies in doing nothing. Let the fake symptoms and strange thoughts come. Accept them calmly and without fear. After all they are simply blips in your nervous system. Why frighten yourself half to death because of a blip?
So let them come and accept them. Fake symptoms and false feelings can't kill you, disable you or send you insane. So start accepting them without fear and you know what.
Because you're no longer flooding your nervous system with fear hormones your nerves start to recover. Let time pass and all the awful feelings and afflictions will go too. You will regain your peace of mind and take back your life.
This then is the cause of health anxiety. And the way that tens of millions have recovered. And there's no reason you shouldn't be next so long as you are willing to take control of your recovery and are prepared to practice Acceptance with persistance.
Overcoming anxiety
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