Anxiety cos I'm poorly???

[Littlelumby]

Hiya everyone, just joined today. I've had anxiety for 32 years, had two acute anxiety episodes which lasted weeks and weeks which I had to have the community mental health team come to my house to help. I'm currently poorly with a bug and was wondering if it was weird that I feel anxious because I know it's not a life threatening bug so why do I feel so anxious??

[Cares179]

It is health anxiety and yes I get it too! every time I get sick or even feel like I am going to get sick my anxiety starts up. It is very common for a lot of us here.

[Jeff1943]

That's right what care179 says, Littlelumby, if we have a tendency towards anxiety then even a minor illness like a cold seems to lower our defences and anxiety can make its presence felt. Sorry to hear that you've had anxiety disorder in the past that necessitated mental health people beinng called out. I think the worse thing about anxiety is not understanding how it works in which case our imagination runs riot and we end up bewildered and fearing some awful calamity.

I believe the person who got it right years ago was Doctor Claire Weekes who taught that when we are under too much stress and worry or trauma for too long our nervous system becomes over sensitised. In this state twothings can happen: our sensitised nerves vastly exaggerate small tasks and worries into major insoluble problems. One common example is the normal aversion to dying becomes an all consuming obsession with death.

Second, the nervous system begins to mirror and mimic physical illness so we imagine that all sorts of aches, pains and strange thoughts and feelings are the symptoms of serious medical problems. And once we start in that direction (aided and abetted by that old quack Doctor Google) the fearcof what's happening causes symptoms which cause more anxiety which causes more symptons which causes more anxiety and so the vicious circle rolls on.

The thing to remember, Littlelumby, is that so long as your doctor has confirmed that the symptoms aren't organic and are "only anxiety" then no matter how sensitised your nervous system they can't kill uou or damage your body: no matter how worried abd awful you fell you are NOT going to habe a heart attack, stroke or go blind (yes, visual disturbances are included in the list of fake fraudulent symptoms caused by anxiety).

Know how frazzled nerves play tricks on us bring reassurance as we learn that even high anxiety has its limits. The answer of course is to de-sensitise your nervous system which causes our false exagerrated fears to disappear or return to normal levels. The only way to do this is to stop scaring ourselves half to death when these awful feelings strike, to gradually lose our fear of them and finally to temporarily Accept them allowing our fraught nerves to rest and recover. It was this system of recovery through acceptance that Claire Weekes explained in her self help books.

Anyway, welcome to our world, whatever you have suffered rest assured someone on this forum has been there before you and lived to tell the tale. So whatever your anxieties there's always someone around here to help.

[Littlelumby in reply to Jeff1943]

Thanks for the reassuring words. I find that distraction helps my anxiety but when it's really bad I really struggle to concentrate on anything.