Chest pain

[Solovley]

Hi everyone I'm lyndy I suffer from anxiety in many ways I'm only just starting g to go out short distances from home . Iv been havin g tightness in chest all day pain radiating I to back! I have palpitations as we speak I'm scared and not sure what's going on with me?

[Jeff1943]

Lyndy, have you spoken to a doctor about the chest pain and palpitations? If not then for your own reassurance I would suggest you do. You say that you suffer from anxiety in different ways and suggest that you experience agrophobia. So all things considered, it's probably anxiety, those are very common symptoms of anxiety disorder. Like they say: if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it's probably a duck.

When we suffer from anxiety we become very introspective. We're constantly checking the symptoms are still there and obsessing about them. Well, nobody gets better that way. I suggest you learn to accept all your symptoms of anxiety for the time being. Don't keep fighting them, stop testing yourself and stop generating more and more fear for your nerves to cope with because the last thing your nervous system needs is more fear.

So I say again, learn to accept all your nervous symptoms calmly. They are after all only blips in your over sensitised nervous system. Why allow over wrought nerves to bully you because nervous symptoms can't do your body and mind any damage. They simply don' t have that power.

When I say 'accept' the symptoms I don't mean you should try hard to foeget them.Just don't treat them with the importance you have in the past. If you can do all that then your symptoms will start to go - the palps and chest pain will bother you less and less. And your fears about leaving your home will recede too.

You've already made a start going for short walks which is good news. Likesomeone else said: Do what you fear and the death of fear is assured. You'll surprise yourself just how far your legs will carry you the more you push yourself. O.K., you'll still feel uncomfortable about leaving the comfort zone of your home but so what? Just accept those bad feelings in the same way as you must accept all the symptoms of anxiety.

When you learn to accept the bad feelings with less and less fear you start to give your nerves a break from it all. And gradually they begin to return to normal and stop scaring you with all sorts of symptoms which seem serious but really aren't. That's because they are not the symptoms of real illness they're just nervous glitches mimicing real illness when in fact they're really fakes.

So that's what's going on with you - the over sensitisation of your nervous system by stress, worry and over work. And you now know there's really no need to feel scared because those bad feelings are all fakes. And if you didn't know it before then you know it now - agrophobia and pains in your chest radiating to your back and palpitations will all pass when you are able to accept them without frightening yourself half to death.

You will recover, Lyndy, I assure you of that but this is how you can help yourself reclaim your quiet mind.