I have been having really bad health anxiety for about 6 months. It first started with having some vision problems that I thought was blurred vision and then felt really weird one day and had a panic attack and ended up at the hospital. They told me that my heart was fine from ekg, echo, CT and blood work. Everything else came out good on the blood work.
I saw my primary doctor a few times and he said that everything is healthy with me and contributed it to anxiety.
I felt some relief at first, but it started getting worse and worse and I have had a few other panic attacks and high anxiety just about every day thinking I have a heart problem or something else that will cause me to die suddenly.
I’ve been in therapy for about three months and it helped at first, but now it is coming back. I notice ever single body sensation and think the worst will happen anytime I feel off. I get a foggy, dizzy, dropping sensation most of the day. I am just constantly thinking something isn’t right and I’m not healthy and will just drop dead and pass out and end up in the hospital.
Is this normal for anxiety disorders? Is there something else that could be wrong physically? And if it is just anxiety has anyone have good insight on how to beat it?
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Yatesrp
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It’s normal for health anxiety, I’m exactly the same as you. I’m going through this daily and it’s getting to the point I am just about functioning. I’m a mother of 3 and it’s all the effort I have in me to get them off to school. Then I’m dreading picking up,time. I’ve become withdrawn and cry all the time. I’m getting great care and they are trying to sort out some meds so I’m hopeful but it’s such an up hill battle every day so I totally get it babes, I’m here if you need to talk.
I have 3 kids also and suffer from terrible health anxiety. I can go 3 weeks with nothing then BOOM MAJOR attack. I Google something and it's just downhill from there.
Yatesrp, you feel bewildered and confused. Some awful malaise has descended on you and you don't know why.
Yatesrp, 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.
Yatesrp, you've been fighting these bad feelings for 6 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. That's ridiculous. 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 thousands 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.
I suffer from this too sometimes unfortunately. But as Jeff1943 said, when you have over sensitive nerves they start creating more than one fake symptom which you think they are all serious. Chill up guy and don't let the negative thoughts ruins your life.
Hands up that’s me also.. blurry vision I swear a brain tumor slight chest pain that’s it my heart is going to stop... get cramps in my belly that’s it I swear ovarian cancer..
It’s terrible and there’s some days I don’t even think about it. I read one article in the daily mail of someone young dying and I swear that will be me!! My brother had a heart attack a few days ago at 37 and that’s made me even crazier my husband begged me stopped doing this to myself. Sometimes I get so tired from over thinking everything it’s crazy. I agree with the others everything is a lot worse when we worry:: I guess it’s living with it being busy and being around loved ones xx there’s many of us living this crap hang in there x
Peppermint tea!! I convinced myself I had stomach cancer because of really bad acid! Had a camera put thru my mouth when I was sedated. Thank god all clear pepper mint tea works like magic and zero reflux even after a lovely curry!!
Oh not too sure you can also ask your doctor? But one cup a night made the world of a difference I was addicted to omperazole and gaviscon at 1 point. And who would have thought peppermint tea 😊
Been like it since 2014. Sent me completely in panic all the time. I even gave up my job. I still get ups and downs and right now is a ‘down’ time. But the more you give to these feelings the worse you end up feeling. Health anxiety is awful but you learn to live with it.
Thank you all for the replies. It is comforting to know that others experience this and can live with it and get better. I am just so tired of everyday feeling like I might die, or I feel dizzy or woozy and panic about fainting. I haven’t had a ton of tests done, but I had pretty much all the heart tests and a complete blood work up and my doctor says I’m fine and it’s just anxiety. It’s hard to convince myself that I’m fine and anxiety is causing me to feel ill, get woozy or dizzy, or have this just “off” feeling almost all day every day because I don’t remember ever feeling these symptoms before the past 6 months. The only time I am fully relaxed and not worrying about something being wrong with me is in the evening at home with my wife and daughter. Just wish I could feel like myself again.
You cannot wish yourself well, Yatesrp. Sorry. You need to do something. You're not going to wake up one day and find it's gone. Again sorry. Why should it? You're feeding your nerves with copious amounts of fear hormone on a daily basis. Over sensitised nerves thrive on fear hormone. We are our own worst enemies.
You're still convinced the medical professionals who spent 5 years at medical school and endless days in practice don't know what they're talking about. Maybe one good night's sleep and you'll feel fine again. Dream on. So sorry.
Go to Amazon today. If you're British search for 'Self help for your nerves' by Claire Weekes. If you're American search for 'Hope and help for your nerves' by Claire Weekes. It's the same book.
Order a copy new or used. The combined reader reviews for all Doctor Weekes books on the U.K. and U.S. versions of Amazon total 1,750 reviews in the last few years alone: 90% rated it Very Good or Excellent.
That's 1,750 reviews in the last few years alone. Yet the book was written 55 years ago.
Why not stop wishing and start reading and doing? That way lies recovery.
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