Does anyone else get confused on what to think about their symptoms? Like is it anxiety or is it something more serious?

[ImHere_Again]

I am always afraid of not feeling good, especially when it involves my chest or head. I don't know if it is anxiety that I am experiencing or is it something more serious. For instance, when I feel tightness in my chest. I don't know if it's anxiety or maybe heart burn or even a heart attack(I have not had one). I am just always afraid of feeling something serious and brushing it off an anxiety. ( Not sure if I many sense.)

[Frenchbulldogsx]

You make perfect sense, I do that as well trouble is I have had a heart attack. So now if I get chest pains or jaw pain I start getting anxious which makes me worse. My surgeon doesn't think that it is my heart. Said to use gtn spray but I'm nervous about that..... Omg what am I like 😳

[BlueSky125]

I can relate to this. What I try to focus on are the symptoms that I’m having different from what I normally experience. When I get a bad panic attack I get tingling and numbness in both my hands. I know it’s a symptom of anxiety for me. It’s difficult because we have been conditioned to think it’s just anxiety. When that isn’t necessarily always going to be the case.

[Jollylolly]

Yes I get that too, ever since I had to have heart surgery. It was such a shock as I was only in my 40s, otherwise healthy, no-smoker etc so didn't think I'd have a heart problem. Following the surgery I kept getting chest pains and was convinced I was having a heart attack. It's difficult to deal with because every bit of advice you read tells you to go to A and E, but I had to learn to fight it. It often happened for me in the middle of the night. Luckily I had a friend who was a night owl, so I could ring them at 3am and just get them to talk to me to distract me. That worked. I think that the more you focus on it, the more you convince yourself that it's a heart attack. Distraction was the answer for me. Good luck!!