Re: Mornings are the worst
Well a friend rang and I ended up bursting into tears about all this and they said, 'hang on how many of these skips are you getting in a day.' I told them and they were like 'so you're getting about 500 a month and your still here.' I don't know why but it made me laugh at that moment.
The day went ok but now at midnight I've been getting flutters and like a balloon inside the chest feeling for an hour or so. I take my beta blocker now anyway, so hopefully will feel better soon. Just no idea why my heart has suddenly got so active.
Not looking forward to work on tuesday, travel and it'll be quite a stressful day. It was after a commute that I ended up in the ER a few weeks ago. Let's see, I'll just take it moment by moment.
Re: Mornings are the worst
Your heart tends to become more active the more you focus on it. The heartrate can be high, it can be stronger than usual, it can skip beats, you can have odd sensations in your chest etc.
All those things are exacerbated by constantly thinking about it.
It's very common to have an increased heart rate after eating (mine does especially after an evening meal - often by about 20bpm or more) for a few hours, and mornings are traditionally a tough time for anxiety sufferers because of the way hormones work.
The best thing you can do by far is just letting them be. It's not going to harm you in any way. Just accept that it's going to feel that way for a while, and tell yourself nothing bad is going to happen (you have historical and experiential proof of this).
Re: Mornings are the worst
500 a month is incredibly low. That works out to about 15 a day. I know people who have had thousands a day and they're fine. So long as the heart is healthy you're all good. Even in normal healthy people without anxiety they can experience them.
That's what doctors tell me. What I don't get is if normal people have them, why don't they feel them?
I have 3 different types of skips:
- Flutter type skips that feel very faint, hardly noticable at all
- Skips that feel like the heart has skipped a beat. 100% noticable. Even if I don't focus on them, I can feel when these happen
- Thud type skips are the absolute worst! They are usually followed witha normal skip, or a flutter, or a run of skip. I say this with 1000% certaintly. No normal person could have a thud type skip and not notice it, or not be freaked out by it.
With the above in mind, I find the doctors explanation incorrect. I was told: "even healthy people have them, but they don't notice them". Not possible. Nobody could have a skip, or a thud and not notice. A flutter maybe.
I do notice certain situations that make mine worse:
- Eating can cause them. I've had the thud type skip when swallowing a few times. I almost choked one time because of it.
- Bending over
- Deep breaths
- Stress
- Not enough sleep
- Not enough water
- Sugar
- Coffee (I can not drink coffee at all because of this)
- Alcohol, but usually the day after
- Cannabis if I smoke too much. These usually result in skips that happen in runs
- Excitement
- Panic attacks
- Stretching
I have them every day. Have done for the past 15 years. I'm 32 now, but noticed the first one during my first panic attack after I choked on a hard boiled sweet.
I'm still here, alive and kicking. But, every day I wake up and I'm convinced today is my day to die.
I can mostly ignore them 95% of the time. The thud type skips will throw me off for a second, but I have learned to maintain my composure. I was once in a meeting and I gave a 20 minute talk. The entire time my heart was skipping. I managed to get through the meeting and nobody suspected a thing.
Just now I took a deep breath and I felt a skipped beat. Very noticeable. Felt like my heart skipped the beat very slowly, with an empty hollow feeling in my chest.
These things have plagued my life. The only time I get less skips is when I am happy and content. Which is rare.
Re: Mornings are the worst
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ankietyjoe
Your heart tends to become more active the more you focus on it. The heartrate can be high, it can be stronger than usual, it can skip beats, you can have odd sensations in your chest etc.
All those things are exacerbated by constantly thinking about it.
It's very common to have an increased heart rate after eating (mine does especially after an evening meal - often by about 20bpm or more) for a few hours, and mornings are traditionally a tough time for anxiety sufferers because of the way hormones work.
The best thing you can do by far is just letting them be. It's not going to harm you in any way. Just accept that it's going to feel that way for a while, and tell yourself nothing bad is going to happen (you have historical and experiential proof of this).
Thanks. I guess I'm finding it hard to believe that my heart symptoms are the result of anxiety, particularly as they came first. Also it's just when I'm getting my confidence back that I get a heart symptom that bursts the bubble again.
But if I look at the whole picture I can see that I have also responded very fearfully at times.
What is it about hormones in the morning? that's when I'm REALLY struggling. Wondering if there's anything I can do to alleviate it. I'm taking a gram of inositol at the moment for anxiety, its worked before but this has really got a hold.
It's the change in the palpitations that's got me. Some very weird upper chest fluttering, etc. And yes mealtimes are really difficult as most of the skipping is then.
I've increased my beta blocker which is a pain, but was necessary. It's a pain because I was weaning off it ever so gradually (this is not the reason for the exacerbation in skips though because I was on the same low dose for nearly a year) and now I feel back to square one. I can't just stop the beta blockers without experiencing chest and arm discomfort. The doctor takes no notice but it's real and freaks me out. If I do it gradually though I'm fine.
Re: Mornings are the worst
Well you say your palpitations came first, but maybe they were responding to stressful situations or a buildup of anxiety before you recognised it as anxiety?
The best way to deal with mornings (in my humble opinion) is to just take a few deep breaths as soon as you wake up, and let your body and mind adjust to the new day. Take five minutes and just say to yourself 'ok, I know the drill. Let it be for a little while and wait for the worst of it to pass'. I always wake up 10-15 minutes before I really have to, just to give myself time to adjust to the new day.
I rarely get skips or flutters like you, mine tends to manisfest itself as rapid heart rate, but I still do get skips and flutters sometimes. It's a changing thing, anxiety never seems to respond the same way each day. Try and look at the bigger picture rather than the small details.
Re: Mornings are the worst
Thanks WiredIncorrectly
I could have written most of what you said myself. Very similar. I'm older than you at 46, but I also remember my heart skipping at work if I was presenting at a meeting, etc. Strangely I wasn't at all nervous about it back then, I thought I was invincible, lol, and I thought everyone's heart skipped if they were a bit nervous and giving a talk.
It was only after a traumatic event that I began to worry about it. Interesting that you say yours happened first when you were panicking because of choking. Dr Sanjay Gupta has said that everyone who notices these ectopics usually has some bad event that made them anxious in the past as a trigger, or if not, they suffered generally with anxiety. I find it hard to believe it's all anxiety, as I've done a lot of work on how to manage my mind, etc, and most of the time when these skips happen it seems to have more of a hormonal trigger. But having said that, I have to be open to it. He's spoken with thousands of people on this subject and seen the same pattern. And I did experience a traumatic incident that has made me more vigilant of any changes in my heart.
Yes I hate the thuds too. I was in a bookshop once, everything calm, looking at books and suddenly THUD, like being punched from the inside out. I staggered out of this quaint little bookshop into the street, trying to get away from heaven knows what, but I was trying. And that sales assistant in that calm little shop, who was stood really close to me didn't suspect a thing.
I'm a little better now that I know what the thuds mean. But I agree, there's something else going on, there's no way people wouldn't notice them, you cannot fail to notice being punched from the inside of your chest.
To some extent, though no offence to Dr Gupta who is doing brilliant work and is very understanding, but a lot of doctors are putting everything down to anxiety purely because there's no research into it and they cannot explain it. That's how I feel.
But that said, I am trying hard to work on my anxiety as well, I haven't ruled it out, especially at the moment I'm a mess because of all this.
---------- Post added at 22:48 ---------- Previous post was at 22:39 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ankietyjoe
Well you say your palpitations came first, but maybe they were responding to stressful situations or a buildup of anxiety before you recognised it as anxiety?
Interesting point because I woke up with skips on New Year's morning, like at 2am. I'd only just gone to sleep. They were happening every 3rd beat. I hate that the most because it seems to have some kind of 'consciousness' or mind when it is precise like that, like it's not random, it's a 'thing' - a terrifying thing, lol.
I got up and ate a banana and drank water and it went away quite quickly and I went back to bed but it set me back mentally. All my other skips were predictable and related to hormones.
Well since then I've had a lot of hormonal changes in my cycle, very significant stuff, so it's possible that all my recent, unpredictable skips are down to that.....
But going back to the anxiety, it's true that I was having a lot of problems with a set of aggressive and noisy neighbours before Christmas (all the neighbours were upset not just me) and getting very little sleep and then over the actual christmas they were home the whole time causing a disturbance....so yes perhaps there was a peak of stress going on, because there was other stuff happening in the family too.
Thanks for getting me to consider that.
Re: Mornings are the worst
My own brief experience with noisy neighbour lead me to concur that it is one of lifes most frustrating and stressful things to deal with. I had murderous thoughts at the time lol:mad:
Just as a side note, I was once told by a Doctor I saw that skipped beats and irregular heartbeats are 'medically insignificant' in the absence of disease (which you DON'T have!).
Relaxation is probably the way forward! :)
Re: Mornings are the worst
One thing I've done differently and wondered about. I was taking the vitamin Inositol because I'm a bit ocd, and its supposed to work for that. I find it does.
Around Christmas time I changed the brand. I wondered if the brand I changed to didn't absorb very well, also for a few weeks I was taking a lower dose without realising it.
Last week i went and got my usual brand and felt differently the same day after taking it. Inositol also works with panic and while I wasn't feeling panicky, I wonder if a drop in something I was used to taking has brought all this on (and heart skips as well).
I'm just amazed at how much the anxiety has gripped me in the last week, to the point of not wanting to leave the house. I have a diagnosis of ptsd, but I had my routines and was coping within those. This is a significant change.
Re: Mornings are the worst
Could well be. I know that when I'm very anxious or having a stressful time of things my body is hyper sensitive to all sorts of things. If you've noticed a difference by swapping brands, there's probably something to it.
