At the start of August, I was dragged by my girlfriend to France for a month.
I was terrible for the first couple of days. We were hitching a lift down to France with my parents in their camper van. I was a disgrace lying on the sofa in the back, in dispair.
"You've traded my life for a baguette! I said between gasps of air.
My severe anxiety and constant panic attacks stemed from me getting cancer (I'm 24) and being 'cured' (i.e remission) within a week. After that, I was constantly looking inward via Health Anxiety for about 3 months, with symptoms building on top of others in a vicious cycle. I was looking in the mirror every chance I got, checking for lumps all the time and obsessing over every ache and pain.
Here's the mother of all symptom lists for you:
- Feelings of Unreality (Derealisation)
- Week long headaches
- Pressure in the head
- Headaches in the temples
- Targetted, one sided headaches
- Eye pain (migranes)
- Dizzyness
- Lightheadedness
- Fatigue
- Despair
- Split second darkening of vision
- Flashes of light when eyes closed
- Blurred vision
- Difficulty focusing on foreground objects
- Leftward deviation when walking
- Balance issues
- Pins and needles down left side of my body
- Weakness and percived numbness in left limbs
- Occasional leg buckling
- Tinnitus
- TMJ
- One pupil bigger than the other
- Trembling hands
- Muscle pains
- Muscle spasms
- Neck and shoulder pain
- Difficulty talking (tripping over words)
- Tight throat
- Lump in throat
- Difficulty Swollowing
- Displaced adam's apple
- Stomach cramps (IBS)
- Shallow breathing
- Waves of anxiety
- Sleep starts (wave of anxiety, loud sounds
- Racing thoughts
I suffered through all of that. I was CONVINCED that I had a brain tumor, even after countless visits and reassurances of my GP and my Oncologist.
I guess what France did was break that cycle. I was too pre-occupied to worry. With each day that passed my anxiety and the symptoms that went with it diminished more. A week into the holiday, most of my symptoms were completely gone. Even more importantly, it showed me that the symptoms were indeed transient and therefore obviously self induced and not because of any underlying ilness.
For example, one of the most troublesome symptoms I had was De-Realisation. It was really awful - I felt like a ghost watching the world go by, and the brain fog was tremendous. Through weeks and weeks of fussing and constantly debating this in my head, I came to the (i)logical conclusion that the feelings of unreality were caused by a brain tumor induced seziure. My reasoning? Well, Temproal Lobe Epeleptics get a similar symptom to De-Realisation and therefore I had a tumor there. Hence, the 'seziure' gap in my brain tumor symptom check-list was filled.
Anyhow, when we landed in France we quickly made our way south, stopping in service stations and small shops along the way. I noticed quite early on that the de-realisation only occured when I was standing in a queue, worrying about how the hell I was going to order a packet of smokes or whatever. That was the first of many breakthrough's. For the first time I had conclusive 'proof' that the unreality feelings were directly linked to my state of mind.
So here I am. 1 week after coming back from France and I feel like a new person. Obviously I am not completely 'cured', I still get the occasional bout of symptoms (for example I am slightly brain fogged at the moment, simply because I had to re-live the last 4 months and type that awful list out!). But I am well on the way to being my old self again.
My advice to anyone who is struggling with anxiety (especially Health Anxiety like me), is to GET ACTIVE. Don't allow yourself to do what I did and take months
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