blondinou
30-08-11, 20:50
Hello everyone.
I thought I would introduce myself because I am a final year medical student suffering with anxiety - particularly health anxiety. Perk of the job haha. I will be a doctor in one year with any luck. I hope I can provide a different perspective, as I have (hopefully!) a little knowledge about both mental and physical illness as well as experience of anxiety myself.
I’ve had anxiety for 3 months now in the current form, but I now recognise I’ve had it on and off for years (ouch that is disappointing to admit). I have a mixture of two things which I call ‘panic attack’ and ‘anxiety’.
‘Panic attack’ for me is a short episode of absolute fear, dread and panic where nearly all rational thought goes OUT the window!!! These are really hard to deal with and I feel like I’m going to die or there will be some disastrous outcome like going permanently insane or ending up in A&E collapsed. There’s not much I can do except ride it out.
‘Anxiety’ for me is a low-level tense, fearful feeling. It goes up and down, and sometimes it feels like I’m on the brink of panic and I will tip over if I let myself. Other times I can talk myself out of it and comfort myself back into the real world. It’s often with this disconnected feeling that I’m not engaging with real life like everyone else is.
I loved the 'The Battle That Rages In My Head' post by SFAOK about Mr Positive and Mr Negative because that it exactly what goes on in my head too, and it really helped me to read it. So I thought I would leave my version of it so others can hopefully identify with it.
I feel a bit weird... What does this symptom mean… Now I’m concentrating on it and it’s feeling worse and starting to feel out of control… There must be something wrong with me, something awful, ______ [fill in the blank with heart problem/cancer/etc], what if it's about to make me seriously ill? I need to see a doctor quickly, or phone 999 or my boyfriend, or go outside to where there are people around or something, I need to make sure someone would know I'm ill in case I collapse and die and they find me when it's too late... I better search Google for the symptoms and see what comes up...
Or maybe I'm just going mad, nothing feels real any more, I'm not connected to the world or other people or anything, I'm alone in this cos no-one else understands how this feels... I'm going to be anxious and panicky for the rest of my life and I won't enjoy anything or be able to function... My boyfriend will get fed up and leave me… My family will stop listening to me and taking me seriously… I'll end up in a psychiatric hospital if this gets any worse
So that was Miss Negative. I’m working on Miss Positive haha…
Symptoms I have had with anxiety...
- Lightheadedness
- Chest pressure / crushing / weird indescribable sensations
- Thumping heart like it is about to leap out my chest or explode!
- Racing heart, seems faster and faster like a runaway train (very very scary)
- Tightness in throat, feeling of airway constricted
- Breathlessness
- Vague feeling of about to pass out / lose consciousness
- Pain/ache and tingling down arms
- Pressure in head
- Feelings that I am going mad
- Sheer panic, dread, terrified that something is about to go wrong, that I am in mortal danger
(The phrase medical people like to use is ‘feelings of impending doom’!! Great)
- Pre-occupation with thoughts of death (mine or a loved one), life is too short etc
Diagnoses I have given myself…
- Fatal arrhythmia e.g. Wolff Parkinson White, long QT syndrome (due to palpitations)
- Lymphoma (cancer, due to lumps in neck)
- Heart attack/myocardial infarction (due to chest pain and suffocating feelings)
- Pulmonary embolism - this is a clot on the lung (due to breathlessness)
- Deep vein thrombosis – DVT, clot in leg (due to slight redness and warmth on leg)
- Schizophrenia prodrome (this means the year-ish before schizophrenia where you just feel weird)
- Phaeochromocytoma (rare tumour of the adrenal glands)
- Marfans / Ehlers Danlos syndrome (rare connective tissue problems)
- Brain tumour (due to blurred vision)
As you can see being a medical student I have come up with weird and wonderful diagnoses that I have read about, as well as the standard ones. Needless to say none of them have come true, and all were based on vague symptoms, or just one or two of the list of possible symptoms for each one. Nearly all of them I have moved on from once I finally reassure myself I don’t have that disease.
For example I went to the GP several times about possible lymphoma before I could convince myself that the lumps in my neck were just raised lymph nodes (glands) due to previously bad acne, they can stay enlarged and calcified (hard) after infections like this.
I am going to counselling in two days (finally, long waiting list). I really want to work on this and get better. Anyone got any tips about counselling / making the most of attempting to get rid of this big scary monster that lives under my bed?!
I hope reading about my experiences helps someone. If you have any questions or comments please post back.
Thank you :D
I thought I would introduce myself because I am a final year medical student suffering with anxiety - particularly health anxiety. Perk of the job haha. I will be a doctor in one year with any luck. I hope I can provide a different perspective, as I have (hopefully!) a little knowledge about both mental and physical illness as well as experience of anxiety myself.
I’ve had anxiety for 3 months now in the current form, but I now recognise I’ve had it on and off for years (ouch that is disappointing to admit). I have a mixture of two things which I call ‘panic attack’ and ‘anxiety’.
‘Panic attack’ for me is a short episode of absolute fear, dread and panic where nearly all rational thought goes OUT the window!!! These are really hard to deal with and I feel like I’m going to die or there will be some disastrous outcome like going permanently insane or ending up in A&E collapsed. There’s not much I can do except ride it out.
‘Anxiety’ for me is a low-level tense, fearful feeling. It goes up and down, and sometimes it feels like I’m on the brink of panic and I will tip over if I let myself. Other times I can talk myself out of it and comfort myself back into the real world. It’s often with this disconnected feeling that I’m not engaging with real life like everyone else is.
I loved the 'The Battle That Rages In My Head' post by SFAOK about Mr Positive and Mr Negative because that it exactly what goes on in my head too, and it really helped me to read it. So I thought I would leave my version of it so others can hopefully identify with it.
I feel a bit weird... What does this symptom mean… Now I’m concentrating on it and it’s feeling worse and starting to feel out of control… There must be something wrong with me, something awful, ______ [fill in the blank with heart problem/cancer/etc], what if it's about to make me seriously ill? I need to see a doctor quickly, or phone 999 or my boyfriend, or go outside to where there are people around or something, I need to make sure someone would know I'm ill in case I collapse and die and they find me when it's too late... I better search Google for the symptoms and see what comes up...
Or maybe I'm just going mad, nothing feels real any more, I'm not connected to the world or other people or anything, I'm alone in this cos no-one else understands how this feels... I'm going to be anxious and panicky for the rest of my life and I won't enjoy anything or be able to function... My boyfriend will get fed up and leave me… My family will stop listening to me and taking me seriously… I'll end up in a psychiatric hospital if this gets any worse
So that was Miss Negative. I’m working on Miss Positive haha…
Symptoms I have had with anxiety...
- Lightheadedness
- Chest pressure / crushing / weird indescribable sensations
- Thumping heart like it is about to leap out my chest or explode!
- Racing heart, seems faster and faster like a runaway train (very very scary)
- Tightness in throat, feeling of airway constricted
- Breathlessness
- Vague feeling of about to pass out / lose consciousness
- Pain/ache and tingling down arms
- Pressure in head
- Feelings that I am going mad
- Sheer panic, dread, terrified that something is about to go wrong, that I am in mortal danger
(The phrase medical people like to use is ‘feelings of impending doom’!! Great)
- Pre-occupation with thoughts of death (mine or a loved one), life is too short etc
Diagnoses I have given myself…
- Fatal arrhythmia e.g. Wolff Parkinson White, long QT syndrome (due to palpitations)
- Lymphoma (cancer, due to lumps in neck)
- Heart attack/myocardial infarction (due to chest pain and suffocating feelings)
- Pulmonary embolism - this is a clot on the lung (due to breathlessness)
- Deep vein thrombosis – DVT, clot in leg (due to slight redness and warmth on leg)
- Schizophrenia prodrome (this means the year-ish before schizophrenia where you just feel weird)
- Phaeochromocytoma (rare tumour of the adrenal glands)
- Marfans / Ehlers Danlos syndrome (rare connective tissue problems)
- Brain tumour (due to blurred vision)
As you can see being a medical student I have come up with weird and wonderful diagnoses that I have read about, as well as the standard ones. Needless to say none of them have come true, and all were based on vague symptoms, or just one or two of the list of possible symptoms for each one. Nearly all of them I have moved on from once I finally reassure myself I don’t have that disease.
For example I went to the GP several times about possible lymphoma before I could convince myself that the lumps in my neck were just raised lymph nodes (glands) due to previously bad acne, they can stay enlarged and calcified (hard) after infections like this.
I am going to counselling in two days (finally, long waiting list). I really want to work on this and get better. Anyone got any tips about counselling / making the most of attempting to get rid of this big scary monster that lives under my bed?!
I hope reading about my experiences helps someone. If you have any questions or comments please post back.
Thank you :D