JackInTheBox
17-10-12, 05:35
Well today was (and it's still being) a bad day...
After two weeks of anxiety-free days, today I got it with a vengance :( But I'm not surrendering this time!
So, what happened? First the symptoms:
Soft chest pain, palpitations in all shapes and forms, sometimes trouble breathing. The chest pain is very mild, but the palpitations...goodness me, it seems that my heart just missed a beat or sometimes is beating out of sync, with some beats normal and others just way too hard.
Having these symptoms triggers my survival mode on maximum, the first reflex is "I'm going to have a heart attack!", then comes the fear of it and finally the fear of dying. The worst part is going to bed, because I can't stop thinking about "what if I die in my sleep??", I'd hate that I tell you this much...
The reaction to all of it:
Like I have said on previous posts, I did all sorts of exams to heart, lungs and blood...twice, they came back with a clean bill of health so I shouldn't worry (yeah, right). When I did both Holter exams, they shown nothing (and used it while having the palpitations), the same happened with the rest of the exams, so in my mind I know that the heart is most likely fine, as in "it won't stop or malfunction by it self" fine.
I also know that I suffer from rheumatism on my sternum and that I have a "scar" on a lung due to a pneumonia when I was younger.
So, I decided to fight the fear today. I rationalized it and kept thinking about how nothing is wrong or abnormal with my body and the cause must be somewhere else. This is very hard and all throught the day caused a great conflict on me, which is expected since your head is saying that "all is well" and your heart (organ) is acting funny at the same time.
Unfortunately, I'm still waiting for the results of my latest exams, so I was in doubt, rational and pure doubt, that manages to pop up that "what if" in the back of your head. This caused me to loose most of my attempts to fight the fear and anxiety, but I won some and actually got to spend parts of the day without thinking about it or feeling anxious!
Another victory:
And today another major milestone was taken (for me at least), for the first time I started to automatically assign the fear to health anxiety and instead of only reacting "Oh my god I'm gonna die" and spend the rest of the day waiting for it, I managed to scramble the "oh wait, you must be anxious or stressing about something, let's figure out what it is".
So sometimes I was affraid, specially when the palpitations show up, but then I managed to overcome that and only feel anxious and streesed. Not having the fear for me is a good step, because it turns health anxiety in to regular anxiety. Of course, like I said before, this "process" failed on some occasions because I don't feel 100% sure.
Provable causes for the anxiety and sympthoms:
A while ago a friend of mine who is a doctor told me "one way to keep yourself safe and calm is to know your own quirks". At time the full meaning was lost to me, but after a while it started to make sense.
So for instance, today the weather was very humid and then it started to pour (monsoon style), this is perfect for rheumatic pains, on my case chest pain. One sympthom was scratched out of the list.
Also on occasions of weather change my scarred lung acts out, specially on rainy winters. As most smokers I used to be "chronically" out of breath, this has improved (a lot) since I started doing exercise and now I only feel like that on humid, rainy weather, particularly on those first few days of bad weather. Considering all this, I scratched "trouble breathing" also out of the list.
This leaves the palpitations to handle. The curious thing about anxiety is that it sometimes can be rather silent, sometimes we worry and we suffer about something, we are indeed on a state of anxiety but we don't notice it (at least most people don't) unless we stay like that long enough.
One of my indicators for "silent" stress or anxiety is my stomach, whenever I'm reaching "critical mass" it starts to bloat. If the situation continues for a couple more days, I will have nausea, stomach pain and all sorts of complications due to having too much acid boiling inside.
Today I got some mild bloating and I knew that it meant anxiety all across the board, since I was also having palpitations. This got me thinking about what could be making me anxious/stressed. And without surprise a couple of issues have arised:
-Waiting for the results of my exams, I'm very eager to know them
-A customer's payment is late, I hate it when people delay payments
-I have been slacking off on my projects, this makes me feel guilty
-Also I'm eager to finish them, so slacking off makes me angry with myself
-I was delayed in the morning and I saw my afternoon commitments being endangered. I was forced into hurrying up a whole bunch of stuff and this stressed me a bit.
So, I'm guessing that the exam worry has been here ever since I took them, which may be causing a certain level of "silent" anxiety. Then the slacking off came up, it was just one day but I felt really bad about it, since I am my own boss and I should know better. This must have raised the anxiety levels further and then the rushed morning and the annoyance with my client did the trick in triggering some palpitations, who in turn triggered the "anxiety level:max" state.
I think that knowing this or being aware is a good thing. If I know what set me off, I can try to mitigate it, solve it or avoid it.
Bottom line:
-I had sympthoms
-I was afraid of them
-I tried and both succeded and failed into rationalizing them
-I thought about my known quirks and managed to "explain" some of them
-I thought about what could be making me anxious (with a lot of assertiveness )
-I am now able to take steps to try to mitigate or solve my causes for anxiety.
The worst part of health anxiety for me is the fear, I think thats the worst part for everyone really. We fear the consequences of the sympthoms and what they can do to our lives and then we get anxious because we are not sure about what our sympthoms mean. This forum is a big help for me, because it allows me to understand the difference between the effects anxiety and body "quirks".
My body has been the target of much abuse and poor maintenance over the years, so it has a lot of quirks from aches, lumps, stings to accute pains and malfunctions. With every workout or run that I take as part of my exercise, I realize more and more how far the damage goes and how to cope with it. I guess that knowing what "things" are normal and what "things" are not on our own organisms is a pretty good step into fighting and beating health anxiety. I hope one day I can claim that win, I hope we all do.
Tomorrow I'm getting the results for the x-rays and ECG, thursday I'll get the bloodwork, so I'll post my findings when I have them. Wish me luck ;)
After two weeks of anxiety-free days, today I got it with a vengance :( But I'm not surrendering this time!
So, what happened? First the symptoms:
Soft chest pain, palpitations in all shapes and forms, sometimes trouble breathing. The chest pain is very mild, but the palpitations...goodness me, it seems that my heart just missed a beat or sometimes is beating out of sync, with some beats normal and others just way too hard.
Having these symptoms triggers my survival mode on maximum, the first reflex is "I'm going to have a heart attack!", then comes the fear of it and finally the fear of dying. The worst part is going to bed, because I can't stop thinking about "what if I die in my sleep??", I'd hate that I tell you this much...
The reaction to all of it:
Like I have said on previous posts, I did all sorts of exams to heart, lungs and blood...twice, they came back with a clean bill of health so I shouldn't worry (yeah, right). When I did both Holter exams, they shown nothing (and used it while having the palpitations), the same happened with the rest of the exams, so in my mind I know that the heart is most likely fine, as in "it won't stop or malfunction by it self" fine.
I also know that I suffer from rheumatism on my sternum and that I have a "scar" on a lung due to a pneumonia when I was younger.
So, I decided to fight the fear today. I rationalized it and kept thinking about how nothing is wrong or abnormal with my body and the cause must be somewhere else. This is very hard and all throught the day caused a great conflict on me, which is expected since your head is saying that "all is well" and your heart (organ) is acting funny at the same time.
Unfortunately, I'm still waiting for the results of my latest exams, so I was in doubt, rational and pure doubt, that manages to pop up that "what if" in the back of your head. This caused me to loose most of my attempts to fight the fear and anxiety, but I won some and actually got to spend parts of the day without thinking about it or feeling anxious!
Another victory:
And today another major milestone was taken (for me at least), for the first time I started to automatically assign the fear to health anxiety and instead of only reacting "Oh my god I'm gonna die" and spend the rest of the day waiting for it, I managed to scramble the "oh wait, you must be anxious or stressing about something, let's figure out what it is".
So sometimes I was affraid, specially when the palpitations show up, but then I managed to overcome that and only feel anxious and streesed. Not having the fear for me is a good step, because it turns health anxiety in to regular anxiety. Of course, like I said before, this "process" failed on some occasions because I don't feel 100% sure.
Provable causes for the anxiety and sympthoms:
A while ago a friend of mine who is a doctor told me "one way to keep yourself safe and calm is to know your own quirks". At time the full meaning was lost to me, but after a while it started to make sense.
So for instance, today the weather was very humid and then it started to pour (monsoon style), this is perfect for rheumatic pains, on my case chest pain. One sympthom was scratched out of the list.
Also on occasions of weather change my scarred lung acts out, specially on rainy winters. As most smokers I used to be "chronically" out of breath, this has improved (a lot) since I started doing exercise and now I only feel like that on humid, rainy weather, particularly on those first few days of bad weather. Considering all this, I scratched "trouble breathing" also out of the list.
This leaves the palpitations to handle. The curious thing about anxiety is that it sometimes can be rather silent, sometimes we worry and we suffer about something, we are indeed on a state of anxiety but we don't notice it (at least most people don't) unless we stay like that long enough.
One of my indicators for "silent" stress or anxiety is my stomach, whenever I'm reaching "critical mass" it starts to bloat. If the situation continues for a couple more days, I will have nausea, stomach pain and all sorts of complications due to having too much acid boiling inside.
Today I got some mild bloating and I knew that it meant anxiety all across the board, since I was also having palpitations. This got me thinking about what could be making me anxious/stressed. And without surprise a couple of issues have arised:
-Waiting for the results of my exams, I'm very eager to know them
-A customer's payment is late, I hate it when people delay payments
-I have been slacking off on my projects, this makes me feel guilty
-Also I'm eager to finish them, so slacking off makes me angry with myself
-I was delayed in the morning and I saw my afternoon commitments being endangered. I was forced into hurrying up a whole bunch of stuff and this stressed me a bit.
So, I'm guessing that the exam worry has been here ever since I took them, which may be causing a certain level of "silent" anxiety. Then the slacking off came up, it was just one day but I felt really bad about it, since I am my own boss and I should know better. This must have raised the anxiety levels further and then the rushed morning and the annoyance with my client did the trick in triggering some palpitations, who in turn triggered the "anxiety level:max" state.
I think that knowing this or being aware is a good thing. If I know what set me off, I can try to mitigate it, solve it or avoid it.
Bottom line:
-I had sympthoms
-I was afraid of them
-I tried and both succeded and failed into rationalizing them
-I thought about my known quirks and managed to "explain" some of them
-I thought about what could be making me anxious (with a lot of assertiveness )
-I am now able to take steps to try to mitigate or solve my causes for anxiety.
The worst part of health anxiety for me is the fear, I think thats the worst part for everyone really. We fear the consequences of the sympthoms and what they can do to our lives and then we get anxious because we are not sure about what our sympthoms mean. This forum is a big help for me, because it allows me to understand the difference between the effects anxiety and body "quirks".
My body has been the target of much abuse and poor maintenance over the years, so it has a lot of quirks from aches, lumps, stings to accute pains and malfunctions. With every workout or run that I take as part of my exercise, I realize more and more how far the damage goes and how to cope with it. I guess that knowing what "things" are normal and what "things" are not on our own organisms is a pretty good step into fighting and beating health anxiety. I hope one day I can claim that win, I hope we all do.
Tomorrow I'm getting the results for the x-rays and ECG, thursday I'll get the bloodwork, so I'll post my findings when I have them. Wish me luck ;)