terror and anxiety are different...

[backfromthebrink]

I've been experiencing health anxiety for a few months now, over a variety of different things.

I've gone through phases of feeling better and phases of feeling worse.

By far the worst thing is what I call the 'terror'. This is when it hits you in your chest, makes you freeze in fear, causes your hands to sweat and any appetite you might have to go - instantly. (It has happened in the middle of eating food, that I've suddenly thought of something terrifying and I literally want to spit out the food in my mouth because of this.) And it makes your bowels loose!

This, for me, is a whole different thing to just living with the low-grade anxiety around most of the time.

Can anyone else relate to the difference between terror and anxiety? (Anxiety doesn't quite do what it feels like justice - it is far greater.)

[Bekzie]

Hi Backfromthebrink,
I know what you mean the anxiety is bad enough but then the sheer terror comes along and scares you half to death. The way I see it is as if anxiety is a wide spectrum, On one end is the niggling nervous feeling and at the other end is the pure panic thinking you are going to die. Suffering anxiety for me includes both ends of the spectrum and everything in between. The terror is panic/panic attack for me as when I feel like that it always leads to a full blown attack with the racing heart, chest pains, dizziness, feeling you are dying, can't breath etc.

[illgetthere]

Yes I totally understand that ill have the pain in my chest and the instant panic of that sets my system of and instantly need the toilet I do no what you mean

[Pinktel]

Backfromthebrink what you have stumbled upon is the key to never having a panic attack again!

All by yourself you have deduced that anxiety is not the same as fight or flight symptoms.

You can muddle along feeling anxious as much as you fancy and as long as you never respond to them, just accept them for what they are and float on through, your nervous system will not respond by releasing yet more adrenaline through your nerve endings and adrenals. It is THIS extra release of adrenaline that begins to excite our organs and muscles to the extent that we get panic symptoms.

Low level anxiety and panic are vastly different and you are right to recognise them as separate issues.

The key of course is learning to not fear the symptoms we create in ourselves and that is the hard bit, CBT4panic is helping me enormously with this.

[cattia]

Yes, I get this too. A couple of weeks back it hit me when I was lying in bed and my body was physically shaking for hours, along with racing heart, tingling arms etc. It's a horrible feeling.

[backfromthebrink]

Thanks, it's good to know that I'm not alone!

I think that, if I were having panic attacks and I didn't know what the reason was for them, then I could maybe try to do as you suggest Pinktel - but what keeps it going is the thoughts relating to the health anxiety and all the little decisions I have to make:

How likely is it to be something? When should I go to the doctor (yet again)? Is the doctor not going to take my concerns seriously if I keep going back? Should I see a different doctor at the practice? How much should I encourage the doctor to refer me? Should I pay for a private test and get it done immediately? And (now!) which contraceptive pill should I ask for? (Have just spent about 2 days reading papers on different contraceptive pills so I know which one to ask for!) It's like I'm constantly weighing up the pros and cons of all that and it's exhausting. My husband just sees a decision, makes a choice and lives with that choice and seems none the worse for that approach to life. I wish I could!

Sometimes I think I have health anxiety AND decision anxiety!! (Is there such a thing?) Because it seems like different outcomes could happen, depending on the decision I make - and therefore my decision assumes huge significance and seems v important.:unsure:

[Pinktel]

What you could do is analyse what your specific health anxiety really was, say for example you thought you had a heart defect...

Then you need to cognitively change that way of thinking, so list all the reasons why you may have a heart defect and one by one disprove them, perhaps realising along the way that it is anxiety giving you the symptoms you suffer from. It could be that you have had normal ECCS, your GO could have taken your bp countless times, just think of all the reasons like you can run up a flight of stairs etc. little by little telling yourself this daily would begin the task of eroding your negative feelings about your heart (if this was a relevant example).

Then behaviourally you would begin to disprove to your mind as a powerful reinforcement that indeed your heart was fine. You would do this by exercising, challenging your heart and surviving what you thought it couldn't do.

I have no idea what symptoms are worse for you, what your HA consists of, but give the heart merely as an example as that is what I have had in the past and it is very common.

[backfromthebrink]

Thanks yes. For me, health anxiety seems to morph from one thing to another. That makes it hard to do what you suggest (reassure myself with test results), since I end up needing more tests on other parts of my body(!). Since December 2012 (when this all started), it's been:

Pain in abdomen on left side - internal exam, referred for ultrasound, bloods taken. All normal. Diagnosis possible follicular cysts (which are a normal part of the cycle occasionally but some women are more prone to them than others). Solution - go on birth control pills, which I am now really anxious about the side effects of etc…

Then I worried that the above was incorrect and that the bowel lies behind the ovary, and perhaps there's something wrong with my colon… Leading to another exam, which found nothing, and a referral to a gastro doc. (Still waiting for that one.)

Worried that moles were changing. Referral to dermatologist. None of them changing.

Breast pain - GP found nothing he was worried about but as it was on only 1 side, referred me to breast clinic. I'm 34 so instead of mammogram, was given ultrasound of breast and also of armpit - found nothing. All lymph nodes felt and nothing found.

Armpit pain - breast pain then stopped, but I became worried that my armpit didn't feel right, often when reaching or stretching for something there is pain in it. I can't feel a bump or anything. I tried to reassure myself that the ultrasound found nothing. That's where I am with that one. Trying to forget about it, because further tests would be an MRI or CT scan and that seems OTT and I'm worried about the radiation in CT scans…

Finally: Chest pains - tightening and mild pain on left hand side, occasionally. I've not had an ECG because when I last went to my GP with this several years ago, he just took my BP and listened to my heart and then took some blood for a cholesterol test. That came back normal.

I've split these things over the 2 GPs at the same practice because I thought no one GP is going to take all these different things seriously. (Although they could look on my history to see what I was last there for, they don't seem to do that - maybe not enough time.)

It's driving me crazy and I've no idea why this has all kicked off but I really want it all to go away: I want my life back!

[cattia]

I really struggle with the rationalizing approach because it seems to set off an endless cycle in my mind of weighing up one possibility against another and constantly trying to weigh up how likley or unlikely my fears are. I can spend hours trying to reassure myself but going round in circles. The only thing that breaks the cycle for me is to practice relaxation and self hypnosis but the minute I come out of it I start worrying all over again. It's exhausting and I wish I knew what the answer was. I so understand your dilema about what to do next, especially when anxieties shift from one thing to another.

[backfromthebrink]

Exactly cattia, that's what happens for me too. I can't rationalise it - weighing up pros and cons takes up so much of my brain already.