GUARANTEED way to lessen your health anxiety [Archive]

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skippy66

30-09-13, 15:27

Your mindset needs to change.

Yes, this sounds very vague to you and not helpful at all. So let me explain exactly how it needs to change.

If you're like I was you are getting symptoms pretty much all the time. You long for your 'normal' life back. You think that you're definitely about to die any time you get that twinge of chest pain or shooting head pain, no matter how many times you've had it before and no matter that each of those times has turned out fine. THIS ONE IS THE ONE. That is what your brain tells you.

So you think that to get rid of your health anxiety, all you need to do is get rid of these scary symptoms, right? Very simple. If I could just get rid of the chest pain I won't have anything to be anxious about. So you try all sorts of things: pills from the doctor, diet changes, changes in your routine, stretching. It might work. You might start doing yoga and one day your back pain is gone. So you make the false assumption that the yoga cured your back pain. You might convince yourself that your gluten-free diet (even though the endoscopy confirmed that you weren't a coeliac) has definitely improved your stomach problems.

But then, one day in the not too distant future you get the symptom again. Or a new, more scary symptom which means you definitely have a lymphoma. Maybe sweating at night. Or hot flushes. Or a lump somewhere on your body. Oh my god you think, here we go again. Just as my stomach problem got better, this new symptom has come like a bolt from the blue and it's more scary. It DEFINITELY means certain death.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. I have learnt this the hard way. You MUST change your attitude to your body.

I'm not going to tell you that you need to look at people less fortunate than you and think 'lucky me' because I know that just gets people angry. I'm also aware that some people will react badly to the suggestion that you need to get yourself back working again, active again because if you're in the depths of HA you think that can't be done - it seems impossible to you.

With this in mind I'm not asking you to do this straight away. All I'm asking is for you to have an open mind, and the resolve to try and make yourself better. Here's where the mindset change comes in....you're not going to like this....

YOU WILL ALWAYS HAVE SCARY SYMPTOMS SO DO NOT TRY TO AVOID THEM.

By trying to avoid or lessen your symptoms you are keeping the cycle of HA alive and kicking. The human body IS IMPERFECT. Like a car, things go wrong and for no apparent reason. The other day the radio on my car stopped working. For NO reason. It wouldn't change station no matter what I did. I thought 'that's odd' but then kept on driving. It wasn't critical to the running of the car, it was just odd. The next day, I turned the radio back on and guess what? It worked! I hadn't done anything. It was just one of those unknown things. What I didn't do was run to the mechanics asking them to fix the problem as soon as it happened. I waited it out as it wasn't very important and I realise that things go wrong with cars all the time. How often though have you been driving along and your car has suddenly just become a write-off (with no accident). Unless the car was very, very old I'll wager that this has never happened to you. I hope you can see the parallels I'm trying to draw with the human body here.

Once you start accepting that you're going to get symptoms that are scary, uncomfortable, even painful and unexplained, once you truly accept this, you lose the fear of them. This lessens the anxiety surrounding them. Next time you get a twinge of pain in your chest, or head, or stomach ache, or arm, leg or back pain, or twitches, or floaters, or dizziness - just think of the car analogy. Things happen but the chances of your body becoming a write-off from this is absolutely remote. The more you dwell on the symptoms the worse they get. "But I can't stop dwelling on them" you scream at me. I know. I've been there. You definitely can't stop dwelling on them unless you've got something else to dwell on - only then can you stop dwelling on them. Distraction was one of the most crucial factors in my recovery. Get your mind off your bodily symptoms and your health anxiety will lessen.

When Jack Bauer in 24 is in a gunfight he doesn't notice that his chest was badly burnt from being tortured the hour before. That's because he's distracted. This is not just fiction, it happens in real life too. Let's say you are a woman who suffers from twitching muscles. If you gave birth I guarantee the twitching wouldn't be bothering you. Distraction is absolutely key. Get something in your life which stops you from focusing inwards on your health.

Wow, this rant has gone on for longer than I hoped. I'm not going to be posting as much on this board now as I'm focusing my efforts on my new blog. I do however hope this helps you to some degree.

Bye for now,

Mike

almamatters

30-09-13, 15:41

Really great advice, thanks for posting.

Hypo

30-09-13, 16:02

I needed to read this today.

Thank you for taking the time to post this.

Mind if I print this out?

skippy66

30-09-13, 17:43

Not at all

rebeccad

30-09-13, 18:00

This is amazing I wish you could be my therapist lol thanks x

Natalie2389

30-09-13, 18:39

Great thanks x

Ronno

30-09-13, 20:05

Hi skippy,
What you've written is so right , I developed anxiety in my early thirties I'm. Now in my mid fifties,. The cause a traumatic event , and back then doctors always looked to the physical not mental , and kept saying my symptoms didn't add up . Luckily a older doctor told me I had post traumatic stress. I read Claire weekes self help for your nerves and because my symptoms were explained as mental instead of physical I slowly got to grips with my anxiety , and most of the time I was symptom and anxiety free . Then Severn years ago whilst doing a dream job , a well paid manager, my wife developed Hodgkin's lymphoma ( she had not had a days illness in her life ) because of the treatment , appointments , and being at the ready to rush home. I had the give up the job . And go back on the tools , I thought I could handle it all but I couldn't . After it was all over and she was in remission , I went back to square one minus panick attacks, and no matter how many times I looked up anxiety or read Claire weekes book I could not shake it off , but now I had this obsession about my eyes and optic migraines , I was constantly watching and obsessing , making maters worse.
My life was a misery . And then a year ago my grandson who is a very talented surfer wanted me to take photos of him surfing for his sponsors , ( I used to be a keen amateur photographer ) so I did and enjoyed every minute , in fact it's easer taking digital photos and then editing on the computer , MY MIND WAS OCCUPIED . And my anxiety went, I know not for ever, I accept that, and now and again it's there It's up to me to ignore it or dwell on it. At the moment I can see that if your mind is on some thing , or your involved in a project anxiety takes a back seat . Accepting that anxiety fuels on a idle mind .

BumbleGirl

01-10-13, 00:15

Skippy, I like your post and think it's very helpful but I don't think it's as easy as you make it sound. I know the symptoms of my anxiety are anxiety (well most of the time anyway) but it doesn't make it any less scary to me tbh xx

skippy66

01-10-13, 08:56

At the moment I can see that if your mind is on some thing , or your involved in a project anxiety takes a back seat . Accepting that anxiety fuels on a idle mind .

Exactly, but the problem is that when you're having symptoms every fibre of your being is screaming at you to NOT get out there and do stuff, to go and curl up in bed or on the sofa instead. To get out and about is absolutely counter-intuitive to someone with health anxiety, but this is what they must do to get over it. It takes a lot of courage but it's SO worth it.

blueangel

01-10-13, 10:03

Agree absolutely with your post. There is no magic "cure" for anxiety. If we had no anxiety, none of us would live very long as we'd be walking out in front of cars. Anxiety is a primeval self-preservation mechanism that we need to survive.

What we have to learn to do is manage anxiety, and one of the things that we have to do is learn to think about things outside ourselves. One of the really unpleasant things about anxiety is that it makes us self-centred -

"I'm ill"
"I might/will die"
"what am I going to do"
"I can't cope"
"nobody understands me"

There's a recurring theme here, and when we can accept that we have anxiety and start thinking about something else, then we start getting back in contact with the real world.

Good luck with your endeavours skippy66 - I'm just here on a quick visit as I hadn't popped in for a while.

skippy66

01-10-13, 13:25

Thanks, and you're right.

I think most people on this forum are intelligent folk who possess the means to break away from HA. Reading certain threads there are obviously a few here with serious mental health issues but for the most part I think people with HA are rational in every aspect of their lives EXCEPT their health. I think it's a fear of the unknown, of losing what you have (life, kids, family) which makes people irrational.

We have to fear a life wasted through fear more than the trials of life itself, if that makes sense.

cpe1978

01-10-13, 14:55

JustJules

01-10-13, 15:09

Hi Skippy,

I read your posts with some interest, and I suspect that many people will absolutely subscribe to the sense behind what you are saying. To give you an example, I am currently undergoing CBT. I have seen various therapists over the years and this is the first one that has made sense to me (just as well as is costing me a small fortune!).

When I saw her last I could not argue with the sense of what she said at all, in fact it sounded great. At a rational level is exceptionally easy to believe. What I am interested in and struggle with is how you get your subconscious self to follow rational thoughts. For me this seems poorly explained in the world of CBT and whilst there is stacks of evidence to support its impact, I struggle with that transition.

CPE, my hypnotherapist tells me that you don't get your subconscious mind to change, you do it to your conscious mind as that is the part of the brain that we think with and are able to change. There is a front part of the brain that we can re-train to get rid of these negative thoughts but we must practice replacing negative thoughts with positive ones, just like in CBT - easier said than done, but there is scientific evidence that it works if practised enough. I, like you, thought it was our subconscious that did it but apparently not.

Julie

Fishmanpa

01-10-13, 16:10

Skippy,

I've always enjoyed reading your posts and this one is no exception. It's a voice of reason in a world where reason is often abandoned due to the malady called "anxiety disorder".

I came here to learn more about it and I have. I'm very blessed, despite my life threatening illnesses, that I don't suffer from it. Based on what's happened to me I'm surprised I don't! ~lol~

Thanks for being a voice of reason and sanity. Continued success, positive thoughts and prayers.

skippy66

01-10-13, 16:50

What I am interested in and struggle with is how you get your subconscious self to follow rational thoughts. For me this seems poorly explained in the world of CBT and whilst there is stacks of evidence to support its impact, I struggle with that transition.

The way I did it was to look at the whole recovery process as a game, a series of challenges. To give you an example, I used to get really dizzy every time I stood in line at the supermarket. To conquer this I deliberately put myself in this situation time and time again as if it was a challenge on a gameshow. I would go to the supermarket, get a few things then deliberately pick the checkout with the longest queue. I would force myself to go slowly too - instead of trying to get away as soon as I could like I used to. Slowly but surely the fear of the dizziness went away and then so did the dizziness itself. It's almost as if you're retraining your brain not to make the association between situation & symptoms.

A final example: I used to be terrified of being alone at home in case I had a heart attack or stroke and there was nobody there to help me. Everytime I was alone my anxiety level would go through the roof and I would usually end up curled up on the sofa hoping my skipped heartbeats would stop. So I decided to deliberately put myself in that situation. I still got the symptoms initially but then they faded over time. Once I had realised that most of these scary symptoms were situational, I realised that they couldn't be that serious.

I would recommend exposure techniques like this, and rewarding yourself for doing it. Buy yourself something for completing a really tricky challenge. It really worked for me.

Fishmanpa - thanks. Your own story is truly inspirational.

cpe1978

01-10-13, 18:39

This is fab Skippy and sorry for the questions. In my particular case however my anxiety doesn't link to a specific situation, and nor do the symptoms so it is tricky to do that sort of exposure stuff.

I am doing some in CBT. My major anxiety doesn't come from dying or being ill, as fundamentally I view that as an inevitable part of being alive, I actually hold no fear of dying itself. All my fear stems from the impact of my demise on other people, namely my kids which I know stems from having a less than inspirational father in my life. In CBT I am forcing myself to imagine that situation and work it through in my head, time and time again in the hope that eventually my brain will get bored of fearing it and just sort of accept that it can't control it.

I love also the idea of breaking it down into challenges, I can work with that but need to give some thought to how that can work in my case.

chasingdogma

01-10-13, 19:16

This should be a sticky. Great points!:)

Hypo

01-10-13, 22:07

I have HA because I don't want to leave my kids.

Three of them are watching their father deal with hodgkins non lymphoma. It has just came back for the fourth time in three years.

I can't leave them behind.

When they are much older then I doubt I will care. Will be a relief from feeling like this all the time.

How on earth do you get past those kinds of feelings?

skippy66

02-10-13, 10:58

I think you have to look at life with a 'zoomed out' perspective. In 100 years none of us will be here anymore and neither will our children. So instead of looking at the future and what 'might' happen, you need to focus on the present and just enjoy the ride as best you can. Keep striving to find enjoyment and happiness in your life, this will distract you from the symptoms.