Heart Anxiety - Can't Stop!

[missmandy]

Hi all,

I've been dealing with health anxiety for years, and mine is pretty specific to the heart. For the past two weeks I've been stuck in a panic attack loop - multiple attacks per day. I'm having lots of PVCs, not sleeping well, self medicating with alcohol. I have really bad GERD and always worry that my reflux symptoms are actually cardiac symptoms. Of course now I'm googling heart attacks, cardiomyopathy, and aortic dissection. I'm terrified and it's ruining the holidays. Bf and I have scheduled a very expensive and wonderful trip and we're leaving on the 4th of January. Right now it feels like I won't even make it to January. I'm so scared and so tired and twitchy. Sorry for the rant, I just had to get that out.

[potato11]

Hi
Have you ever read any of the member "RLR" posts on here? He is a retired Dr and is amazing at explanations, especially relating to heart palpitations

Search his posts on here. And also go to his own website
http://palps.chemicalforums.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?board=general

And read the posts by him

Hope that helps :)

[Fishmanpa]

Sorry to hear you're not doing too well. It seems to me that with the issues you're having, self medicating with alcohol is counter-productive and would only serve to make your symptoms worse. Why not stop the drinking and see if things improve?

Positive thoughts

[missmandy]

Hi potato - thanks so much! I'm reading through his posts now. That's very comforting.

Fishmanpa - totally counterproductive, but I've been a functional alcoholic for about 5 years now. I can't stop totally right now but am working substantially on reduction in volume and I was doing very well until this hit! You're totally right and I know I should be doing better.

[Fishmanpa]

Hope you can completely MissM. Drinking with anxiety and especially if you're on meds is akin to me smoking after having oral cancer.

Positive thoughts

[cloudbusting]

Hi
Have you ever read any of the member "RLR" posts on here? He is a retired Dr and is amazing at explanations, especially relating to heart palpitations

/

Hi Potato
I've just read the RLR posts by following your link, and found them incredibly helpful also - many thanks !
Lisa x

[cymraig_chris]

Your are perfectly safe, I remember DR David Burns (one of the originators of Cbt) using a technique of trying to make the heart palps faster by doing jumping jacks. The reality being that you are perfectly safe, you will not have a heart attack, yes you will be scared, but that's just a safe emotion. It took one session of about half an hour for all anxiety and depression to vanish, when the person finally KNEW by self demonstration that they were perfectly safe.

When your heart beats faster with adrenaline, you are exercising your heart muscles, no different than doing to the gym.

You are making your heart physically stronger each time you panic.

[iainm]

hi miss mandy I to suffer really bad heart anx I spent all day Christmas in bed felt awful I to get bad acid reflux eating has become difficult and I feel sick all the time I was so bad I had to get an ambulance in the early hours as I thought oh nooooo heart attack but like usual just anx and reflux im due to go on holiday on 9th of January and the thought of going scares the **** out of me its a horrendous symptom to feel with anx its destroying my life really hard to break the thought process hope u feel better soon and have a great holiday feel free to ask me anything I might of missed

[missmandy]

Cymraig-chris - Thank you. That is a calm and immensely helpful post. I'm copying it to read over each time I panic. You're awesome!

Iainm - I'm so sorry you're dealing with the same thing and that it's negatively impacting your holidays as well. Do you have medical insurance for your trip? I was able to get some rather cheaply and that has calmed me down quite a bit.

[iainm]

I can get it quite cheap, just need to start eating again to get well for the holiday feel sick if I start to eat hate the nausea lol

[cymraig_chris]

Cymraig-chris - Thank you. That is a calm and immensely helpful post. I'm copying it to read over each time I panic. You're awesome!


You don't need to read it again, your subconscious already knows. Just go out and have a fantastic life.

No worries.

Fear is not real.

It's never been real, it never will be real.