Help! Health anxiety and I work in a hospital!

[Danii]

I have health anxiety. I've had it on and off for the past ten years. It started as a fear of being allergic to certain foods. I stopped eating food people are commonly allergic to...peanuts, fish, that whole thing. I am not allergic to any foods, and I eat most of these foods now..

Next I was worried about my asthma. I had it when I was young, but I was 24 when I was worried about it. I lost my job because I called out so much to go to the emergency room, convinced I couldnt breathe. I had testing done and it was discovered I no longer have asthma.

Next - my heart. I would get palpitations, and it would get up to 110 beats a minute. I had an ekg, and constant reassurance, but I still get worried about my heart from time to time..

MY PROBLEM NOW: I'm constanly feeling disconnected. I get that weird feeling. The only way to describe it as like, when your sitting in a car, and the car next to you moves, and for a second you think its your car but its really the other car.. Does that make sense? When I get this feeling my arms and legs feel weak. I just feel like somethings wrong with my brain.

I just want to know if anyone else gets that weird moving feeling that I described. My doctor did neuro checks on me, and everythings fine. I'm scheduled to see a neurologist, but they wont give me an MRI, they say I'm too young and all my blood tests came back perfect (I'm 26).

Also..I work in a hospital. on a neuro recovery unit. So, all the time I'm getting patients that have seizures, brain tumors, spinal cord problems. How do I stop this anxiety? any advice? Thank you in advance.

[Serenity1990]

The sensations you describe are very, very typical of anxiety. I have experienced them myself and I dare say the vast majority of people on here have as well.

The information below is copies from the 'Symptoms' tab on the left.

Weak legs

What you feel:

Your legs feel so weak that you think they won't be able to support you. In some cases you might feel you won't be able to walk. Sometimes your legs may feel like jelly or rubber, or that you have to force yourself to walk. You may even feel as though your legs or knees are too stiff to move.
What causes this:

When people feel nervous, often they will feel 'weak in the knees', which means jelly legs or weak legs. This is a very common symptom of stress biology and most people who are placed in stressful situations will experience this. However, the degree of which is dependent upon the amount of stress biology. The higher your stress biology, the more your legs will feel weak.
Physically, your legs are fine. You may just feel weak. Sometimes people become played out by this condition because it taxes all of their strength, leaving them feeling weak. Through rest, this symptom will subside. Also, regular exercise helps to keep muscles and body tone in shape which helps to eliminate this symptom.
As with all symptoms, when the nervous system gets sufficient rest, this symptom will diminish and eventually subside.

Depersonalization, Derealization, Feeling of unreality

What you feel:

Now for the Brain , the limbic system in the brain instigates this whole response and is responsible too for our emotions and behaviour One of the body symptoms that people hate most is the one when you feel all foggy, surreal, woozy or spacey. You may either feel that you are not real or that the earth is not real and you're a time warp away. These are often the hardest symptoms to understand and its very common to deduce that you must be going mad which makes you panic even more. This is completely untrue and you are very safe.
You feel like you are not a part of what is going on, or that you feel like you are in a dream state or 'out of touch with things'. Also, things around you may seem like they are shimmering, foggy, hazy or too bright.
What causes this:

As we learned in Understanding, the body and mind are tightly integrated. What affects one affects the other. This symptom is another example of how an over stimulated nervous system can cause us to experience odd and impaired feelings, emotions and perceptions. Much like how a psychoactive or recreational drug can alter one's mental state, an over active nervous system can affect certain body chemistries thereby producing mind altering effects. The feeling of unreality or disassociation is one type of altered mental state that high levels of stress biology can produce.
It is not completely understood what goes here but it is generally thought that the limbic system in the brain decides there is too much going on and goes into a self protection mode and shuts out excess stimuli. As the adrenaline levels decrease and you calm down it clears. This can be several hours days or weeks.

[klg1975]

I used to do that too at the lights and also felt like my car was rolling. To stop it, I started trying to distract myself at the lights such as talking to the kids or singing to the radio etc. It's an odd feeling I admit and definitely a common trait with anxiety!