What causes us to be like this?

[colinmckee2]

My anxiety was triggered from a bad trip on recreational drugs. Since then I've had pretty bad anxiety concentrated on my health. Although I know and have had the physical analysis of my body come back clear. Why do I still feel rushes of panic come over me when I'm sitting there feeling fine about my health? Like very wee pain I go into panic whenever I know full well it's an innocent pain we all go through. I've read that it's an imbalance of chemistry in the brain. Is there any treatment for this which didn't involve medicines? Thanks :) just can't understand why I still feel a bit panicky wheneve I
Know I'm fine?

[Gary A]

It's typically a problem with the way your mind perceives threat, or to put it another way, a misfiring fight of flight mode. Our brains know certain threats instinctively, like a lion running toward us or a madman chasing us with a knife. We don't have to think about these as threats because it's already pre-programmed into our brains. When it comes to your health, all that's happened here is that youve programmed your brain to percieve every ache and pain as a threat. Your fight or flight mode kicks in when it shouldn't.

Your own thought processes and threat perception have been warped and this in turn has made your brain associate small pains etc with danger. It's quite a simple concept, really, but it's hard to get out of it once you've got yourself in that mode.

There is therapy like CBT, this teaches you how to recognise your own faulty thought process and switch it off. Perhaps you could speak to your doctor about a referral for a course of it?

[Sam123]

I'm doing CBT myself and it's helping i'm feeling improvements everyday.

I do wonder if there was as many anxious people, or people with 'Health Anxiety' a long time ago, i think it's become more or a problem in recent years. Such fast paced lifestyles and the negativity around that's hard to escape. Always being told and reminded about health risks and illnesses must have some affect.

[Lostinthought...]

Definitely some flaw in my brain as far as I can see. I can be doing fine then out of the blew a wave of panic comes over me because I experienced a two second long stab in my head etc etc. I'm on constant alert mode, tiring!
Think we all need CBT to try and rewire our brains to think 'normally'
I've been on a waiting list for 14 months, not impressed with the nhs!

Totally agree abt the faces paced life etc we live in now. It's all unnatural and doesn't fit with a lot of us. I personally think I would do a lot better on a desert island with just a few hippies chilling as I hate all this fast paced crap