Realisation!!

[Help1989]

I've had HA for around a year now but suffered from depression/anxiety for much longer. What's funny is, I'm not actually worried about conditions I've been actually diagnosed with.... E.g I had an endoscopy and was diagnosed with mild gastritis last year. Guess what I had been doing for months prior to this burning pain in my stomach? That's right, worrying myself silly about what could be wrong with me. Almost since the endoscopy and since I have been taking omeprazole for the gastritis, I haven't given it a second thought.

Now a year on, I'm going through another particularly bad bout of HA. This has been really bad for around a month now. Guess what's back almost exactly on cue?! The familiar burning pain in my stomach. Obviously it's not a nice sensation and I must go back onto omeprazole regularly but I just thought it puts my HA into perspective a bit. If I or anyone ever needed convincing that anxiety can cause real symptoms and problems, this proves it. I was adamant last year that my gastritis was a stomach tumour or something. I wouldn't listen when my mum told me stress and worry can cause excess acid.

I suppose I'm just writing this post to try and help anyone who is in that horrible place, being told their symptom is caused by anxiety and not be able to believe that. The body is a complicated thing...

[Gary A]

The most fascinating aspect of it is how intimately the body and mind are connected. What do you do when you see a picture of food when you're hungry? You salivate. What do you feel when you think of something that makes you angry? Adrenaline. When you're bursting for a pee, the last thing you want to think about is a tap of running water, right?

These are all thoughts, but they cause physical reactions within the body. There's no difference between that and anxiety giving you physical symptoms. Anxiety is the thought, the physical symptom is your body's reaction to it.

[Davit]

But even more interesting is that if you had never heard of a tumour you could not think you had one. So it comes to how you use memory because you also have in memory the real problem. So why do you pick the tumour? We talk about that in another post, but it is simply that the mind works on appropriate not right or wrong and it get appropriate from last used, most often used, or that repeated the most often. So if you think you have tumour you are setting yourself up. So if you ask DR. Google and he tells you a half dozen times your symptoms are Cancer you have just suggested to your mind that that thought is appropriate. It is a vicious circle because the more you think about it the more you reinforce it as appropriate. So let DR google show you what it really is over and over till that becomes appropriate. Thoughts it might be cancer will still be there but secondary now. And that you can use thought stopping for.

[MyNameIsTerry]

The most fascinating aspect of it is how intimately the body and mind are connected. What do you do when you see a picture of food when you're hungry? You salivate. What do you feel when you think of something that makes you angry? Adrenaline. When you're bursting for a pee, the last thing you want to think about is a tap of running water, right?

These are all thoughts, but they cause physical reactions within the body. There's no difference between that and anxiety giving you physical symptoms. Anxiety is the thought, the physical symptom is your body's reaction to it.

It is very interesting just how far it can go. On the GAD board there is a thread linking to a newspaper article by a neurologist about some of her more challenging psychosomatic cases including involuntary hand clenching and a couple of others that I won't mention on here. These were truly severe end cases though, nothing like we see on here.

---------- Post added at 06:26 ---------- Previous post was at 06:22 ----------


But even more interesting is that if you had never heard of a tumour you could not think you had one. So it comes to how you use memory because you also have in memory the real problem. So why do you pick the tumour? We talk about that in another post, but it is simply that the mind works on appropriate not right or wrong and it get appropriate from last used, most often used, or that repeated the most often. So if you think you have tumour you are setting yourself up. So if you ask DR. Google and he tells you a half dozen times your symptoms are Cancer you have just suggested to your mind that that thought is appropriate. It is a vicious circle because the more you think about it the more you reinforce it as appropriate. So let DR google show you what it really is over and over till that becomes appropriate. Thoughts it might be cancer will still be there but secondary now. And that you can use thought stopping for.

Yes, I agree.

There is nothing at all wrong with Google and what it does. There is some debate about how it searches and pulls up things most searched for as opposed to most likely but that is irrelevent because if you have a balanced viewpoint, you will look for evidence, not jump to conclusions.

Focussing on the brain tumour when there are a multitude of possibles ranging from a simple headache is a classic example of Cognitive Distortion. I can Google now problem and come to the conclusion a tumour is rare & unlikely and its most like a headache, a migraine or perhaps a lack of food or dehydration. Why? Because my Cognitive Distortions are not HA based so I can make a judgement on the same basis as anyone with an anxiety disorder. Now apply that to why I would perform touching rituals because of magical thinking...the HA person wouldn't see that as needed at all because they have balance in that area.

[Sam123]

Bump