Coping with health anxiety

[Danielle87]

As you may know from my previous posts I've been struggling with health anxiety pretty bad relating to my heart. I feel like I'm going round in circles as I'm not convinced there's nothing wrong with my heart. I've tried medication and CBT but nothing is helping.
I was just wondering how everyone else copes, or if they have found something that works? I feel like my life isn't worth living because of the constant worry :(

[emmalj0]

I can relate nothing has helped me either I just plod on each day and try to push to back of my mind

[helenhoo]

Mine is my brain. I constantly check my balance, sight, memory. It's horrid.

[cpe1978]

Simply because I have written it a zillion times I wrote my thoughts on this down in a blog. Www.healthanxietyrecovery.wordpress.com.

I suffered terribly and now I don't cope - I dont feel for the most part like I have health anxiety at all. I never thought it possible.

[Jinaiya]

Hello there,

To be honest, and probably not the answer you are looking for, I have never coped with my HA. The only way to get rid of my symptoms in the past has been by taking Paxil. Within 3 weeks, all of my symptoms have been gone.

This time I am scared of something other than my heart, but in the past I was obsessed over it. My heart pounded literally all day long with no break. Sometimes I had bouts of skipped beats, chest pain, numbness, etc. I couldn't sleep because of it. I had multiple EKG's, a holter monitor, an echocardiogram... 2 ER visits. I continued to fear the worst because the pounding wouldn't stop. Most nights I'd just stay up late watching movies until I passed out from being so tired.

It's really really awful, but I am still alive... Had it been my heart, I'm sure I'd not be typing right now, and certainly one of those tests would picked something up, no?

What testing have you gone through to rule out the worst case scenario?

[Danielle87]

Thanks for the replies
Jinaiya, I've had quite a few ecgs and blood tests and one chest X-ray but I haven't had a holter monitor or stress test which I feel like I need as I don't have these horrible missed beats when I've had an ecg. My dr won't refer me for any more tests though, even though my mum had a heart attack at 45. I've just got constant pain in my arm and sometimes jaw, it's worrying me sick and I don't know what to do.