Why don't we believe the doctors when they tell us we are ok?

[Lady Penelope]

Hello
I started with anxiey one year ago but did not realise at the time what was happening. I just felt breathless all the time. I then had a couple of big panic attacks which kept coming and going over 3/4 hours. I was taken to a & e by ambulance as I thought I was having a heart attack. Anyway to cut a long story short I have had countless bloods, ECG, echocardiogram and 24 holter monitor done. I saw the doc yesterday and she said I have some ectopic beats and one short run of SVT supra ventricular tachycardia in 24 hours. She said all my other tests were clear and heart is strong and beating well. I just need to have a 7 day monitor to see how often the SVT is happening so they can decide what to do next. She said its not dangerous - just unpleasant. I should feel reassured but I don't. Every time I get he slightest twinge in my chest I feel so anxious and panicky. I am on day 14 fluoxetine so I hope they will help and also have Diazipam for occasional use. I am on Bisoprolol beta blocker at night which I believe slows heart rate down. How I get into my head that I am not going to have a heart attack every time I get a twinge?

[Nzxt27]

It's hard to believe doctors when they say your ok. I have been to the doctor 4 times this year all says its anxeity and I'm fine. I've had a EKG, two CBC one with diff and a urinalysis and other blood work. All came back fine. I can't get over these twitches. I get twitch all throughout my body almost all day. Random places. I don't even know if it's my muscles anymore. I actually saw my medeim nerve twitch at my wrist. For about 5-10 seconds. And have saw what I thought was muscle in my palm but it is a nerve to twitch a few times this year. And I get ton's of twitches in my legs. But weird thing is I never had any twitches till 2 weeks after I went to the ER with chest pains and panic attack. I get told over and over again I am fine it's just anxeity.

[Lady Penelope]

I do believe them 90% of the time but as soon as I get any type of chest sensation all that goes out the window and I go into panic mode again. I think "this time it might not be just anxiety".

[Nzxt27]

I know exactly how you feel. When they did my EKG they said my t wave was alittle low but that is not uncommon. Doctor exact words some variables are not uncommon. Didn't refer me to anyone didn't tell me to
Eat better or workout or anything. All my blood work came back fine.

I do get mild chest pains every now and then. it sucks but I do notice I get them more often when stress is high.

I'm also 32 don't smoke or drink or do any drugs. I'm not diabetic or have high blood pressure. I do not have a family history of heart issues. And all my blood work has came back fine two times this year. Some things are very hard to accept. Like when they told me my t wave was a little low I didn't know what that meant I took it as I was having heart attack or heart failure. But after googling ( which I don't recommend I did learn t wave abnormality is the most common on ekg's and they have no know cause really some people are perfectly healthy and have them all their life's. And even stress and anxeity I read can cause it. The doctor didn't seem worried at all. He said my heart is fine. And I would know I asked him like ten times lol ( I was in panic mode).

But now I moved on from my heart to thinking I have MS or ALS with all these twitches which didn't start till 2 weeks after I ended up in the ER with chest pains from stress and panic attacks. Like I said I have been to Doctor 4 times and out of the two I have seen neither seemed worried about my heart or anything just the anxiety. It does suck to feel you have something really wrong and you finally build up courage to go and they say your fine and you leave there with the same syptoms and no answers. The last for Doctor visit for me was hard because I feel something is really wrong but they say I'm fine. All she said is I might have IBS and said she thinks I'm completely fine.

Sorry for the long post lol

[MyNameIsTerry]

I do believe them 90% of the time but as soon as I get any type of chest sensation all that goes out the window and I go into panic mode again. I think "this time it might not be just anxiety".

That's one of the fundamentals of anxiety/panic. And irony is the more you react with a fear response, the more you reinforce it. This is because the survival mechanism is only expecting "oh shit, it's a bear! ". Therapy gets us to stop the negative reaction but it takes longer to mothball a fear because the area of the brain looking for the reaction was designed to look for "oh shit, it's a bear! ". It's ticking a box at the end of a process "conscious mind reacted A LOT, I must have done good, I'll keep doing that then".

It's hard to change that reaction and that's the first battle. The next is reacting in a positive/neutral way enough times and over enough time to effectively starve the response it expects. At each point, you will start to realise you are achieving it.

A palp, wind, aches & pains OR seeing a number, a person, a place. It doesn't matter, it's an irrational response that we have learned to send (subconscious) and react with fear too (conscious).

[Lady Penelope]

Thank you so much. Makes sense. I will have a look at the mindfulness list.

[paranoid-viking]

Because we fear and assume the worst. And we google and google and find stories of people who got misdiagnosed and where the doctors were wrong. Som we often assume that this aplies to us to but forget the simple fact that doctors knows more than us about medical conditions and the human body; and their year long training consists of more thn massive googling of health sites with various credibility, anecdotes from various forums and nightmare stories in the tabloid media.