Fast heart rate when walking around house?

[Goblin88]

Anyone ever feel this? The anxiety I'm dealing with stems from heart fears. I find that just getting up and walking into my kitchen or bathroom will cause my heart to race above 100. I have had ecg's and blood tests done and all were normal. My heart rates during the ecgs were 140 and 130 and still nothing abnormal showed up.

This stuff sends me over the edge :(

[Hollow]

I'm in the same boat as you mate, most of my anxiety is based around the heart these days. My heart rate also goes up a lot just walking around the house and also i can hear it too which makes it a lot worse. Also had multiple ECGs and blood tests and they were normal.

Do you always keep checking your heart rate using some kind of tracker?

[ankietyjoe]

Completely fine and normal, especially with anxiety. It's especially prevalent for those of us that have heartrate specific anxiety because as soon as we move, there is expectation and worry.

Best thing to do is ignore it (no, really).

I had this issue a few years back and made the mistake of moving about less and less and it became a REAL problem.

[Ksilver2]

I've been having the same problem recently and I have been very inactive which is causing its own prolems. I'm constantly aware of my heartbeat and I have a bunch of other symptoms of heart problems. I've also had these tests and a chest x-ray and all was normal.
Expecting your heart rate to increase is going to increase your heart rate and thinking about how there could be something wrong with you will make you hypersensitive to everything you feel.

[Goblin88]

It's crazy that just thinking of something can cause us to feel it.

I do always check my heart rate and worry when it's fast. Last night I had a bad panic attack after feeling a sudden pain in my chest that lasted maybe a fifth of a second, but I sort of gasped out of fear and immediately felt like I was going to faint. I calmed down a bit but still felt a little funny and my left arm even became slightly numb. It took about 2 hours for everything to subside. Later in the night at around 3am I noticed my heart was fast and began to worry that what I had felt earlier was a heartattack and now my heart had to work harder..my pulse was 110-115 and I turned over in bed to relax and it shot up to 140, and I could feel it. I didn't feel any chest pain or dizzyness, just a racing heart. It slowly went down to around 90-92 and then I got up to go to the bathroom, when I got back into bed it was 120 again. I didn't really feel anxious or nervous during this so it's been on my mind all day..

Sound like typical anxiety to you guys?

[ankietyjoe]

All sounds familiar to me. Your body can start to produce extra adrenaline when you're anxious all the time and I find that it manifests most at night time. I am 100% in control of my daytime anxiety, but I still regularly wake up at night with a feeling of muscle tightness all over, and a raised heart rate. It usually goes up to about 120-130 if I go for a pee and then takes about 5-10 mins to come back down again once I get back into bed.

I've come to learn that anxiety isn't just in the mind, your whole body can react in various ways without you necessarily worrying about anything, it's a learned response. It subsides over time when you start to learn how to relax. A journey I'm still on!

[Goblin88]

All sounds familiar to me. Your body can start to produce extra adrenaline when you're anxious all the time and I find that it manifests most at night time. I am 100% in control of my daytime anxiety, but I still regularly wake up at night with a feeling of muscle tightness all over, and a raised heart rate. It usually goes up to about 120-130 if I go for a pee and then takes about 5-10 mins to come back down again once I get back into bed.

I've come to learn that anxiety isn't just in the mind, your whole body can react in various ways without you necessarily worrying about anything, it's a learned response. It subsides over time when you start to learn how to relax. A journey I'm still on!

I feel like I'm definitely starting to notice that my thoughts are producing the anxiety, and not my heart.

when I wake up, my heart rate is 74-80 and stays that way until I start thinking about things again. It was 74 this morning and stayed between that and 82 until I let my mind go for a run. It's been fast all day since and I've been feeling uneasy and on edge all day. I just decided to do some push ups, 20 to be exact, and my heart rate shot up to 130 and felt like it was quivering, lol. It's come down to 114 now about 20 minutes later.

It's always made me laugh how even post exercise, when we know why we feel what we feel, still causes us anxiety.

[Fishmanpa]

Reading this thread, there's a shared behavior that jumps off the page. Every one of you are hyper aware of your heart. You know what your heart rate is dozens of ways, situations, times of the day etc. It's an obsessive shared behavior that illustrates OCD aspects combined with health concerns. Every one of you are hyper-focusing on the numbers and physical sensations. Also, I'm willing to go out on a limb as say that medically you're fine and you also recognize that your anxiety has something to do with it ;)

Perhaps the key is to focus on reducing and removing the self-checking behavior. CBT might be helpful for that.

Positive thoughts

[Goblin88]

Reading this thread, there's a shared behavior that jumps off the page. Every one of you are hyper aware of your heart. You know what your heart rate is dozens of ways, situations, times of the day etc. It's an obsessive shared behavior that illustrates OCD aspects combined with health concerns. Every one of you are hyper-focusing on the numbers and physical sensations. Also, I'm willing to go out on a limb as say that medically you're fine and you also recognize that your anxiety has something to do with it ;)

Perhaps the key is to focus on reducing and removing the self-checking behavior. CBT might be helpful for that.

Positive thoughts

You're absolutely right. I check my pulse dozens of times a day, when it's normal I'm able to relax, and if it's over 100 it sends me into a bit of anxiousness. I'm fully aware that heart rate fluctuations are completely normal, and excessive worry about your heart rate will increase it. Tonight I had to fight myself after doing those push ups, my mind wanted to completely freak out that my heart rate was 130, but I know that push ups are a short burst work out, meaning they get your heart going fast. On top of that is anxiety over the heart rate, which keeps it higher for longer.

Every twitch, twinge and pain is heightened for me. Sometimes, out of nowhere I'll feel slight pain in my chest and it'll be accompanied by a strong surge of fear, which I know is due to the heightened stress response..and yet it still causes me to panic.

I am also very faithful, my belief in Christ is the only thing keeping me sane. I dealt with heart based anxiety 5 years ago after losing my dad to a heart attack. It was a constant, every day 24/7 fear for 14 months until I found a new church. I hadn't had a single issue with anxiety from the day I started volunteering there in 2013 and the day I left in November 2016 after a bad breakup. My symptoms started with my breathing, it wasn't so bad at first but developed into anxiety after constant worry that I was dealing with bad asthma again and would die from an asthma attack. After numerous doctors told me my lungs sound amazing, the fear went away. However, on April 1st I had a really a really bad panic attack and ended up in the ER thinking I was going to die of an asthma attack. They were more concerned with my heart rate as it was 140, I had an ECG done while my heart was racing and pounding in my chest. It was so hard to stay still during the test and I felt like I was at my end, but it was clear.

I know that that's where this heart rate anxiety came from. They wouldn't let me leave until it went down. It lowered to 90 after they gave me 0.25mg of Xanax and I drifted off to sleep. Since then, every time my heart gets fast I start to become aware of it and it's become a fixation basically. Trying to keep myself from checking it feels like a smoker trying to keep themselves from smoking a cigarette.

I hate anxiety. But I will overcome it through God's help. He's taken me out of it before, he'll do it again. Just believe.

[ankietyjoe]

I used to check mine so much, and I became so hyper aware that I knew what my heart rate was without even checking, within about 1-2bpm. I would sometimes be sitting in the car with my partner and say 'my heart rate is 85', with both hands on the wheel, looking straight ahead. Lo and behold I'd check and it was.

It took me a long time to learn that the best thing to do is ignore it. If you've had medical checks and they've come back fine, just let it be.

There is an adrenaline cycle that you can get into. You'll check your HR, a little adrenaline spike will happen (you might not even feel it), your HR will rise a little, you'll check again, another adrenaline spike etc etc etc. This can keep your heart rate much higher than it would usually be for hours and hours.

Exercise will not only raise your HR anyway, you'll be aware that it's raised and go into that cycle again.

You will become obsessed by what 'should be' normal, in an abnormal situation.

I used to wake up in the morning with my HR between 70-80 and mentally try and keep it there all day. I was obsessed. Now I wake up and it's usually between 55-65 (I don't check, I still just 'know'), and the rest of the day it'll be what it'll be. If I start to feel it's too fast for whatever reason I'll just sit/lay on the sofa for 5 minutes to calm myself down and then carry on again. Hopefully one day I won't even need to do that.

But ultimately, the best thing to do is just ignore it.

[TangoCharlie]

Even I deal with heart related anxiety.