How do I tell my body "You're fine?"

[WiredIncorrectly]

It doesn't matter what I do in terms of exercise my brain will always tell me I'm going to die. Mostly of a heart attack.

As the years tick by (almost 40 now), I tell myself "All that damage you done to your body by smoking, cannabis and alcohol".

I don't use alcohol or smoke cannabis.

Today I did a 13 mile walk. It took me almost 5 hours and I enjoyed every moment of it. I had no anxiety during the walk (I took my valium before I left).

Now I'm back home and rested my brain is playing tricks on me for example "You just walked 13 miles with a damaged body you've gone and damaged it even more now. You'll die sooner".

This only happens in the house. So I've started tackling the agorophobia. I'm off rock climbing tomorrow, and I guess I need reassurance that I'm going to be ok more than anything.

Health anxiety sucks. General anxiety sucks. But I'm determined to nail this.

[ankietyjoe]

Now I'm back home and rested my brain is playing tricks on me for example "You just walked 13 miles with a damaged body you've gone and damaged it even more now. You'll die sooner".


I think this kind of cognitive dissonance is normal, and also relatively long lasting.

There is a reaction to physical exertion that (for me) occurs 2-3 hours after exercise. Your body senses damage and under normal circumstances just starts repairing. It's my belief that those who are prone to hyper reactions to this kind of 'good stress' can have a negative, more anxiety prone reaction to it.

I feel it will take months to retrain the subconscious to not react in this way, assuming there are no other stressors happening.

It's probably a long developed cross connection between multiple historical thought patterns that leads you to these negative thought patterns. I know it's that way for me. I really don't exprience anxiety at all any more in the sense of sitting there panicking, but my body will STILL react to certain stimuli as though I were having a panic attack. I think that's what's happening to you, and your mind is reacting accordingly.

I think just sitting with those thoughts and challenging them long term is the only real answer to this. It probably won't seem like it's working in the short term.