Cant Shake Dread / Panic Feeling Even After Good News

[user007]

Last month I had a very abnormal blood test result which sent me into panic for a month waiting on a recheck. After recheck the number moved a lot closer to normal but still a little out of normal range. Doctor thinks it was just a bad infection and said to recheck again after another month. The drop was probably large enough to rule out cancer, I think, but even with this encouraging news I cannot reset my body off the panic feeling from the last month of waiting.

My joints are still tight, I have random pains and zings around the body. Muscle twitches, waking up in panic. I really messed my system up with this fear and cant come back down. Any advice for getting back to normal?

[NoraB]

You went through a very stressful time and your nervous system has been working overtime - flooding your body with stress hormones. This won't resolve overnight. It will take time for your system to settle back down again. Could be weeks, could be months. (And that's providing you do the relaxation and keep yourself as calm as possible).

Try not to pay attention to the aches and pains. They will subside eventually. Try and do some progressive muscle relaxation to loosen things up. Walking or some light exercise. Steer clear of stimulants (dietary and brain) and work with the panic attacks by doing some deep breathing which will actively turn off the stress response.

Your system will return to your normal level, you just need to do whatever you can to help yourself and be patient.

[WorryRaptor]

Like Nora said, you need to give your body time to return to its normal baseline :)

To add to that, and as something I've experienced multiple times after health issues - the body doesn't like to recover in a linear way. So, you might feel improvements one day, only to feel a little bit worse the next day, and so and and so forth until your nervous system has worked everything out. Allow for randomness to happen without convincing yourself it means you're not getting better. It's just your nervous system recalibrating.

Panic and anxiety causes a process very similar to shock in the body, so your system thinks it's been through some major trauma and is acting accordingly. It's going to be wonky for a while, but it will calm down. Something that really helped me was getting engrossed in a hobby as I recovered from a particularly nasty migraine that had started with a brain stem aura. I spent about a month going through all kinds of horrid body sensations afterwards as everything regulated itself. When I was able to find something to engage my mind, those zaps, twitches and shakes became a lot less noticeable until one day they were gone.