Looking for some positive, constructive advice

[karlyo]

Hi all,

I dont want to post another message asking for reassurance or support - I know that I am not really ill, I know it's anxiety -I just dont know how to help myself. Over the past 3 or so years I have had the following:

Problems taking a deep breath.
My diagnosis - collapsed lung.
Actual diagnosis - air hunger, classic anxiety

Tension headaches
My diagnosis - brain tumour
Actual diagnosis - stress, classic anxiety

Itchy flaky rash on one nipple
My diagnosis - Paget's disease (rare breast cancer)
Actual diagnosis - eczema

Pain behind one breast
My diagnosis - Breast cancer
Actual diagnosis - nothing...just anxiety

Spot of blood after intercourse
My diagnosis - cervical cancer
Actual problem - just a small cut

Current state of affairs - dull all over headache, dizziness, feeling 'spaced out' - worked myself into a frenzy over this one, brain tumour again. Surely just anxiety. My neck and shoulders are so tensed up, I can feel huge great knots. I'm also feeling nauseous (even more reason to think brain tumour) only I know it's probably because I've made myself sick with worry.

There must be others out there like me who are past the point of TRULY believing they are ill (though still getting those flashes of 'what if') who have some good advice and tips of how to move forward. I'd really appreciate any suggestion anyone can make. I dont want this to ruin my life.

Thanks so much. Karlyo

[paula lynne]

Hi Karlyo, you dont realise how well youre doing!
You are realising just what a hold anxiety has over you, and want to do something to help yourself, such pro-active attitude deserves some congratulations!! x

How about getting some self-help books from the library, or invest in one. So many out there, but a lot of people here swear by Dr Claire Weekes.

You are already moving forward..well done to you. x Can I suggest relaxation techniques for those tense muscles, and maybe a regular massage from a partner/friend would be beneficial?

I use lavender oil a lot, and I know lots of people find cds/tapes with positive affermations on very helpful.

Youve come a long way already...keep it up. x :yesyes:

[itoldyouiwasill]

What follows is something I have posted on another forum. I posted it over a year ago and have recovered from anxiety/health anxiety since then after a 4 year nightmare. It isn't really full of hints or tips etc but rather it contains, I believe, the core basic truth of what you need to know to recover from any anxiety disorder. You may have read this on the other forum before and you may or may not find it helpful, as with everything, there are no guarantees:winks:


...accepting the diagnosis is really the key to breaking out of the Health Anxiety trap!

I haven't been on this forum for a huge amount of time but one thing you see time and time again from the worried and concerned new members is the doubt they have that these new and alien sensations are not indicative of a serious undetected ailment.

The following is an extract from a post I once read about why we CHOOSE not to accept the diagnosis and why we allow ourselves to get caught up in illogical and highly frustrating trap. This post was the catalyst for me and the starting point for me on the road to recovery....after reading this I realised that it was not assurance from others that would release me but rather it was accepting and moving on that would do it.

I hope it helps others:


Why do we not accept the diagosis? Simply put, we choose not to.

18 months ago, 12 months ago...heck, even six months ago I would have simply written off this very notion and laughed at the author. Ludicrous - it can't be that simple. But, I for one can now look into the mirror and definitively conclude that much of the "suffering" I endured for the past 30 months was a function of my own perceptions of my bodily "symptoms" and how I chose to react to them.

Did I bring on my initial twitching and other "abnormal" sensations and symptoms? Strictly interpreted - NO (although one could make a strong argument that the life I was choosing to lead and the motivations I chose to adhere to for my actions were causing a stress imbalance that made this inevitable, but that is a different discussion for a different day). But once my mind and psyche went first to Google and then down an endless road of reassurance-seeking to "prove" that this was NOT me I had read about (i.e.: dying from a deadly disease), the rest of the story very much WAS of my doing.

Frankly, I give myself a lot of credit for the will and sensibility to seek out a trained neurologist (of course, something I knew NOTHING about previously) and find the thorough check-up I needed to see what, if anything, was wrong. We all seem to do that just fine. But as far as the remaining 6 neuro visits, endless EMG's, countless hours spent spoiling precious days and nights with worry (Christmas 2005- I will never get you back), limitless "investigations" for a self-diagnosis on the internet, and countless theories on why my meds were screwing me up, how this couldn't be all in my head, why doctors never take the necessary time to REALLY LISTEN TO ME, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. -- THAT WAS ALL OF MY CHOOSING, AND REALLY WHERE I DIDN'T ALLOW MYSELF TO ACCEPT ANY DIAGNOSIS - at least the benign ones.

That is the simple truth - and those who truly "heal" from this thing all share the same common story and characteristics:

Thorough workup (sometimes EMG, MRI sometimes not, depending on the person)

Benign diagnosis

Acceptance

Willingness to allow the body to continue doing "strange things" without getting ensnared in the "why" and "what"

Healing


How people get on that road varies - some need medications, some therapy. Others just a good old look within and some guidance from this place but get on that road and the rest works out fine. I can tell you from the "other side", you KNOW true healing and moving on when you feel it - I even think this stuff gives you a greater propensity to live, truly live, when you realize how powerful and wonderful the human spirit and will is. To the sufferer this all sounds fluffy and "not me" - trust me, I know. But unlike a pill, or chemo, this IS the cure for Health Anxiety, as much as one exists, because the underlying "disorder" is perpetuated by the mind, the chemical reactions it triggers, and the body's reactions to the signals the mind is sending. Plain and simple.

People on here have complained from time to time about why medical science has not written more on this or studied it. I can somewhat sympathize - it would be interesting, and perhaps useful, to know why certain bodies and the nerve gateways within them seem to "breakdown" under oxidative stress, causing us to twitch, tweak, get weak, etc. But I don't think much is forthcoming there, because medical science KNOWS that whatever the triggers, the outcomes are comfortably known. In and of itself, this syndrome is benign. However, when the mind intervenes, and the cycle described above and in countless other posts on here by hundreds of authors feeds upon itself, then medical science has already been thoroughly published on the outcomes - it is called somatic and/or conversion disorder - it features real and widely varied "symptoms", and it can be every bit as troubling and hard to treat as a difficult cancer or another "major" illness.

For me, I now am piecing together the understanding, through outstanding therapy and a combination of medications that really really work (my GOD how different I feel - I SMILE MOST OF THE TIME!!!), that my predisposition to view myself as unwell and "destined" to suffer and die early from a terrible disease is rooted in things that go way back and behaviours that have been learned over a lifetime. Fuzzy hoo hah nonsense - hardly. Understanding yourself, how you react and respond to things, including your own body's signals, is so vitally important to "curing" yourself of this. Otherwise, you are at the mercy, fully, of whether your body chooses to be "normal" for a period of time. I have seen so many, myself included, on here say "...I was doing so well for a while, and then this new stuff came up and now I'm freaking out all over again..." You can search on my posts - that was me and I KNOW it is MANY of you too. That is NO BASIS for recovery, and is probably the mindset that threw us into Googling TWITCHING (for God's sake of all things) into the first place. That is not MND/ALS, not MS, not BS - it is behavioural, it is psychological, and it is TREATABLE, and well within your grasp.

So - long story long - the answer to your simple question is simple itself. CHOOSE TO VIEW YOURSELF AS WELL. You had your tests, you had your workup - your doctor is unconcerned, and so too should you be. Let it go. It is a choice that only lies within you, and I can tell you first hand - 7 EMGs or MRI’s will NOT give that to you. You will never find a doctor thorough and careful enough to give that to you. If you are predisposed to feel destined to suffer, you will always find "flaws" in the examination, the tests, heck, even the logic itself. Not too long ago a poster on here who shall remain nameless was expressing disappointment in how the board had become - there were no longer discussions of statistics, and the remote possibilities that could be causes, or one-off cases that defied the odds. Imagine that, my friends. Not enough focus on the dying or the possibilities thereof...too much focus on the comfort, support, and infinite probabilities of health and well being. For fear of being too simplistic, it simply boils down to that - you are 99.9998% likely well relative to these symptoms, and .0002% likely to have a poor outcome coming (PLEASE don't start picking apart those numbers...they are MADE UP...I can see it coming now). YOU CHOOSE whether your focus is on the 99.9998% part, and if it is, you will get past this. Until it is, you will always leave the neuro wondering "what if" and "please just help me get past this one problem, so I can feel NORMAL again", and the months will dribble by with no improvement.

I used to define recovery by when, and IF, I was ever going to stop twitching and having all these other wacky sensations. Now, I simply don't care about that answer. The twitching, and the other host of things that can accompany it, does NOT define me, nor in ANY WAY dictate my wellness. That much has been proven by the literature, countless doctors and too many EMG's. Until I stopped linking the two - twitching to wellness (or lack thereof) - I had NO hope of overcoming this thing. Now that I realize, and take to heart, that I am well, and that I have nothing but living to worry about, true healing is setting in by the day.

Today, I rode to and from work with the radio off. HUGELY significant for me. It was not long ago that I needed to stuff my mind FULL of noise, distractions, etc. to push out the fears, concerns, and endless focusing on my body that would be the "default" source of what filled my noisy head constantly. Today, I could just allow my mind to wander freely, peacefully, through the drive - the farms and fields along the way, as well as what I wanted to accomplish today, how nice it was to just lift my daughter out of her crib this morning, what I wanted to do for Fathers Day and even a little reflection on God and the gifts I've been blessed with. Remarkable to me - how long it had been, and how wasteful it felt, to have missed out on this type of living, and mental freedom, simply because I was predisposed to feel unwell, and spent a long while -- maybe a lifetime -- trying to "block" those feelings out of me with distractions, noise and of course anxiety.

This Health Anxiety is powerful stuff, no doubt. WE ARE STRONGER. The human spirit, will and desire to live, outweighs the fear by miles except in the most serious of cases (mental illnesses). I watch the likes of Maz, Nikki, AB12 and the countless others who are submersed in this struggle now and I just ache to reach out and touch them with what I can see now, as I KNOW how close they all are to moving past this and the power to do it is ABSOLUTELY within each of us. It took me close to 30 months, and that is somewhat regrettable. But I made it, I will not give it up at any cost, and I see a life filled with nothing but richness, hope and WELLNESS for myself, and all of us on here.

If anyone reading this who is struggling is a dad, and wants to give themselves a gift for Fathers' day, just simply commit on Saturday night that you WILL NOT think about or dwell on this stuff on Sunday...for just one day. Monday? Knock yourself out, but for one day on Sunday, "...no matter what my body does, I'm not, under any circumstances, going to care or think about it..." See what happens. What do you have to lose?? And for the moms (or anyone else for that matter), commit to the same thing as a gift to dad. Just one, short day. And stick to it, even if your knee is buzzing like a bee or your tongue is twitching so bad you can't lick a lollipop...WHO CARES. FOR ONE SPECIAL DAY - FATHERS' DAY - it simply doesn't matter. And see what happens.

If you make that commitment, and stick to it without exception, you will just have gotten 24 hours of valuable practice on the rest of your glorious life. And who knows - that just might be enough to spark something inside of you that will make you crave more of that feeling...want it like nothing else. I don't think I need to fill in the ending.

Last Fathers' day, I was miserable, and worried. I put on a good ********, but I wasn't really "there" for my family in a meaningful way. I can never get that back. Now looking back, it seems senseless, though all of us recognize why and how someone can get there. I am simply asking all of you not to give up that one day. To practice taking control over things with one 24 hour period. You will find it glorious, worthwhile, and humbling...humbling how much we have been given, and how precious it is. I, for one, can't WAIT for Sunday, but am damn glad Saturday is wedged in between there because I'm going to enjoy the heck out of that too.

If there is anything that could make those 30 months worth it for me, it would be the thought that these experiences, and shared lessons, will help you avoid the same "duration to recovery".

You are well - choose to be, live life that way, and enjoy each day

[paula lynne]

That is a truly enlightening post! wow!
Ive identified Im at the "willingness to allow" stage, healing next! yippee.
It reminds me of the stages of loss-, shock, disbelief, anger, bargaining, acceptance...and I know with grief we can move forwards and backwards in and out of them before acceptance is reached.

Does your thesis allow/accept that a person can move forward through stages until acceptance, or can you go back?

Very interesting post

[i love tea]

Hi karlyo,

Like paula lynne said, you don't realise how well you're doing because you are 'self-aware', and that's half the battle.

I have started reading a book called 'Overcoming Health Anxiety' http://www.amazon.co.uk/Overcoming-Health-Anxiety-David-Veale/dp/1845298241/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288974503&sr=8-1

It seems really good - it's CBT based, so lots of things you can do to help yourself. might be worth a look?

:flowers:

[CrazyCatLady]

Don't underestimate the power of distraction - it really helps. My HA blew completely out of control when I quit my job, and it's becuase I was sat at home with more time to think about it.

I've managed to cut down my reassurance requests by telling my family to refuse to respond to them, and to instead gently remind me that i have HA.

Doing something pro-active like exercise or diet change is great, because you will know you are getting healthier.

[karlyo]

Thanks all so much for your responses, especially that long one, really interested.
I didnt think of myself as having come any distance at all but maybe I have by realising my problem.
That book looks good Ilovetea - I have ordered it. I feel I need to just do something positive to overcome this.
And crazycatlady - you are really quite right. I am so much worse when I'm not kept busy, this week is a prime example of that!

[Primula]

Excellent post. I'm going to keep it in my favourites to read. I think I may be at the stage of realising my symptoms are coming from my HA. I counted up that I've had 9 different symptoms in the last 14 months that I have been convinced are cancer, none of them have been! I'm struggling with a symptom now, and have resisted seeing the doctor for 4 weeks. I am going tomorrow as I need my prescription reviewed, and I will mention my worry, and if the Doc says it's nothing to worry about I will accept her word.

[blueangel]

I agree with the distraction thing as well - it's very important that we give our mind something to occupy itself with other than "me, me, me" (which in the end is what this is all about, as whether we like it or not, we become self-obsessed when we're like this).

Exercise and diet change are also excellent ideas - in fact, anything constructive that will make us feel better about ourselves