Here are some of the techniques I use to cope with my daily heart palpitations. I still get them even though I no longer have health anxiety. Beating health anxiety does not mean eradicating all symptoms and illnesses, it just means learning how to cope with them (and they usually reduce as a result):
1. Accept that they just happen for no rhyme or reason. Stop looking for cures on the internet because it's like searching for the holy grail and you will never find it. You will go through the same process as me and try things from magnesium supplements to Powerade to Berocca to eating more peas, to more dodgy things like taking acid-reducing stomach pills or glugging back Gaviscon daily.
2. Try to stop them by:
- bearing down
- splashing cold water on your face
- holding your breath
- coughing
- jumping around (yes I have done this)
- changing position
3. But understand that these things may not be the cause of them stopping every time, they often stop on their own for no reason.
4. Don't Google anything to do with your heart. Just don't. I relied for years on a guy on a forum called RLR for reassurance. He was helpful to a point, but looking back that forum kept me locked into the obsession and fed my fear. Once you have the OK from a doctor, resume normal activities.
5. When exercising, warm up gradually - sudden sprinting or exertion is guaranteed to bring them on for me, but everyone is different.
6. Get checks done if you haven't already. Let's face it you probably have. But don't copy my mistake of forgetting your cardiologist's reassurance and going back for the same tests over and over. It keeps you locked into the cycle of fear.
7. If you see someone have a heart attack on TV, or you hear about someone who has had one, don't relate it to you. This was also my problem for years - a footballer died on the pitch once (cardiomyopathy) and it stopped me playing football for, wait, 8 YEARS through fear that it would happen to me. I now play, get palpitations before during and after, but they don't bother me like they used to.
8. Get plenty of sleep because for me tiredness is another guaranteed trigger.
9. When your heart starts racing in stressful situations, acknowledge it. Once you realise that stress can cause the heart to do incredibly weird things, you naturally relax about it.
10. Go out and enjoy your life knowing that your condition probably isn't serious. Even if it's going to kill you in a few years, wouldn't you want to live those few years to the absolute full. This is the mindset shift that helped me to beat HA in general.
Hope this helps.