Re: nausea feeling
Originally Posted by
unsure_about_this
I am going into the rabbit hole.
You're thinking your way down the rabbit hole, and you need to think your way back out again..
Nausea is one of THE MOST COMMON SYMPTOMS OF ANXIETY. I've had nausea so bad due to my anxiety that I couldn't eat anything aside Complans and soup, and that was simply a case of getting something inside me. I had no appetite whatsoever. I felt so sick that I was retching all the time. At home, in the doctors surgery (I was given a bowl to be sick into once) and in the street. At my worst with this symptom, I was drinking ginger tea all day and wearing anti-sickness bands on my wrists. Do not underestimate anxiety with this symptom!
Quite simply, it's fight or flight. Because you are SO ANXIOUS, your body is constantly in parasympathetic mode (fight or flight) so imagine how your body feels when you step out into the road and have a near miss with a car? Your heart races, your stomach lurches - you feel sick, right? In non-anxious people this normal response calms down quite quickly once the danger has passed - not so with anxiety. It's there constantly. The fight or flight never gets to stand down and your body is flooded with stress hormones and stress directly affects the digestive system. This is why you feel sick all the time, and because you are fearing this symptom - you are making the issue far worse than it needs to be..
Ginger tea is fabulous for nausea. It works. Try it.
What you don't do is fear this symptom. This is just your body trying to protect you with the fight or flight response because that's what's there for. It's just that your brain doesn't know the difference between a real danger and an imagined one. Fear is the key word here because people who don't have HA will see a spot on their @rse and not freak out. It's a spot. Spots are normal. EVerybody has them at some time. HAers, however, will see a spot on their @rse and diagnose themselves terminally ill within a few seconds of clapping eyes on the blighter. They will receive a massive shot of adrenalin which is to be expected with fear, and there will most likely be some kind of panic attack. And by the way, the part in your brain which is responsible for phobias (amygdala) is taking notes - to the point that you can be seeing someone in the street or on TV who has a spot and you will experience a panic attack!
It's like this. I had REALLY bad anxiety as a kid too and one day my parents took me to London. I had baked beans for my lunch and promptly threw up. For years after I couldn't look or smell a baked bean without feeling sick. My stomach would lurch and I would have to fight the nausea. It's a conditioned fear response. This is the amygdala in action. And this is how we develop phobias. You are conditioning yourself to react fearfully to every symptom and sensation in your body...
It's all very simple when you understand what's going on..
So what you do is to do things to alleviate this symptom which I've already explained to you. The ginger REALLY WORKS. When this symptom comes on - acknowledge it - but don't add fear to it because that only releases the hormones which will keep this symptom going. You tell yourself that, yes, this feels unpleasant, but it's not harming you, and it will pass. Eat little and often. If you can't face proper meals try nutritious soups.
Believe it or not, as crap as this feels right now, your body is working perfectly. Remember: real or imagined - it doesn't know the difference. It's just trying to keep you alive. It's working overtime and deserves some recognition for being excellent, don't you think?
__________________
A thought is harmless unless we believe it.
Reply With Quote
