Accepting the Diagnosis.............

[andie79]

Pan,  I know this is an older post, but you are an incredibly articulate writer.  I really appreciated all you had to say, and I for one can definitely see myself closing in on the other side of the fence.  I believe in myself and my amazing will, as you mention.

I wish you the best, and thank you for your continued support.

Andrea

[Reg]

Terrific post. Just some additions to share.

First off, I've been off the forum for awhile. In that time, all my objective health news has been good. After a 2nd MRI and 2nd & 3rd neurologists' opinions, I'm convinced that my chances of having MS are too low  to  worry about. Then I moved back to heart worries. Again, I've got a clean bill of health from my physician, and 2 clean EKGs in 1 year to confirm that diagnosis. (In the words of my physician: "You're young, you have no family history of serious heart disease, your blood pressure and cholesterol are normal.  Your only risk factor for heart disease is being male.")

The rest of my life has gone pretty well, too. I just got hired to a new, interesting job, starting this fall. That's quite a feat in a recession!

Despite all this, I still have serious heart concerns. Today I had a panic attack at the gym. I convinced myself that if my heart rate monitor appeared to skip a beat, it was because my actual heart had stopped beating. I ended up spending 20 minutes on an exercise machine, staring at my heart rate monitor, holding one hand to my neck to get an "independent" heartbeat count. You can imagine how fun that was.

And this is just the latest in a series of unfortunate decisions:

(*) I tried Paxil, but quit after a week
(*) I tried meditation, but quit 6 months ago
(*) I tried quitting drinking coffee. That lasted about half a day
(*) I almost quit going to therapy
(*) Today I had a double espresso and went to the gym 3 hours later! I *knew* I was likely to have a panic attack. WTF?

The only logical conclusion is that some part of me wants to have health anxiety, and is sabotaging all my efforts to cure it. I don't think medication can fix that. But I think it's related to the parent's conclusions.  Does this sound familiar to anyone else?


-----------------------------------
"So while you sit back and wonder why
I've got this 0213#%^ thorn in my side"

[el-k]

Wow! That's the beauty of this forum....stumbling upon this very insightful and helpful thread. Thanks to all who shared!

[michaela]

Excellent writing.

By the way do any of you have taken medicine for your anxiety?  I have been 3 years on this and see no improvement.

Thanks

[abeja_reina_1989]

soooo helpful!! u really put a lot of time into this thank you :)
it took me finally realizing that it's OKAY to have anxiety and the things i have.. that's what FINALLY got me to get help.. it didn't matter what others told me.. im glad i finally realized it's ok to be different, and to go through this. we're not alone!!

[lindalynn]

I must say that post really hit home. I am only 23 and have been to the hospital mulitiple times gotten 2 diff MRI's done and am currently under the care of a cardioloigst. It's hard to just tell yourself that all you're symptom's are nothing more then a group of "physical symptom's" that you're own mind fabricated, but that's what you have to do. For me?.. all i keep telling myself is after I get ALL the bloodwork done, explore ALL the possibilities their cant possibly be anything else?.. What are you're thoughts on that? The sad thing also is I know it's in my head when I am in that right state of mind. But when those thoughts and anxieties start going in my head I can't help but let them all take over me.  

[Pan]

I must say that post really hit home. I am only 23 and have been to the hospital mulitiple times gotten 2 diff MRI's done and am currently under the care of a cardioloigst. It's hard to just tell yourself that all you're symptom's are nothing more then a group of "physical symptom's" that you're own mind fabricated, but that's what you have to do. For me?.. all i keep telling myself is after I get ALL the bloodwork done, explore ALL the possibilities their cant possibly be anything else?.. What are you're thoughts on that? The sad thing also is I know it's in my head when I am in that right state of mind. But when those thoughts and anxieties start going in my head I can't help but let them all take over me.  

You can never explore all the possibilties I'm afraid.  Health anxiety can never be cured through reassurance as reassurance is never enough.  If you decide that you will only allow yourself to stop being the overseer and guardian of your body when all the possibilites have been investigated then you are consigning yourself to a world of pain, frustration and misery.  One of the core issues of health anxiety is our inability to deal with uncertainty...once we tackle this and start to undertstand and accept that uncertainty is part of the human condition we can then start to make some progress.

[lindalynn]

You can never explore all the possibilties I'm afraid.  Health anxiety can never be cured through reassurance as reassurance is never enough.  If you decide that you will only allow yourself to stop being the overseer and guardian of your body when all the possibilites have been investigated then you are consigning yourself to a world of pain, frustration and misery.  One of the core issues of health anxiety is our inability to deal with uncertainty...once we tackle this and start to undertstand and accept that uncertainty is part of the human condition we can then start to make some progress.

thank you very much for you're response it really started me thinking. At 1st my thought went to omg so what if I keep going to all the doctor's and nothin's wrong with me but this anxiety never stops! that's not the way to think though. Sometimes when i am eating I think I am going to choke or my throat is closing. Weird randomn things, I want to control all my thoughts I just dont know how!.. I try 1 step at a time and I know that's all I can do but I'm greedy and just want it all gone already!

[abeja_reina_1989]

i LOVE reading things like this.. you can tell this person really had a lot of pain and you can just sense all the relief they've found. soooo beautiful. i feel im on the way to feeling the same :) one day at a time. it's ok to not be "perfect"... it's ok to "slip up" from time to time.. it doesn't mean we have to start over.

we can get through this guys!!!!!!

[sunone]

 ::)hi ...newbie glad to be here! This has been an ongoing problem(big surprise) for years with me.age(56) take 225 effexor  daily, but someone mentioned that it might heighten health anxiety. BTW...do any of you believe that this is learned behavior. My mother always seemed constantly concerned about her health.

[sixpack]

hi sunone

welcome to our  group.

I'm one to believe that anxiety disorders/depression have a variety of causes.  I think there is a genetic link (I have numerous people in my family with this).  I think it can also be learned/life experiences.  I think some folks have chemical imbalance.  I think it can be a product of faulty thinking.  In some people it may be just one cause, in others mutliple reasons.   

[shrublet]

I just read this again, and I forgot how powerful it was. It almost brought me to tears. I think it was just what I needed tonight, and is going to provide me with something to meditate on for the next little while.

Countless thanks to the original author of the post, and thanks again to Pan for sharing it with us.

[dbw]

Pan,
You are a God sent person.
Thank you!
dbw

[HZMom]

Pan-
Excellent post and really eye-opening.

Interesting to read that you, too, had once had numerous EMG's and such for twitching. Last year and into the beginning of 2009, I had developed unexplained twitching. First it started out at work on New Year's Eve as both my hands going numb and tingly and then you can imagine how my family's New Year's Eve went... I was lying in the fetal position basically all night in bed while my hubby stewed downstairs feeling like a total dweeb sitting at  home with a wife upstairs in bed fearing ALS or MS.

I had EMG's and an MRI. All normal, and the MRI only showed a few punctate hyperintensities in the deep white matter in right parietal lobe. According to neuro, he sees these even in young people in their 20's and isn't consistent with MS. But at the time of my twitching, which really got bad, and I even experienced what i THOUGHT was "weakness" in limbs, I googled stuff constantly and even perused the ALS forums thinking I might end up there one day anyway.

But, all was normal in the end and no twitching ever since. Even neuro said it could've been from a bad viral infection but that I shouldn't worry.

Glad you are fine!! Of course now I have new problems.... supposed IBS but I will be seeing a gastro doctor if I have any say about it.

[Calamy]

The acceptance is our power and our real "control." We can control how we react to our own fears and we can control how much we allow these feelings to have say in our lives. My therapist and I talked about it today, also about how comforting it can be to have anxiety problems to "fall back on." It is a battle between entertaining the misery and wasting years or your life, or going out and breaking through the fear and living another kind of life, the kind that other people live where you know there are dangers but they do not consume and control you. You accept the human condition. That is really the core of this whole problem.

[NYButterfly]

My god this section is me! I don't have much info on anxiety period and never knew where to go and look for a resource that really helps. I'm not familiar with terms either but I know this is what I have. No matter how many times I'm told that it's just anxiety etc...I will feel something else and think it's serious and I should go checked out. I also will get temporary relief from doctors on my symtoms/sensations then it will go out the window down the road. This is what I struggle with the most.

Anyone have tips or books or anything that can help give me more info?

[amsa]

Hi everyone, i'm new to this group, and i've decided to finally join after reading Pan's posts several times. Whenever my fears take over (fear of MS or neurological disorders due to my symptoms) I look up Pan's post.... and it truly helps me calm down. Over the last 5 months I've had so many disturbing symptoms (tingling, numbness in my arms, legs and face) and i've seen so many doctors and have done so many tests, the symptoms persist and I feel my health anxiety is expanding to agoraphobia and sometimes depression. I'm still trying to find a way to just accept these symptoms, and sometimes it works, but often I'm just overcome with fear of what if. I'm really happy I found this wonderful group. Many thanks to all of you.

[exposingocd]

Wow.  Thank you so much for posting this!

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

That statement encapsulates a lot of my struggle wanting to know why I have a symptom, way beyond anything a human being can find out.  Living with uncertainty is really hard for me when it comes to health, but it has helped me to see that I only fixate on certain aspects of my body, like moles or lymph nodes, and other areas aren't "hot spots," and that all that we humans get is our "best guess" which can really suck if it's not a great guess, but otherwise I'd have no life at all, spending all my time researching symptoms and obsessing.

[learning to cope]

I really needed to read this. Now I have to put it into action. It has been months since I had a full on health anxiety attack but over the last few days it was building and resulted in me running to the ER and having a complete workup done. I had blood work, CT Scan, ultrasound to detect blood clots, EKG, and all concluded what I should already know, I am a 29 year perfectly healthy woman. Now I am at acceptance. Even as I walked out the hospital, rode home, got ready for bed, I fought off the demons telling me that the doctors and test were "wrong". I deal with these irrational fears daily for periods at a time. Whenever my life gets busy (I am about to get another college degree,my beginning to teach school) and things begin to change I go into this mode of fear and seek reasons why I won't achieve my goals. I self sabotage anything good. This is so sickening for me but I am glad to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. That I can get through this.

[JTKurtz]

i'm at that point with my anxiety and health phobia where i'm having panic attacks daily, worry that the vibrating feeling in my chest denotes future heart failure, that my twitching eye speaks to neurological problems that i know i don't have.  i've had all the requisite testing that pan mentioned above, and he's right. no matter what i was told and no matter how many negative diagnoses came back i was still convinced that my death from some vague and thoroughly terrible physical ailment was imminent.  i'm just wondering what people here have found to be effective methods of dealing with panic attacks.  lately i've been  feeling like i want to hurt myself just so that these intense moments of disorientation will stop i was on zoloft and stopped taking it because i was feeling so good (without my doc's recommendation) and am now suffering the consequences.  any and all input is welcome and greatly appreciated

[saturngirl]

Thank you! I'm new here and find your posts very comforting and matter of fact (which I need after all the non factual things I make up to worry about). It's true, we can never get back the days we give to anxiety.

[GoogleFiend]

Wowsers!  What an amazing wonderful gift!  Thank you for that post!  I'm going to take that challenge - shoot - I'm going to take a break from google and everything!  Thank you again!

Peace.

Rob.

[oneworld2010]

 

[dahliasinbloom]

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

That was amazingly helpful. Thank you!

[mapshog]

Whenever I feel 'down' or I'm struggling with my symptoms this is one of the posts I always come back to and re-read. This is therapy 101 :)