Podcast EP 149: Health Anxiety Explanations and Recovery Strategies (March 2021)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ก.ย. 2024
- Let’s look at health anxiety. What it is, what it isn’t, and how the principles of recovery we talk about all the time apply. Does my book apply to health anxiety? It does, but you have to know how to apply the principles correctly!
Hint: Health anxiety is about learning to NOT do things. ;-)
For full show notes:
theanxioustrut...
My books, podcast, and social media links:
theanxioustrut...
Music Credit: Afterglow by Ben Drake w/Permission
bendrakemusic.com
I have health anxiety and my therapist has me in an OCD group, which I completely understand. I have somatic symptom disorder. It is hard, and I’m still trying. Having 24/7 physical symptoms makes it really hard because I am afraid of the symptoms, especially the dizziness.
How are you now? I am dealing with the same thing for 6 months now.
I am in the same category..how has therapy been?
It's important to recognise that health anxiety is often caused by a traumatic health experience. It takes time and experience to tell the difference between anxiety symptoms and physical illness, but it's totally possible.
YES! I love how you acknowledge both the difficulty, and the possibilities! Thank you for sharing. :-)
i have helth anxiety and im afraid go to the doctor..waiting for analysis freaks me out!
It’s true, intolerance of uncertainty. I needed to hear this today - thanks Drew
You're very welcome. I'm glad I was able to help in some way.
Great informative podcast! I relate to everything you said. Sadly my biggest problem is needing that 100% certainty 😥
❤ great podcast Drew ❤
Well for me I really need to cut out the mental compulsions. I don't routinely Google I don't do that many repeat doctor visits I don't seek reassurance at all from friends or even family. So it's really my malfunctioning brain that refuses to stop ruminating that causing me to neglect self care. Over the past few days it's hit a record bad. So bad it simply hasn't been worse.
Hi Drew, I have a question, I'm having panic attacks everyday at a certain time like I'm expecting it to happen
Hi there. One of the foundation principles when it comes to recurring panic attacks and panic disorder (and really any anxiety disorder) is that when we fear a thing and anticipate it, we do help to create it. Many in this community will relate to what you're saying. For some, it's waking up in the morning. For others, it's the moment they have to leave for work, or maybe it's right at bedtime because they fear and anticipate nocturnal panic attacks. It's a pretty common thing. Forget the time of day. Lean on the principle that tells us the cause of the next panic attack is largely the previous panic attack and the fear of repeating that experience.
Oh it is SO OCD.. the line merges all over the place!
It seriously is a VERY fuzzy line between these disorders. I'd also argue that GAD and OCD have very little that differentiates them.
I have a chronic health condition and because of this, I have obsession with my symptoms, I check everything a dozen times s day. I can't live the limited life I have because I am obsessed with symptoms, which are real. Do you have advise for people like me?
This is where you have to follow medical advice for sure, but it can be helpful to go over this with your medical team to get a good definition of when you are going too far. If your doctors tell you to check your BP (for example) twice a day and you tell them that you check it 12 times every day, what would they say? What have they said? Then the hard part kicks in. Making the difficult choice to "roll the dice" (it will feel that way to you) by cutting back on that checking. Essentially taking a "risk" that your brain insists is a FAR greater risk than it really might be in order to learn that your brain is over-assessing risk. That's the simplified version. That's not an easy thing to do.
I suffer so bad from this :(
Hey Drew, I got a this is what’s going on with me I have what is perceived as anxiety morning anxiety, the anxiousness the nervousness, and it does go down in the afternoon evening been checked out by many doctors ER visits. Now I’ve gone down the functional path, functional doctor, path, and pretty much nothing is coming up even there, here is what’s the crux of my problem because my body is throwing off anxiety like symptoms and that’s pretty much. The only thing is the anxiousness and the nervousness that I guess is pretty much normal with an anxiety disorder I have perceive that is something wrong with me like is it my endocrine system? Do I have a autoimmune disease? Do I have this or that or the other which I don’t but in my mind I keep manifesting. What could it be this could be that and it keeps me in this loop because then I am asking for reassurance I don’t really go on Google cause it scares the hell out of me and I get in there and I look at the symptoms and I’m like oh my gosh I’ve got this disease that disease because my body sensation of anxiety makes me feel like there’s something more sinister going on and that’s kind of what I’m fighting and then when I don’t do these compulsions, it drives my anxiety, even higher, and in the stories my brain tells me is even more intricate and detail to try to get me to do what I consider safety behaviors is that health anxiety or is it somatic disorder or I mean my therapist said his health anxiety caused by trauma I don’t know I wanted your take on it
One thing you will find i that I will rarely if ever weigh in to either validate or invalidate what your therapist has said. They are in a room with you. I am just someone on the Internet that doesn't know you. I'd just ask you to consider why you think you need my "take"? Note the pattern of never accepting anything without needing to dig more to be sure about it.
@@TheAnxiousTruth tomorrow I’m going to my primary care and I’m a make sure I get everything rolled out. I can tell you one thing I am every doctor that I’ve seen says the same thing it’s a Anxiety in Anxiety. There’s nothing wrong with me. It just feels crazy because I’ve never had this and all of a sudden I have a little bit of a well I did have a traumatic event happened about two years ago and my life was just completely turned upside down and I’ve dealt with a traumatic trauma and I’m dealing with it and then all of a sudden I have this, you know, anxious, anxiety feelings, and they go down at night in the same pattern you had in the morning in but then I think what keeps me going really is my thoughts so yesterday I put my foot down and I said no more but I definitely am going to go do my due diligence and go see my primary care for the last time and make sure we rule out everything that she can think of that might be causing anxiety, and at that point, I got to drop the rope and walk away and start recovery Thanks for the feedback but I would also love some more feedback thanks Drew
Ive spent thousands of Dollars Because of this Crap...suxs