How to distinguish between "health anxiety" and real symptoms

[p1234]

Hello, just joined and this is my first post, sorry its a long one. I really need some help, just opinions, points of view and a strategic insight into how to move forward.

I always had a little bit of anxiety as a kid but now at 49 I really can't say its been an issue all my life, although I would shy away from public speaking and things like that, and I'm a bit aspergic really (I probably would get a positive diagnosis for that but I don't feel I need one). I've run a business for 15 years which is fairly successful.

Six years ago I was diagnosed with meniere's disease. Meniere's took 2 years to settle down and I took up a sport which helped a lot. Through 2012 I noticed some anxiety issues with leg soreness but again I just went to the physio and he helped me find a way of dealing with it, so it took a year to settle down but I could continue my sport and felt really better than ever before. Still I had huge problems with concentration in work and so on but I just accepted it and carried on for the last 5-6 years.

I never quite felt that the meniere's diagnosis was right, as I felt it was caused by a problem in my neck.

In early march I had a strange headache. It was like someone had squeezed my brain like a wet rag. Since then I've had all kinds of symptoms - some like menieres (hyperacusis, 2x days stuck in bed vertigo but not throwing up). and some not like menieres - palpitations, scalp numbness, unable to concentrate (thats common with meniere's too, but much worse here), neck pain and a feeling of inflammation at the back of the head. Also chronic fatigue levels have increased. I now have orthostatic intolerance (like POTS, postural tachycardia syndrome) and other signs of dysautonomia.

The impact on my life has been huge. Business falling apart, can't work, can't do my sport, feeling ill all the time. Some days I can't even talk because the hyperacusis makes my own voice so loud. I've had some well days where I think wow great I can get on and work and cycle or take the misses out to the pub and all that... and then suddenly something comes back and I can't work or I have to leave the pub because everything is so loud.

The first doctor I saw ordered bloods but only a small subset of what was possible. I wasn't too impressed by this but I'll be doing full bloods tomorrow so no problem.

I saw him again and mentioned that I'd had neck problems and I felt that meniere's could be a wrong diagnosis. He told me that scalp numbness was caused by cycling helmets (it isn't) and that I had anxiety.

I'm sure I appear anxious when I'm in front of a doctor, I definitely feel backfooted, especially when I'm going in there with a big list of symptoms on a piece of paper, and I'm sure I have some anxiety because I'm ill, unable to work, my business is falling apart, and my life is falling apart. Who wouldn't get anxiety in that situation ?

So, I wrote to a more senior doctor explaining it all and after an examination he basically said two things: (a) you should accept symptoms that are not getting any worse, just live with them and (b) you have anxiety and thats whats stopping you from getting better.

Despite being mensa qualified I'm not very quick thinking in these situations. In fact I'm hopeless! I wish I could have thought of this answer at the time:

A guy who has been disabled for 6 years comes to the doctor in a wheelchair and says “I think you can make me walk again”. The doctor says “no, you just have to learn to live with it”. Yet the doctor hasn’t actually looked at WHY the patient is in a wheelchair, and the patient is saying – “all we need to do is a few scans” and the doctor says “no, go home, you have anxiety and you need to live with it !”



Of course its just a proverbial wheelchair ! But in terms of being able to function normally, I've been able to do sport and some work to hold off meniere's but not a lot else. Holidays are a challenge as I don't get on well with long journeys, I haven't visited the team of people who work for me in 5 years. And since early march I haven't been able to work at all, so its really looking grim.

Does this sound like "health anxiety" to you ? Could all these symptoms really keep continuing just because I'm anxious ?

I'm lucky that i have the means to go to private doctors, although it would change my retirement date by quite a lot, but would they say anything different?

I really need a roadmap that addresses the anxiety and the diagnostic process, but I know that every time I go back to that doctor they're going to diagnose anxiety again. Yet even when I'm chilled and happy the symptoms just pop back randomly. How on earth do I deal with this to get myself put through the right scans and wotnot to end up with a diagnosis - and if it ends up being anxiety - fine ! At least we can treat it then - at the moment I'm just stuck without any hope of a diagnosis. What should i do, what would you do ?

[raggamuffin]

Anxiety can cause any symptom or pain imaginable. There's a thread stickied to the top of this forum section with a list of anxiety symptoms and that's not all of them. It's for Dr's to say if the symptoms are anxiety or not. if tests come back fine you'd need to start accepting anxiety is causing such issues. i've had symptoms day in day out for 5 years that have occurred anywhere and everywhere in my body. Some short and sharp pauins some long lasting and dull.

Symptoms will be around even if you feel happy or relaxed. A long time of stress and anxiety cause the symptoms, so they won't go away overnight or when you have a happy day and aren't feeling anxious. It'd be nice if it simply switched off when our mood was good but that isn't the case.

Reading more about anxiety and understanding it is very helpful as is exercise and cutting processed foods from your diet. You should also read up on Google about core beliefs and changing them. often issues that are unaddressed in the past continue to have an effect on our present self. The more empowered you become through learning and self improvement the less of an impact anxiety will have.

You need to remember that anxiety doesn't control us, we control anxiety. if it wasn't for our way of thinking, worrying and feeling paranoid our anxiety wouldn't be there. Accepting it's anxiety is a fundamental step to take and it can be a difficult one. When you get a symptom there can be all sorts of what if's. Fearing disease or death, but in reality it's highly likely that anxiety is the cause. Many with anxiety and symptoms of anxiety will harss Dr's time and time again when a new symptom comes along.

Truth be told when all the tests come back fine and you're on your 10th, 20th or maybe 30th Dr visit you start to piece things together and trace things back to anxiety. The more days you go through symptoms the more of a case file you have. You wake up each day, but sometimes you might go to bed thinking you're dying and in sheer panic. Anxiety is there to promote change in our lives. Clearly there's unhappiness that needs addressing. Anxiety needn't make you feel like a weaker or vulnerable person, it can be used as a tool to empower and better yourself.

It's not a short journey but it's a worthwhile one.

Ed

[p1234]

Thank you, thats a very good response, and quite "eye opening". I'll be happy to accept anxiety or something real - whatever it takes to get better and get back to normal life.

I suppose the thing that is causing the most anxiety is that visit to the second doctor who didn't put me forward for any kind of diagnostic assessment. Wouldn't you normally do all the scans first and then diagnose anxiety when you can't find anything else ?

That was only my 3rd doctors visit so at least I've made the connection early enough by asking on here :) ... But I'm just concerned that they should really be doing brain scans and neck scans and ear scans to diagnose any physical problems properly before sending me off with some prozac or whatever.

I'll follow your advice and do some reading, and trying to cut out the current obsession with it would obviously help. Its just so frustrating really that they can say that when I feel like I've known for many years that there is a problem in my neck and now because I've presented in an anxious state they've diagnosed that whereas if I went in well as cool as a cucumber they probably would have sent me for a scan and ruled out any problems.

I suppose insisting on a scan and then finding out nothing was wrong woudl be embarrasing. But then whats a little bit of embarrasment when your life is falling apart ?

[raggamuffin]

I think if it was something serious you'd be presenting symptoms the Dr would pick up on promptly and then send you for further testing. I used to leave many Dr's unhappy they didn't do more testing. but then I realized 15+ Dr's can't all have missed things, in fact I was missing something - the acceptance it was anxiety.

You can keep pushing Dr's and they can refer you to specialists. but when test upon test comes back fine and Dr's trace things back to anxiety you'll start to realize that the worries are in your mind and the body is simply reciprocating what the mind thinks and making you feel bad.

As for Prozac - medications mask symptoms with anxiety they don't cure them. It's like a band aid. For people on the brink, suicidal or so unhappy and anxious they can't function in the day to day medication is a good thing to tide them over whilst they undertake therapy and working on bettering themselves. but many dr's dish out meds like candy as it's a cheap and easy means compared to expensive therapy. Many Dr's seem to treat patients like any sort of work task - get through them day in day out without really showing empathy and compassion.

Neck tension is very common with anxiety and also poor posture. I've had neck aches that have been bad, i've had dizziness that's lasted weeks without relent, derealization and headaches that've lasted 2 or 3 weeks at a time. Trust me anxiety can cause you any symptom imaginable.

If you feel like your life is falling apart anxiety will be more empowered because you feel less in control and more helpless. That's a breeding ground for stress and worry which is what anxiety feeds off of. Anxiety is actually a positive thing in my mind. It's a tool to help us change and better ourselves.

Look to tackling anxiety and moving your life onto a new path as a positive challenge. Relish the challenges ahead and focus on the positive outcomes. Act in life with love for yourself. Don't hold yourself back with paranoia and fears of "what if's". Don't focus on worries about situations you have no control over or things that haven't even happened. Love yourself and you can't really go wrong in life.

I originally thought i'd never live a normal life again after anxiety first hit with panic attacks and constant symptoms. Many years later i've come a long way and things have really improved. I've accomplished things I didn't think possible and I actually enjoy life once again, but in a vastly different way to how I did prior to anxiety. Empowering yourself and overcoming anxiety helps you appreciate so much more in life.

Ed

[p1234]

thanks again. This has helped a lot :)

I wonder could my whole episode of meniere's disease be simply anxiety and not meniere's at all !! I didn't put a question mark after that because I know there's no answer or at least that any attempt at a web diagnosis for something like that would be silly. But its a grimly amusing possibility that all of what I've been through that was attributed to some inner ear disease could have been something simple like labyrinthitis that just carried on because I was so wound up about it :--)

The only bit that scares me is that anxiety might not be the root cause. I don't think I'll be able to control that gremlin until all the tests are done.

[raggamuffin]

If you find yourself Googling symptoms do this simple edit and you'll help rather than hinder yourself. Put the word "anxiety" before a symptom description. You'll trace everything back to anxiety.

There's one positive from reading online information about disease and frequent visits to the Dr's - you learn the real tell tale signs of serious issues and then you realize you have none of these symptoms. Truth be told if you worry enough about a symptom or disease you can make it worse.

it's the fight or flight response, the danger is merely a distorted perception. For instance after my second panic attack I had chest tightness and pains from that day onwards. I worried - so they got worse. I Googled chest pains and came up with heart disease and attacks. I feared heart attacks and the chest pains got worse. I started getting palps each day. I became fixcated checking my pulse. i started getting arm and jaw pains.

You see the snowball effect? Perhaps the meniere's was anxiety related. Stress can do all sorts of things to the body in terms of symptoms. I imagine if you try my Google anxiety search method and put in each symptom you had, one search at a time, you'd find people on anxiety forums talking about the same issues.

You're certainly not alone in this :)


Ed

[sae]

The body is a weird and wonderful thing. It also lies when it is afraid. I have on numerous occasions gone to the ER convinced I was having yet another heart attack. I was certain I had all the symptoms that felt just like the real ones I had in previous years.
It wasn't until my now current cardiologist, in the middle of a heart cath, turned the screen toward me, pointed to everything and explained what all was going on. He showed me my stents, the occluded arterial branch that was causing the angina, and best of all the increase of blood flow around the stent as well as the oddly clear arteries and vessels around my stents.
Admittedly I was a little too doped to freak out, but I remember the whole exchange, his assurances that i.did not have the atypical heart disease, my case was strange and likely caused by some kind of pericardial infection (the narrowing only affects a portion of my heart, the rest is the heart of a healthy 34 year old).
He explained my pain and discomfort was something that was likely going to be around for a while. Since a stent was placed in the initial procedure in such a way it blocked the little scarred branch I was going to hurt until it healed up and cleared on its own. The rest was my anxiety feeding the "I'm going to die again" monster.
After some sobering up and a good old fashioned leg clamping he returned to give me a printout of a human heart. He carefully labeled where all the stents were placed, where the remaining occlusion was, and a little note to assure me that it takes years of following a miserable diet and not taking my meds to start blocking my arteries again.
My cardiologist is amazing. He's the reason I don't mind taking a 3 hour bus ride then a taxi to his visits. Maybe this is what you need, just someone to hash it all out for you, give you solid proof of what are real symptoms and what is conjured by anxiety. As twisted as it sounds I still keep that paper hanging on my in my bathroom.
It's not fool proof, I still have the rare panic attack and I am convinced I am dying again. Having the paper hanging to see helps me remember than not all pain is going to kill me, and the body is a whole hell of alot tougher than the anxious mind lets on.
I
Living with any kind of daily pain sucks. I wake up some mornings feeling like warm death. These are the days I feel alive. The pain is my heart saying " yo, homie, I'm still here doing heart shit, just take it easy, okay?"

[p1234]

So glad I found this place.

My initial take home (and a bit of self reassurance) is that even if my symptoms ARE caused by something underlying - anxiety probably makes them worse.

I can imagine that the first vertigo attack of Meniere's had nothing to do with anxiety and probably everything to do with the fact that I went surfing and got drunk (in that order) the day before :) but then... see the doctor, doctor says "hmm lets see how that settles down. Come back in 3 months." "WHAT !! I've been hospitalised and omg do you realise.."

Guess what that did to my latent anxiety chimp !

Chimp says "hmm you should be scanning this right now - referral after referral until you find something". I'm now going to be anxious and spend the next month on google, I'm gonna draft 15 different versions of a letter to the doctor.. etc etc

<Face Slaps Head> :)

Anyway, that was 6 years ago, but now I see the cycle repeating.

Maybe now things can get a lot better. I'm going to start working on it by not working on it, if you know what I mean ....

[p1234]

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but thanks for all the help so far :)

[p1234]

thanks, good to have several viewpoints.

I have accepted anxiety head on. Raggamuffin's posts just ticked all the boxes, and my brain had no problem with the switch over. Once all the facts matched it was easy. Difficult bit, how do I tell the misses ??? OMG OMG OMG.

I am quite deeply fatigued after two months since symptoms started - I've slept well the whole time, but the preoccupation and all that has just been crazy crazy bonkers. I am whacked. So I need some time now to mull over what this all means, and I need to get some rest and chill and just rebuild what I had slowly. I have a high level of confidence that the symptoms will clear up, but they will need time I presume.

I always said that whatever I have, it doesn't matter that much, because I've had it all my life. If its MS or chiari or menieres or egyptian beriberi - whatever it is - its just an extension of what I've always had. Flare ups are not such a problem as something like MS that gets constantly worse and you can't address. This seems at odds with my mention of preoccupation above, but still when you get these awful flare up and the symptoms are so huge, and you can't explain it, its going to be stressful and cause preoccupation. So I can see how the process is a catch 22.

I'm hugely relieved and grateful to have found an answer that fits. And I know that even if there is an underlying cause, the anxiety would have been making it all worse. So just got to chill now and wop that gremlin on the head.

On the subject of gremlins and 22's ! I'm going to try to pop off the gremlins one by one with my .22, but they do reproduce more rapidly than rabbits, so I should combine shooting them with starving them to death :)

Seriously I think there are a lot of other gremlins - not just "health anxiety", so I need to just step through this now. Perhaps I'll knock up a bullet point plan and drop it on here to see if you folks agree

[p1234]

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[p1234]

Update:

Its a week since Ragamuffin and others gave me the kick up the backside I needed on here ! (thank you)

Things have moved on nicely. I get the occasional blip where a symptom pops up and the brain says "omg I so didn't cause that" !! But most of the time things have settled down and when a symptom appears I'm ignoring it and mostly successful at that. Palpitations are still up and down but improving, the headaches are less, and scalp numbness, spine chills haven't been seen for a week or more.

More importantly a very dark cloud has started to lift. It feels like I've been drugged up for the past two months, and that twist in the brain is still not clear but its going.

But if there's one thing thats getting me now its that the word anxiety pops into my head 1000 times a day. Its like I've moved house and now have a noisy neighbour thats got music blasting all day.

I suppose this is OCD and there's plenty of that in my past and in my family history. Need something to obsess about. Hey I'm anxious about anxiety :) No I'm obsessing about anxiety.

I'm sure a true resolution of anxiety would be to drop obsessing about everything and just focus on lifes challenges and having a good time. But its so endemic, ingrained, so deep.

Anyone else had that ? Anyone managed to control it/ shake it off ? Is it just a case of distraction and learning to live with this noisy neighbour? I'd like to do the equivalent of a facebook defriend with this guy :lol:

Perhaps the thing I'm now managing is not anxiety but it is obsession ? omg I don't have to join yet another forum do I ?????? :)