New and need advice!

[-AC-]

Hi folks,

Just new to this forum and would like to share my own concerns and see what thoughts and advice you can give me as anything at all is better than what I have now.. nothing.

So I guess I will start from the beginning...

I am a 22 year old male and it all started about 6 months ago. Over the summer I had decided to take the girlfriend away for a few days to Manchester. I had to drive most of the day to get there so we left early in the morning and arrive there around 6pm or so that evening. I was rather tired at the start of the day so throughout the day I had drank 3 tins of red bull as I was driving. Normally that would not have been a problem for me but as I arrived at the hotel I felt very odd. I didn't feel myself. I decided to try and forget about it and jump into the shower before heading out for dinner, but as I was showering I lost my balance in the shower and had to put my hands on the wall in order to keep myself from falling over (very strange feeling). I didn't know what was wrong but I decided to try and forget about it, went out for a nice meal and headed back to the hotel for an early night as we had been travelling most of the day. Throughout my meal I felt very strange but I put it down to being tired.

I then woke up in a fright at about 6am in the morning thinking that my heart was about to stop, I had a pain in my chest and I could have sworn that my heart rate was very very low. I had never experienced this before and was extremely scared, but it eventually passed and I managed to get back to sleep after around an hour. The next day this feeling surpassed and I was able to enjoy the rest of my break away. I then thought nothing of it.

A few months passed and I had forgotten about what had happened until 1 night, I shot up in my bed again at around 2am thinking my heart was going to stop. This time it was worse than before and my automatic reaction was to jump out of bed and start jumping around my room like a lunatic in order to get my heart going again (or so I thought at the time). It was completely out of the blue and very scary! I didn't sleep much for the rest of the night. After that day I experienced dull pains in my chest off and on which were very annoying and I have spent many many nights lying in bed worrying that it is going to happen again. When I do think about it in bed, my pains get worse which stop me from being able to sleep.

A few weeks passed like this until 1 night I was lying in bed and I was experiencing a burning sensation around my heart. I had it for maybe 2 hours before I mentioned it to my dad who got a little concerned and phoned the on call doctor. The on call doctor advised me to take a trip to the emergency room as a precaution. As soon as I got into the car to go up, I started having a panic attack (I have never experienced one of these before and it was the worst experience of my life to date!). It felt like my heart was beating so fast that it was going to give up, I felt very sick and nauseous and honestly thought I was going to have a heart attack. I had to sit in the emergency room for about 5 minutes before I was seen to (which seemed like an hour!!). The nurse then brought me in and asked me my symptoms, I was breathing so fast that freaking out that I couldn't physically speak to her, I tried to but I just couldn't. She eventually calmed me down enough to take my heart rate.

After that, she took me into a room and they hooked me up to an ECG machine and took a sample of blood. I then sat in the emergency room waiting on the results. A doctor called me in and told me that my heart was fine, the ECG results were normal and my blood results didn't show any signs of a heart complication. These were his words.. "I'm sorry but I cannot tell you what is wrong other than it might be anxiety". So I left the hospital none the wiser of what had just happened to me.

I now get a dull pain around my heart every single day and it affects me most of the day. It has gradually got worse and I now feel a dull pain in my left arm too. I also have a pain in the middle of my chest bone when I turn my head to the left or the right or tilt is back fully.

I am not proud to admit this but I have been a smoker since the age of about 14-15. I am not a heavy smoker and would smoke under 10 a day. Since this has been happening to me I worry about my health a lot, I worry that I may have heart disease or some other type of disease and it scares me. I do intend on giving up smoking soon and I have cut way back (I know thats not an excuse).

I apologise for the very long essay I have just wrote lol, but I find that the doctors are useless as they palm it off as anxiety and I feel that they do not understand the severity of it all in my mind!

Anything you can share with me would be a great help as I have not come across anybody that has gone through what I have. Can you make head or tails of my symptoms? Is it anxiety or does it sound like something more serious?

[lordhenry]

our hearts are very strong muscles i think this is why when it does something even slightly out of the ordinary it physically feels kinda scary.
i'm a 21 male my doctor also thinks that i have anxiety, i've been having pains that she can not explain and i have panic attacks (impending doom kind of thing)
i was prescribed cyclobenzaprine to help with muscle pains and to help me get better sleep one of the side effects of which is heart palpitations which are really quite common and not serious. these heart palpitations REALLY scared me though, it felt like every second beat my heart was tearing through muscle or something, a kind of burny sensation. red bull could definitely cause heart palps. in the long term maybe you should ask your doctor about some thing to do with abnormal heart rhythm or something like that. you can get a doctor to give you a monitor thing that monitors your heart while you sleep and stuff and then they check out the results, this could put your mind at ease.
i've just quit smoking i also started stupidly young. one way i found that made it easy is associating all the medical anxiety i have with cigarettes. in short i'm now terrified of cigarettes and that i can honestly say has been the one good thing to come from my recent panic.
also i'm thinking about signing up to a gym where they have instructors for cardio workouts they seem to know ALOT about heart health and may be a good place to talk about and improve your own.
hope that any of this was a help i'm very new to anxiety too.

[anxiety-king]

Could be that first incident in the shower stunned you somewhat, even though you got over it the memory of it was obviously still there. Once something repeats itself its almost that thought of "oh no why is this happening again" which then makes the anxiety stronger! When I had my first panic attack I feared for a few months about having another one and its almost like your on edge constantly as your mentally preparing for it. Like you, when I first had a panic attack I thought I was dying, I was at work at the time and I remember ripping my tie off because I felt like I was being strangled, my heart rate went through the roof and I went very pale according to my co-workers.

I haven't posted much on these forums, but the beginning of my anxiety stemmed from heart palpatrations and the continous fear and worry of random "stitch like pains", and the fact everytime I would lay down I could feel my heart beating very heavily. If your doctor says you are fine, then yes it is most likely anxiety!!! Whether its your diet, maybe taking up relaxation classes/lessons, working out, CBT, medication etc, once you get over the peak of your anxiety and learn to control it hopefully over days/weeks/months, you will notice a reduction of your symptoms:)

[elevated]

Remember our flight or fight response releases adrenaline to such organs as the heart and lungs (hence the racing heart and fast paced breathing), due to our fear of the heart palpitations. The more we stay internally focused on what our bodies are doing, we release even more adrenaline- creating even more palpitations. You see the cycle here? It helped me to recognize this cycle and the fact I was creating this myself due to my thinking.

If you have been given a clean bill of health by a Dr. I would consider this just an involuntary response of your sympathetic nervous system.

I agree with anxiety-king, your nerves are shot, learning how to relax and face your anxiety (not release any more adrenalin in a fear response) will allow you to slowly notice your anxiety lessoning. It takes work daily, but will eventually become easier and easier for you.