Health Anxiety - SO Frustrated!

[ChicagoFan689]

Over the last few weeks I have been obsessing over/terrified that I am going to have a heart attack. As I've posted before, I am a relatively healthy 25 year old female. No family history of heart disease, not diabetic, blood pressure and cholesterol are good, recent normal EKG and chest x-ray, etc.

The only thing I do have is GERD, and a bit of an issue with insulin resistance (not diabetes).

I started to get some very weird symptoms though, pain in my extremities, muscles twitching, pain between my shoulder blades and in my chest, etc. Of course, I was terrified of what it could be. My PCP suggested we do a full range of lab work to rule everything out. Just found out today that all my lab work came back normal...

For someone with health anxiety, this should be a relief, but honestly I was hoping for an answer - something to blame all my symptoms on. If I knew there was something wrong with me, I could fix it. Now...I'm in the same place I was, nervous about what could be going on inside my body that I don't know about.

Any ideas for how to cope?

[Lilac]

Dear ChicagoFan, I know exactly what you are going through. If you want you can read some of the threads I have started. My biggest fear today is ALS. And I have so much muscle twitching, tingling sensations, sometimes numbness too. The twitches are driving me crazy, and they get a lot worse when I am scared. I have been to several doctors and to neurologists to rule out ALS (none of them thought it was necessary, as I in fact do not paint a typical ALS picture at all), so I have done blood tests, EMG/NVC, and other clinical examinations. Nothing. I too want to have something to blame on, I cannot accept that it is all in my head. Of course I do not want to have ALS - death is certain with ALS.

But if you read my post "Health Anxiety? Perhaps this can help?" you can see how my head works to brainwash me, and how I change the image of myself depending on what I am struggling with. I wrote a post the day after named "Anxiety Attack now! Help", which shows how my fear of ALS completely took over my mind the other day. I have to warn you that the post is very detailed and might be triggering, so do not click on it if you are easily influenced by such readings. I know how people with health anxiety can scare each other with details of their symptoms.

I also know that many health anxiety sufferers are scared of their heart, because of hart murmur, rapid heart beats, etc. You must know that extra heartbeats, rapid heartbeats and even when the heart skips a beat is VERY normal, even in the healthiest person. Like everything else in the body, the heart is not completely stable all the time. It does not follow one single rhythm all day long - it IS irregular sometimes. You know, there is a reason doctors say that if you had known everything that is going on inside your body all the time, you would lose your mind. The same goes with the heart - once you start paying attention to your own heart, you will feel and hear a lot of scary things. Hearing the heart beats is in itself quite scary I think :P And if there is one thing that reacts to stress and anxiety in the body, it is the heart. Why else would so many people with anxiety experience rapid heartbeats or extra heartbeats all the time? Your heart starts beating harder and faster and become irregular when you are extremely scared - it prepares your body for fight (or flight ;)). So if you are truly concerned about your heart, you MUST calm down. Believe me, I know it is way easier said than done, I am sitting here with anxiety despite all the negative test results myself. But I am telling myself this over and over - I see my symptoms go away when I am relaxed, and get even worse during my anxiety attacks. And believe me, I have no idea how many times I have experienced rapid heartbeat (sometimes my heart beats so hard and fast I can see it in my abdomen), extra heartbeats, etc. I just pay no attention to it, because I know when it comes (when I am tensed and stressed) and when it goes away (when I am calm).

I guess this is all I can help you with. Seriously, you should read the first post I mentioned here, so you can see how a health anxiety mind really works. I think it paints a good picture, if I may say so :)