| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| JoeyT |
Posted - 05/14/2009 : 16:21:03
I notice that you post over on the anxiety board...Have you tried to bring up Sarno and TMS to any of those folks? I was going looking at some of those forums and there is a lot of TMS in them... |
| 19 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| pan |
Posted - 04/07/2010 : 02:39:22
quote:
Originally posted by jerica
Pan,
I'm so sorry you were banned, that doesn't seem right to me. You have been so helpful and you understand this stuff so well. I'm glad you're here. I use a different name there. I love your post here and think I will print it out, too. It's like you wrote my bio, lol. :) I hope you will keep posting even if it's to talk about the emotional aspect or just reinforce that we must choose health.
I remember when I first moved from one state to another, starting a new life, everything fresh and exciting. That first year I was pretty much like 98% well and I don't even remember going to a doctor once. I don't think I did, anyway. I felt good, I had a good job, good money, at least a bit of respect in it and didn't feel like a turd, had a really nice apartment that was mine which I set about decorating, had lots of fun. I felt alive and well. I saw myself as well.
Then the next year I went to a concert, came home and started smelling a weird smell. Like chemicals. A hallucination because I had a brain scan and EEG and nothing bad was found. I think I started going back downhill (I had been quite "ill" at least mentally or with TMS symptoms for many years before). Now I feel like I'm just So much worse, thinking of myself as an invalid, unable to walk from here to there or pick up stuff much less have the strength or breath to do laundry or decorate anything. My apartment is dusty and I don't take pride in it anymore. My interest is body body body, breathing breathing OMG I CAN'T BREATHE breathing and chest pain and heart heart heart heart heart.
Life is filled with doctors and therapists and self help books and forums. When I leave the forums I tend to remember there's OTHER STUFF out there and I feel better. Then I start to feel sick again and run back.
You should write a book about all this. Seriously. Even if it's something you publish yourself on Lulu or something. I'd read it. I think your posts are really helpful, really valuable.
Yes well that really is the crux of it....it is all so easy to become so totally embroiled in the whole thing that it becomes our whole life.
I do think that once we have become ensnared in the whole health anxiety / hypochondria / somatoform disorder merry-go-round it is no longer possible for us to stay as an idle bystander on the edge, we feel compelled to commit to it totally 100%. I'm sure it is the buddist writer Pema Chodrum (sp) who likens it to having an itch that MUST be scratched....all the time we read the books and visit the forums we know we are going to get itchy and therefore should we really be surprised that we start to scratch again.
I know that it sounds banal and simplistic to couch recovery in the idea that we must choose health but the truth is it is as simple as that....accept the diagnosis, repudiate the physical and live life as a healthy and pain free person. |
| jerica |
Posted - 03/05/2010 : 10:39:58
Pan,
I'm so sorry you were banned, that doesn't seem right to me. You have been so helpful and you understand this stuff so well. I'm glad you're here. I use a different name there. I love your post here and think I will print it out, too. It's like you wrote my bio, lol. :) I hope you will keep posting even if it's to talk about the emotional aspect or just reinforce that we must choose health.
I remember when I first moved from one state to another, starting a new life, everything fresh and exciting. That first year I was pretty much like 98% well and I don't even remember going to a doctor once. I don't think I did, anyway. I felt good, I had a good job, good money, at least a bit of respect in it and didn't feel like a turd, had a really nice apartment that was mine which I set about decorating, had lots of fun. I felt alive and well. I saw myself as well.
Then the next year I went to a concert, came home and started smelling a weird smell. Like chemicals. A hallucination because I had a brain scan and EEG and nothing bad was found. I think I started going back downhill (I had been quite "ill" at least mentally or with TMS symptoms for many years before). Now I feel like I'm just So much worse, thinking of myself as an invalid, unable to walk from here to there or pick up stuff much less have the strength or breath to do laundry or decorate anything. My apartment is dusty and I don't take pride in it anymore. My interest is body body body, breathing breathing OMG I CAN'T BREATHE breathing and chest pain and heart heart heart heart heart.
Life is filled with doctors and therapists and self help books and forums. When I leave the forums I tend to remember there's OTHER STUFF out there and I feel better. Then I start to feel sick again and run back.
You should write a book about all this. Seriously. Even if it's something you publish yourself on Lulu or something. I'd read it. I think your posts are really helpful, really valuable. |
| susan828 |
Posted - 03/05/2010 : 06:51:45
Pan, regarding the health anxiety forums, there are some where people just get reassurance all day and nobody addresses the larger issues that you talk about and what's talked about on this forum. They are nor helpful to the poster. The same person has ALS one day, then MS the next day, HIV the next. I have every book that has been written on health anxiety but they don't get into the emotional issues much, more cognitive based.
Pan, I want to tell you that I read this thread and printed it out which I don't usually do. I have to say that your posts have helped me more than any of the books I've read. They haven't cured me yet of course...but they inspired me to get well and to recognize that this is a choice. I know that there is a reason I hang on to this...although despite digging into my diaries, I can't find out the reason that this started. I try to see what might have precipitated it...conflict at home, school, my first panic attack at age 10...but I don't see anything written that gives me a clue.
I guess it doesn't matter, as long as I deal with it now. I hope that you stay on this board because your insight is amazing, how health anxiety develops and is sustained...I truly never read anything that explains it as succinctly as you have. I know it's an old thread but I still want to say thank you!! |
| pan |
Posted - 03/05/2010 : 03:25:33
Just out of interest Jerica, was that your name on AZ or did you post under a different name? |
| pan |
Posted - 03/04/2010 : 13:29:55
Hi Jerica
Yep, tis me from Anxiety Zone. I didn't actually write that 'accepting the diagnosis' thread, I found the crux of that from somewhere else and posted it as thought it was quite a salient outlook on health anxiety...I'm surprised it is still a sticky on there to be honest. I no longer post on AZ as the admin saw fit to ban me....I'm sure the main reason for this was that I was advocating that recovery can only come once we start to leave forums and change our focus. I don't think such a viewpoint fitted in with the 'business' of AZ...oh well.
I agree with your insight....health anxiety is probably the best hobby in the world, it becomes so all encompassing and so self absorbed that there is no room for anything else in your life, if it so happens you didn't have anything in your life anyways the more the better.
Yes, the key is really to start to lose the emotional and pragmatic investments in our 'symptoms'. We have to force ourselves to see that we are not ill or not broken. All too often we are telling ourselves a story and if we tell it for long enough we start to believe it and invest everything, even our life, into it.
If I recall correctly, the last words of the accepting the diagnosis thread are 'you are well, choose to be well'....that is it in a nutshell right there! |
| jerica |
Posted - 03/04/2010 : 07:48:10
quote:
Originally posted by pan
Hi Hillbilly
I am really of the belief that health anxiety is due to the misinterpretation and subsequent over-catastrophisation of physical anxiety symptoms/sensations which in turn produce frustration, anger and fear. As you have outlined quite succinctly and correctly the physical effect that anxiety has on the body is pretty well documented and understood BUT, the real stumbling block arises when people are advised that the causality of these symptoms is actually emotional/mental in origin. It appears that people really struggle to accept this concept. I do agree with you on some level that all anxiety conditions must become health anxiety as if we do not stress, worry and fixate on the symptoms then the symptoms do indeed lose their power and are no longer fit for purpose….the classic example of this is with the concept of symptom shifting and the changing of disease fixation etc, this is incredibly common (if not a defining factor) with health anxiety as when the sufferer becomes conditioned to eventually accepting of their symptoms a new and improved symptom will crop up to keep the symptom>interpretation>response>fear loop going. You only need see the number of MS worriers who resolve that issue only to then interpret their symptoms as ALS….a prime example of a new and improved fear that develops to fuel the anxiety fire.
Where I personally find Sarno’s and actually any somatic theory interesting in relation to anxiety is in the idea that physical symptoms can be caused by a non organic causality. From my experience the problem with health anxiety is that people become totally and utterly fixated on the physical and totally miss seeing the far bigger picture. What I see time and time again is people who have years and years of poor anxiety management/ emotional issues/fear and black or white thinking under their belts who suddenly experience a stressor and who then start to get all these weird and wonderful physical symptoms kicking off….it is also no surprise that if that stressor is health related you can almost guarantee that health anxiety then develops. The problem is that people convince themselves that these symptoms have ‘come out of the blue’ and ‘how can it be anxiety when I’m not mentally anxious?’….they really struggle to take a step back from where they are at the moment and to consider where they are at the moment in light of all that has gone before. I think that a common trait amongst health anxiety sufferers is the tendency to always believe that they are right, to be suspicious of others and their motives and also to think that if a job is to be done well then it is us that needs to do it, when these traits are seen alongside the idea that the sufferer is actually losing control of their health it is quite easy to see how a health anxiety fixation can develop. What often prolongs this and makes it worse is that the typical sufferer will often have a typical frame of reference that they have applied to all the problems they have faced in their lives and when they apply this to the new worry it is redundant and powerless and the sufferer is just left in a state of bewilderment as they have no other tools to fall back on to solve the puzzle….I like the quote here that ‘problems cannot be solved on the same level of thinking that created them’.
I totally agree with you about the negative elements of visiting various forums. I did actually find a superb post on here about the concept of ‘forum identities’ and the like. I post a lot on anxietyzone and whilst I would love to believe that I do this for the love of my fellow man I also know this is bull****!....every post I write is basically written to me and is just me attempting to reassure myself that my beliefs are correct and valid…I’m not stupid, arrogant or misguided enough to believe for one moment that I am recovered if the first thing I do when I get to work is to check the forum…I know damn well that it is not healthy and it is not recovery BUT it is a better place than I was at 2 years ago, a year ago and a month ago, who knows what next week will bring…account deletion?...maybe!
Health anxiety is an identity Hillbilly, I fell for this and I see it over and over time and time again. Once the body scanning and symptom monitoring takes hold health anxiety becomes the best damn hobby in the world. If we had far more pressing things to do, a far happier and fulfilled life to live it would be pointless and redundant but if we don’t have those things then health anxiety will fill the void very nicely thank you…crikey, if you are physically, mentally and emotionally bored what better pastime is there than ensuring your survival against all the other people who have got this all so wrong….we know we are ill, we will get to the bottom of it and we will be proved right…a waste of time you say, rubbish, what better way to spend your precious time. We then start to embrace the identity. We start to make excuses, we cant do X Y or Z any longer because we are ill, we bookmark all those useful health sites in our browser and we start to search high and low for a cure or if not a cure at least a correct diagnose that is better than this ‘just anxiety’ explanation that we keep getting blown off with…yep, it could be lupus, fibro, ME, IBS, BFS, auto immune etc etc, why haven’t I been tested for those? We start to research all the best vitamins and supplements and often spend a fortune on stuff that we think will ‘make us better’…you do know that magnesium is excellent for twitching right..lol. Basically, before too long we become very good at ‘doing’ health anxiety we pick up all those behaviours that are expected of someone who is ill, sick or broken and we then totally buy into that mindset and all the while we totally fail to see the big elephant that sits in the middle of the room….we totally and utterly fail to comprehend that the origin of our problem is mental/emotional, the continuation of our problem is mental/emotional and that recovery therefore can only come from by addressing this from a mental/emotional perspective.
I have been on the merry-go-round for the best part of 2 years. I too though my symptoms came out of the blue and that I wasn’t anxious but were the result of a health scare stressor. It was only when I started to look beyond the physical and looked at the 20 years of my life before all this began that it started to become obvious that there was a bigger picture. When I looked at my hopes, aspirations, fears and coping strategies that I though on the base level served me so well and which made me such a ‘good’ person I came to see that these has basically put me on a one way path to the day I woke up with the twitching, buzzing, dizziness and depersonalisation. I’m still not fully recovered and I have the one step forward and two scenarios on regular occasions but I’m in a far better place than I was before all this started…yep, I twitch and I buzz but thanks to that I know far more about myself than I ever did before.
I agree with you that recovery is totally about rejecting the physical and stopping falling into the auto response bear traps that anxiety sets for us. I do get annoyed when people think that recovery or part recovery gives us all the answers. I see myself as no different from anyone else who suffers from health anxiety but the only difference is that I have CHOSEN to view myself as well and I have taken the leap of faith to 100% believe and buy into the fact that I am fundamentally well and that my body noise and symptoms are not me and therefore do not determine any concept of wellness for me. The leap of faith is the hardest thing to do as the trick that health anxiety plays is to make us think we know best and it is up to us to safeguard our health and if we ignore these symptoms it is going to be too late. Time and time again I would believe this BS and get drawn into the reassurance seeking and numerous doctor visits and time and time again afterwards I would feel the frustration and anger build as I knew I had fallen victim to health anxiety. I think that is what it is about in many ways…it is so easy to readily accept the badge of being sick, being the victim and being a sufferer and once we do this all is lost as we are just reaffirming the negative and illusionary aspects over and over. I believe that the golden point to remember with health anxiety is that control is only EVER recovered once we actually relinquish the control we think we have…the control that we hold onto and demand is nothing but a sham and the very core of what resigns us to further frustration and misery. I still twitch, I buzz, I ache and I still get the parathesia but I no longer feel the need to interpret these symptoms. These symptoms are not a representation of my mental mindset today and are not in any way determined by my current anxiety level rather they where determined by past thoughts and behaviours and that by carrying on these thoughts and behaviours can only fuel this further. I now recognise that these physical sensations are there because for what ever reason they need to be there and the day they don’t need to be there they will no doubt bugger off as swiftly as they arrived. When that day will be who knows? That is gods work and getting involved in gods work is a sure fire recipe for frustration, anger and fear….and that is where we came in.
Pan I know you from Anxiety Zone -- did you write the famous "Accepting the diagnosis" post?:)
I was going to highlight parts of this post that I felt were spot on but it turns out the whole thing is spot on. I see myself in everything you've written -- to a T, as if you wrote my mini bio or got into my head and figured me out. You have it exactly right and one aspect I really thought about was the identity of health anxiety and the boredom without it. The almost emptiness because you become your obsessions and your anxiety and it feels like there's very little else that comprises "you." At least that's how I feel. I feel like if I took away all my health anxiety, there'd be a nothing left behind. I have devoted so much effort and everything to this, to trying to "save" myself from disease that I don't know why I am bothering because I haven't a life to live outside of it. I am addicted to it, thinking "I can stop whenever I want to." And some tiny part inside me knows it's play acting, knows it's not real and that's almost why it keeps going. It is an identity.
I keep sitting here wondering if I have heart disease because I'd get short of breath or chest pain or weird smothering oppressive sensations in my chest and arm pain or whatever and I don't stop and look at my history, I don't consider my whole life. I consider only that symptom in that moment as if it is being felt for the first time in a completely healthy person. But I am not completely healthy mentally and haven't been for probably 30 years. When pain or shortness of breath or whatever happens I can't connect it to my past so every time it happens I think it has nothing to do with anxiety. There's a serious disconnection there. I am not having a panic attack so whatever I feel can't possibly be from anxiety. But I'm being told that it can be, it is. All the anxiety stored in my mind and body is continually working on me and causing symptoms and they only SEEM to be separate but they're all connected. I'm not able to accept that and I go looking for the physical cause instead of looking at the elephant in the room -- the intense unrelenting worry, fear, anxiety, catastrophizing minute after minute day after day year after year. |
| Logan |
Posted - 05/18/2009 : 08:13:16
Just spent the weekend with my mother who is a classic example of someone who had generalized anxiety in her younger years that has now shifted to "health anxiety." If I had a dollar for every symptom - every TMS equivalent - that she complained of to me, my husband and my dad over the past few days, I could solve this country's recession.
The irony is my dad has bone marrow cancer and didn't say one word about being uncomfortable or having to undergo chemo and other painful procedures.
Here's a quick list of my mom's equivalents: foot swelling, water retention, dizziness, weakness, fatigue, foot pain, heart palpitations, sleeplessness, dry skin, acid reflux, difficulty swallowing, food allergies, pollen allergies etc. etc. etc.
Every time she treats one symptom with surgery or drugs, two others pop up like a demonic game of whack-a-mole. The M.D.s are obliging her in this game; you should see the literal baggies full of prescriptions she's on.
Of course, I've tried to tell my mom about Sarno and TMS. I even wrote down the book titles so she could check them out from the library but she didn't take me seriously. She listened to me on the phone for years when I suffered from neck/back/shoulder pain. She saw how I got completely better, went back to exercising, took up biking and skiing etc. but of course, her pain and symptoms are "real."
These symptoms are about all she has to talk about. They are her hobby, if you will. I've tried to encourage her to get back into dancing and drawing, but she'd rather not. My siblings and dad and I have tried to get her to walk across the street to the community rec center where she might swim, do aerobics etc but no, she'd rather sit around the house.
I am so glad that I have kicked TMS and not given in to the understandable compulsion to be a passive recipient of Western medicine. Who doesn't want to be doted on? Catered to? Pampered?
But Hillbilly is right. You can't let TMS become your identity. Get better and then get the hell off this board and out in the real world. Move, breath, get new hobbies and interests.
Then make an occasional appearance on here to remind yourself that this latest twinge or whatever is merely TMS trying to find a chink in your mindbody armor. And/or come back every so often as a kind of boddhisatva, someone who says, I found a way out of this miserable cycle and so can you! That's what I try to do.
Sarno's books + journaling + Facing the Fire by John Lee + punching bag = pain free |
| sarita |
Posted - 05/17/2009 : 17:44:02
its really a good post pan...it helped me. a lot. |
| sarita |
Posted - 05/17/2009 : 13:14:11
quote from pan:
yep, it could be lupus, fibro, ME, IBS, BFS, auto immune etc etc, why haven’t I been tested for those? We start to research all the best vitamins and supplements and often spend a fortune on stuff that we think will ‘make us better’…you do know that magnesium is excellent for twitching right..lol. Basically, before too long we become very good at ‘doing’ health anxiety we pick up all those behaviours that are expected of someone who is ill, sick or broken and we then totally buy into that mindset and all the while we totally fail to see the big elephant that sits in the middle of the room….we totally and utterly fail to comprehend that the origin of our problem is mental/emotional, the continuation of our problem is mental/emotional and that recovery therefore can only come from by addressing this from a mental/emotional perspective.
you are right. a true liberation can only come by addressing and understanding the underlying causes for this fears, its a long process and i still have bad days, but i am finally getting truly better...
i think hypochondria needs two treatments: one that goes to the core of why you dwell in that fear, making you aware of things you dont really know,
and later,
one which teaches you to take control over your thoughts, but thats ONLY possible if you are aware of how harmful and damaging bad thoughts are, and you only become aware of that if you look back at your life, and see how your thinking, personality, experiences, fears etc are shaped you and your life...there comes a moment when you say, ENOUGH.
sarno is a doctor, not a psychiatrist, and yet the psychiatrists i saw didnt help a bit compared to sarnos theory. we are all EMOTION. to treat emotionally induced disorders with antidepressants, with biofeedback, is all symptom treatment...
only since i am trying to reach back to the source, am i getting better.
|
| JoeyT |
Posted - 05/15/2009 : 14:45:03
Great post Pan
It was almost a year ago now that my twitching, buzzing, heart palps, feeling of brain fog ect. started.. I was sure I had MS...I think back know and I feel so stupid for thinking that.. I wasted all of last summer worried sick literaly about that...My Neuro after Brain MRI came back clean said I do not have MS. OK well maybe I have fibro, I am having a hard time sleeping that is a symptom I have all of this unexplained pains, now not only am I twitching but my limbs jerk from time to time.. Maybe I have Parkinsons. I am about the same age as Micheal J Fox when he caught it. Oh NO I better call the doc again. Why is my leg feeling so weak and my lower back hurting. I better get a lower back MRI to make sure nothing is wrong...
MRI say I have 3 bulging or herniated disc...I say to myself well that explains a lot of my problems. I am going to have to really watch what I do from know on I have a bad back. I hope it does get so bad I will not be able to work. I hope I won't lose control of my bowels and bladder. I read that could happen.. On man what am I going to do now....
You see once I found something wrong with me that is what I fixated on. And of course it never got better...I am still struggling with this part but I am in a better place mentally than about 9 months ago...
Since I have been focused on back issues my other symptoms have reduced by a lot. I have some twitching on occasion but I don't focus my worry on them. I have no fear of MS or ALS but I still trying get in my head my back is not damaged..I would have been easier without the MRI report, but the health anxiety folks like me would have been worried about a tumor on the spine.. |
| pan |
Posted - 05/15/2009 : 14:35:44
quote:
Originally posted by Hillbilly
severson,
The greatest help was getting advice from someone who has lived through it, not just a book or some person on a forum. Someone looked me in the eye and made me confess to coddling my symptoms, shrinking away, and basically being irresponsible. That's what is amazing also. I have always hated being confronted and talked down to, but somehow I knew this person was brilliant, had my number, and there was nothing I could do but obey and get better, no excuses.
Pan,
I know you are trying so hard to regain your life and identity, but what you may not realize is that the identity you put forth before your symptoms wasn't getting it done. Discovering, acknowledging, and putting forth for public consumption the real you is the only way to have a clear conscience and to keep your anxiety symptoms at bay — forever. The real you is waiting to be seen. Fear is the only barrier. That's it in a nutshell.
I am posting a link to something I read a long time ago. It is a thread from another "medical advice site" that deals with whatever symptoms a person is fearing. The person to pay attention to is ldman, who became crushed by anxiety while in med school. His story is my story. His story sums it all up. He sat around and cried and worried and wondered and read and hoped and fretted, and prayed and wished that he could just be his old self. Only his old self wasn't so damn cool, at least not to him. As a med student, he was exposed to all sorts of weird things, aberrations from the norm, constantly reading about diseases and drugs and seeing people who were ill.
Probably he wasn't a popular youngster. There is a reference to being obese in the thread, I believe. At any rate, this guy never heard of TMS, or at least doesn't mention it if he did. He praises the Linden Method for helping him see the light. I bought that damn thing as well, but it was too disjointed for me to follow. So he finally just stopped feeding his anxiety three squares a day and letting it sleep in the garage, and it finally left like a stray, unwanted pet.
Enjoy!
http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Mental-Health/what-is-wrong-with-meanxiety/show/268473
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Well, the point is I am not trying to regain 'that' life. I accepted a long time ago that whilst my symptoms where a physical manifestation they where actually there due to a variety of emotional reasons....reasons that if not addressed and if reverted back to will just doom me to the loop forever and a day. I'm not in the symptom fixing game anymore. Yep, I understand what you are saying. The plea heard time and time again is that if only things could return to normal and the symptoms stop then we will be fine again and our life we be reclaimed and we can move on. This is missing the point and falling into another anxiety bear trap....life was never normal and/or fine and to want to return to that is to want to return to the very thing that the symptoms are often rebelling against. Like I say, confusing the emotional as the physical is what stops real progress. |
| Hillbilly |
Posted - 05/15/2009 : 14:06:58
severson,
The greatest help was getting advice from someone who has lived through it, not just a book or some person on a forum. Someone looked me in the eye and made me confess to coddling my symptoms, shrinking away, and basically being irresponsible. That's what is amazing also. I have always hated being confronted and talked down to, but somehow I knew this person was brilliant, had my number, and there was nothing I could do but obey and get better, no excuses.
Pan,
I know you are trying so hard to regain your life and identity, but what you may not realize is that the identity you put forth before your symptoms wasn't getting it done. Discovering, acknowledging, and putting forth for public consumption the real you is the only way to have a clear conscience and to keep your anxiety symptoms at bay — forever. The real you is waiting to be seen. Fear is the only barrier. That's it in a nutshell.
I am posting a link to something I read a long time ago. It is a thread from another "medical advice site" that deals with whatever symptoms a person is fearing. The person to pay attention to is ldman, who became crushed by anxiety while in med school. His story is my story. His story sums it all up. He sat around and cried and worried and wondered and read and hoped and fretted, and prayed and wished that he could just be his old self. Only his old self wasn't so damn cool, at least not to him. As a med student, he was exposed to all sorts of weird things, aberrations from the norm, constantly reading about diseases and drugs and seeing people who were ill.
Probably he wasn't a popular youngster. There is a reference to being obese in the thread, I believe. At any rate, this guy never heard of TMS, or at least doesn't mention it if he did. He praises the Linden Method for helping him see the light. I bought that damn thing as well, but it was too disjointed for me to follow. So he finally just stopped feeding his anxiety three squares a day and letting it sleep in the garage, and it finally left like a stray, unwanted pet.
Enjoy!
http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Mental-Health/what-is-wrong-with-meanxiety/show/268473
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| pan |
Posted - 05/15/2009 : 08:35:34
Hi Hillbilly
I am really of the belief that health anxiety is due to the misinterpretation and subsequent over-catastrophisation of physical anxiety symptoms/sensations which in turn produce frustration, anger and fear. As you have outlined quite succinctly and correctly the physical effect that anxiety has on the body is pretty well documented and understood BUT, the real stumbling block arises when people are advised that the causality of these symptoms is actually emotional/mental in origin. It appears that people really struggle to accept this concept. I do agree with you on some level that all anxiety conditions must become health anxiety as if we do not stress, worry and fixate on the symptoms then the symptoms do indeed lose their power and are no longer fit for purpose….the classic example of this is with the concept of symptom shifting and the changing of disease fixation etc, this is incredibly common (if not a defining factor) with health anxiety as when the sufferer becomes conditioned to eventually accepting of their symptoms a new and improved symptom will crop up to keep the symptom>interpretation>response>fear loop going. You only need see the number of MS worriers who resolve that issue only to then interpret their symptoms as ALS….a prime example of a new and improved fear that develops to fuel the anxiety fire.
Where I personally find Sarno’s and actually any somatic theory interesting in relation to anxiety is in the idea that physical symptoms can be caused by a non organic causality. From my experience the problem with health anxiety is that people become totally and utterly fixated on the physical and totally miss seeing the far bigger picture. What I see time and time again is people who have years and years of poor anxiety management/ emotional issues/fear and black or white thinking under their belts who suddenly experience a stressor and who then start to get all these weird and wonderful physical symptoms kicking off….it is also no surprise that if that stressor is health related you can almost guarantee that health anxiety then develops. The problem is that people convince themselves that these symptoms have ‘come out of the blue’ and ‘how can it be anxiety when I’m not mentally anxious?’….they really struggle to take a step back from where they are at the moment and to consider where they are at the moment in light of all that has gone before. I think that a common trait amongst health anxiety sufferers is the tendency to always believe that they are right, to be suspicious of others and their motives and also to think that if a job is to be done well then it is us that needs to do it, when these traits are seen alongside the idea that the sufferer is actually losing control of their health it is quite easy to see how a health anxiety fixation can develop. What often prolongs this and makes it worse is that the typical sufferer will often have a typical frame of reference that they have applied to all the problems they have faced in their lives and when they apply this to the new worry it is redundant and powerless and the sufferer is just left in a state of bewilderment as they have no other tools to fall back on to solve the puzzle….I like the quote here that ‘problems cannot be solved on the same level of thinking that created them’.
I totally agree with you about the negative elements of visiting various forums. I did actually find a superb post on here about the concept of ‘forum identities’ and the like. I post a lot on anxietyzone and whilst I would love to believe that I do this for the love of my fellow man I also know this is bull****!....every post I write is basically written to me and is just me attempting to reassure myself that my beliefs are correct and valid…I’m not stupid, arrogant or misguided enough to believe for one moment that I am recovered if the first thing I do when I get to work is to check the forum…I know damn well that it is not healthy and it is not recovery BUT it is a better place than I was at 2 years ago, a year ago and a month ago, who knows what next week will bring…account deletion?...maybe!
Health anxiety is an identity Hillbilly, I fell for this and I see it over and over time and time again. Once the body scanning and symptom monitoring takes hold health anxiety becomes the best damn hobby in the world. If we had far more pressing things to do, a far happier and fulfilled life to live it would be pointless and redundant but if we don’t have those things then health anxiety will fill the void very nicely thank you…crikey, if you are physically, mentally and emotionally bored what better pastime is there than ensuring your survival against all the other people who have got this all so wrong….we know we are ill, we will get to the bottom of it and we will be proved right…a waste of time you say, rubbish, what better way to spend your precious time. We then start to embrace the identity. We start to make excuses, we cant do X Y or Z any longer because we are ill, we bookmark all those useful health sites in our browser and we start to search high and low for a cure or if not a cure at least a correct diagnose that is better than this ‘just anxiety’ explanation that we keep getting blown off with…yep, it could be lupus, fibro, ME, IBS, BFS, auto immune etc etc, why haven’t I been tested for those? We start to research all the best vitamins and supplements and often spend a fortune on stuff that we think will ‘make us better’…you do know that magnesium is excellent for twitching right..lol. Basically, before too long we become very good at ‘doing’ health anxiety we pick up all those behaviours that are expected of someone who is ill, sick or broken and we then totally buy into that mindset and all the while we totally fail to see the big elephant that sits in the middle of the room….we totally and utterly fail to comprehend that the origin of our problem is mental/emotional, the continuation of our problem is mental/emotional and that recovery therefore can only come from by addressing this from a mental/emotional perspective.
I have been on the merry-go-round for the best part of 2 years. I too though my symptoms came out of the blue and that I wasn’t anxious but were the result of a health scare stressor. It was only when I started to look beyond the physical and looked at the 20 years of my life before all this began that it started to become obvious that there was a bigger picture. When I looked at my hopes, aspirations, fears and coping strategies that I though on the base level served me so well and which made me such a ‘good’ person I came to see that these has basically put me on a one way path to the day I woke up with the twitching, buzzing, dizziness and depersonalisation. I’m still not fully recovered and I have the one step forward and two scenarios on regular occasions but I’m in a far better place than I was before all this started…yep, I twitch and I buzz but thanks to that I know far more about myself than I ever did before.
I agree with you that recovery is totally about rejecting the physical and stopping falling into the auto response bear traps that anxiety sets for us. I do get annoyed when people think that recovery or part recovery gives us all the answers. I see myself as no different from anyone else who suffers from health anxiety but the only difference is that I have CHOSEN to view myself as well and I have taken the leap of faith to 100% believe and buy into the fact that I am fundamentally well and that my body noise and symptoms are not me and therefore do not determine any concept of wellness for me. The leap of faith is the hardest thing to do as the trick that health anxiety plays is to make us think we know best and it is up to us to safeguard our health and if we ignore these symptoms it is going to be too late. Time and time again I would believe this BS and get drawn into the reassurance seeking and numerous doctor visits and time and time again afterwards I would feel the frustration and anger build as I knew I had fallen victim to health anxiety. I think that is what it is about in many ways…it is so easy to readily accept the badge of being sick, being the victim and being a sufferer and once we do this all is lost as we are just reaffirming the negative and illusionary aspects over and over. I believe that the golden point to remember with health anxiety is that control is only EVER recovered once we actually relinquish the control we think we have…the control that we hold onto and demand is nothing but a sham and the very core of what resigns us to further frustration and misery. I still twitch, I buzz, I ache and I still get the parathesia but I no longer feel the need to interpret these symptoms. These symptoms are not a representation of my mental mindset today and are not in any way determined by my current anxiety level rather they where determined by past thoughts and behaviours and that by carrying on these thoughts and behaviours can only fuel this further. I now recognise that these physical sensations are there because for what ever reason they need to be there and the day they don’t need to be there they will no doubt bugger off as swiftly as they arrived. When that day will be who knows? That is gods work and getting involved in gods work is a sure fire recipe for frustration, anger and fear….and that is where we came in.
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| severson |
Posted - 05/15/2009 : 06:46:49
Hillbilly, Great post. I have read many of your posts in the past and can thoroughly relate to your situation that initiated your pain problem...feeling super trapped etc. My question is, what do you feel was the most important factor that led to your awareness and subsequent recovery? |
| Dor |
Posted - 05/15/2009 : 05:32:07
Excellent post Hillbilly and very wise indeed.
Dor |
| sarita |
Posted - 05/15/2009 : 05:31:14
hey hillbilly!
you are right in many things but let me tell you that this specific forum is amazing medicine for my hypochondria, as are the books of sarno. its very reassuring. and you learn SO many tools to reshape your thinking, learn that you are not alone any many more things.
just my feeling- although on a long run, its a different story.
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| Hillbilly |
Posted - 05/14/2009 : 20:43:56
Pan,
What is the difference in your mind with health anxiety or garden variety anxiety, say panic attacks, social anxiety, etc.? The health fixation is very understandable for anyone with strong somatic symptoms, and this is what, unfortunately, is the fuel for the fire. The basic issue is that the nervous system overreacts to a stimulus of alarm, and eventually the alarm bells go off all the time, putting the person in a constant state of arousal, depleting cortisol, and generally causing havoc. The symptoms are various, which leads to different "physical" labels: irritable bowel syndrome, TMS, mitral valve prolapse, and on it goes. All anxiety conditions eventually become health anxiety or they would quickly burn themselves out and die of their own inanity. It is the bodily focus and analysis that keeps the body on alert.
It is my sincere and oft-stated opinion that what Dr. Sarno is attempting to treat is nothing more than an anxiety condition, use your own label, and that the different labels serve little purpose other than to find a place to begin with treatment. I am interested to know what advice you might give to others who are going through what you are. It may interest you to know that Sarno isn't the first person to try to treat anxiety conditions by mining the unconscious in search of repression. It was all but abandoned in the 1960's, because the rate of recovery was so poor. It continues today mainly because once a person gets his Freud patch at psychology camp, he must apply what he knows to make his living, so there are stragglers out there.
I have also found that visiting, much less moderating, forums dealing with anxiety is not helpful in the long run. That goes for this one as well. How can someone return to a life before anxiety derailed them if he/she is spending time thinking and writing about it? It almost becomes an identity of sorts. How do I know this? I did it. I constantly logged on to sites to search for help, to seek support, to understand what in hell was going on in my mind and body, and it just made it worse. The lady who helped me the most was wont to say. "Don't take financial advice from a homeless man." What that means is that unless you are pushing people toward the cure, you are enabling irresponsible behavior by letting them go on and on and on about some symptom that doesn't really mean squat to their health, but it hurts or feels weird, so the fixation goes on.
I got better, and I mean all the way better, when I committed every second of every minute of every day to doing what I did before and damning the symptoms. Your thoughts?
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| sarita |
Posted - 05/14/2009 : 17:38:06
hey pan!
i once visited anxieyzone for my own issues.
if you are a moderator, can you manage to make a big advertisment about the divided mind? it will help some, i am sure of it. |
| pan |
Posted - 05/14/2009 : 16:55:24
Yes, I am a mod on AnxietyZone.
Yep, you are quite correct in saying that there is a lot of TMS amongst the people who post on there....my thoughts on the matter is that anxiety has to be somatic by it's nature and therefore the TMS concept is quite salient to many people on there.
Yes, if you read my posts on there you will see that I do constantly talk about moving away from the physical (I suffer from health anxiety) and looking beyond the physicality of the symptoms and looking at the overall emotional and mental background to anxiety BUT it can be very hard to convince people of the validity of this concept.
Basically, I think that every health anxiety sufferer has to take a leap of faith and totally repudiate the physical and banish the sick, ill and broken mindset....some people are in a better place than others to do this I think. |
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