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icelikeaninja
USA
316 Posts |
 Posted - 06/26/2013 : 13:00:34
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We live in an age where diseases from yesterday no longer affect us, but still we suffer. I think I'd rather a tiger chase me then get Tms.
Yesterday I went on a hypochondriac message board and it is amazing what symptoms these people have in the course of a day. I believe I am because I related to so many things and people on there.
The conditioning, the obsession, compusivity. It even gave me pains I never felt just reading it.
I had a cyst removed from my ankle maybe 6 years ago. Last summer it looked like it was coming back just based on the coloring . As a result I checked it ever two hours and it looked different every single time, I even took pictures because I couldn't believe it myself!
We see so many commercials for drugs/marketing that it is making us sick. I was born in the 80s but even growing up I remember the Marlboro man and bugs bunny beating the crap out of Daffy Duck. I remember every other commercial was advertising those mail order schools, mount airy lodge, Sally Struthers, Lincoln logs.
Now it's just embrel, ambien, and many others.
It's making me sick to watch. Sorry for the rant people. I am finally getting this concept again I am feeling so much better but feel like some obstacles need to be addressed. |
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pan
United Kingdom
173 Posts |
Posted - 06/26/2013 : 13:40:30
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I had a huge huge issue with health anxiety about 4 years ago and overcame this to a large degree but strongly believe that my current symptom and probable TMS is but another manifestation. The stalwarts of health anxiety are physical anxiety symptoms, somatic amplification of body noise, fear due to over catastrophisation and a subsequent over stimulation of the nervous system.
...sounds familiar in many ways.
Wake me up with your amphetamine blast
Take me by the collar and throw me out into the world
Rock me gently & send me dreaming of something tender
I was brought here to pay homage to the beat surrender
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 06/26/2013 : 14:08:16
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Read Steveo's book chapter on memes.
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“Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that
other people have of you is inauthentic living – another unconscious role the ego plays.” -- Ekhart Tolle |
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jennypeanut
103 Posts |
Posted - 06/26/2013 : 15:49:40
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I struggle with health anxiety. I too get annoyed with the Big Pharma ads. It's really unbelievable how bad it's gotten. I have stopped watching TV live so I don't have to see that crap.
Stay away from the hypochondria message boards. One of the problems with people who obsess over health is that they constantly want reassurance - be it from a Dr or a friend or a message board. They want someone to read it and say "oh I had the exact same weird symptom. It is nothing". But then someone like you or me reads it and we find out that people are worried that a paper cut will turn into a flesh eating bacteria disease (I actually saw this once, LOL) and then in the back of your mind you store that crazy idea and then boom- you start worrying about the paper cut you get the next day.
Anyway, I like the part you say, Pan, about the over amplification of body noise. I'm assuming by "body noise" you mean regular bodily functions or small issues. Well, anyway, I totally relate to that and all you said regarding health anxiety.
I wonder how many people with TMS have a dual problem with this too. |
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icelikeaninja
USA
316 Posts |
Posted - 06/26/2013 : 16:18:02
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Jenny I think everyone with Tms has it to some degree.
Body noise is right. I thought I had aids once when I was a 16 year old virgin. Somebody who was sweating bumped against me at the gym. ( my father died from aids complications) so it's fitting to think this. Even though I knew how people get it.
Forever I have been using tissues to lift up toilet seats at my relatives houses.
Seeing my dad in stomach cancer pain was what made me fear pain since I was 8.
We all have our little neurotic problems some worst than others. I got so scared seeing those hypo message boards that I pictured myself as Howard Hughes. This crap runs in my family as well so I've seen it.
But I'd think Tms is a close relative of hypo.
On another note , what's the deal with Steve's book? I keep hearing good things and keep procrastinating . Let me order it now . So much has changed since I was here, new authors, new concepts, really is exciting
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Back2-It
USA
438 Posts |
Posted - 06/26/2013 : 22:50:04
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Health anxiety is anxiety is "TMS".
Work on and understand anxiety and it all goes away.
"Bridges Freeze Before Roads" |
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chickenbone
Panama
398 Posts |
Posted - 06/27/2013 : 13:04:29
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EXCELLENT POSTS EVERYONE!!! I struggle terribly with this too. When I hear of someone else's catastrophic fantasies,it seems so funny, but I do exactly the same thing myself.
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icelikeaninja
USA
316 Posts |
Posted - 06/27/2013 : 14:04:03
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Well as a result of me being me, I emailed my therapist asking for her schedule in July (who knows vacations on her end)
It was the hypochondria board that made me do it. I saw myself in everyone and life is to short of think you have everything lol. |
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balto
839 Posts |
Posted - 06/27/2013 : 20:59:38
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Just want to share an article
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Stop Being a Hypochondriac4 ways to trust your body more
Lilly was in her thirties and had experienced, in her mind, just about every major illness you've heard of (and a few you haven't). When I met her, she was almost permanently convinced that her immediate future held unspeakable medical horrors.
The hypochondriac doesn't want to be ill, but nor do they want to be dismissed as 'just imagining it'; it's a tormenting psychological catch-22. The paradox of hypochondria is that the sufferer often knows they are a hypochondriac even whilst maintaining they are justified in believing they are ill. This kind of 'double think' is at the heart of many obsessions. Merely trying to reassure someone directly seldom works.
Unsurprisingly, research shows that hypochondria runs in families. Family members 'teach' each other attitudes (or 'memes') (1) which then get passed on again.
It also won't surprise you that people are more likely to become a hypochondriac if they have witnessed serious illness (2). If you experience something horrible, your brain may wrongly tag the event as being much more likely to occur again. Probability gets all mixed up with possibility (which might be very small anyway) (3).
So, was Lilly's hypochondria typical?
Hypochondria; fearing the worst
A key feature of hypochondria is the inability to be reassured by relatives, friends, or even medical experts for any length of time. Medical tests can become addictive but only serve to reassure momentarily:
"What if they missed something?" or "What if they mixed up the results?"
Lilly was the same. She'd be okay for a time, but sooner or later the doubts would grow back like recalcitrant weeds blocking the sunshine from giving what a garden really needs to flourish.
Her hypochondria was classic. Her mother had always been extremely anxious about health, and when Lilly was twenty-five, her father had been diagnosed with cancer and tragically died a few weeks later. Predictably, this was a huge shock to Lilly and her fear of illness greatly intensified after this, rippling out to affect her family, social, and love life.
"My husband is being driven to distraction and I worry that my eldest son Sam is starting to talk about his health; he's only four!"
There is something I try to avoid when working with anxious obsessions and I think you should avoid it, too.
What doesn't work
The worst advice is: "Try not to think about it." Why? Because trying not to think about something is still focussing on it. Distraction is a great technique for diminishing anxieties, but it needs to happen in such a way that the distraction feels natural. Otherwise, it's just a case of: "I know I'm trying to distract myself from the fear of what that headache may be..."
Anxiety is like water. It needs a container, a thought to give it shape; a channel to flow through. That 'shape' may be insecurity in a relationship, fear of the boss, hypochondria, or anything. If you try to take away the container (by advising they try not to think about what they fear), the water is still there. To cure someone of an overwhelming worry, we need to deal with the source of the worry (the feelings), not just the container (the thoughts).
How Lilly stopped being a hypochondriac
Cognitive-behavioural psychotherapists may try to treat hypochondria by getting sufferers to analyze and alter their thoughts. Certainly, challenging negative thoughts can be extremely powerful, but it's not the thoughts so much as the feelings that are the problem. Once you deal with the feelings, the thoughts take care of themselves. I asked Lilly when she really worried.
"Well, now I'm terrified I've got multiple sclerosis, I have been back and forth having various checks for this - all negative. But it's weird; why would I be getting these symptoms?"
"Are you more likely to worry about your health when you are generally stressed?"
"Yes. We went on holiday last summer and it was great and I actually didn't think about it at all."
I talked to her about the fact that it doesn't matter what you think so much as what you feel when you think it. It's fine to think about horrible possibilities if you feel relaxed when you do so. Now that's a weird idea.
"You have a wonderfully powerful imagination!" I told her. "But you need to stop getting sucked in by it. Stephen King writes horror, but he can imagine and think about these scary things without actually being scared by them! I myself can imagine an earthquake and being swallowed up by it - and I can fanaticize about this without becoming scared."
Hypochondriacs (and all worriers) fantasize about bad stuff, look for any signs that seem to confirm the fantasies as real, then believe the fantasy. Next, Lilly told me exactly how she worried.
Learning to relax whilst thinking the worst
Lilly was awakening in the early hours, imagining her symptoms, and bringing them on 'hypnotically'. She told me she'd wake up and then get the symptoms, rather than being woken by them. She'd imagine herself getting sick, ill, weak, becoming incapacitated; eventually she'd imagine her own death and how her children would be devastated and how her friends would describe the tragedy.
Wow! That's a lot to 'try not to think about'. So...I encouraged her to think about it. Psychotherapists call this a 'paradoxical intervention' - you can call it 'crazy' if you like, but it worked.
It's easier and much more powerful to disentangle feeling from thoughts than to try to stop the thoughts directly. So I encouraged Lilly to relax profoundly deeply and, whilst totally relaxed, to imagine her usual fears over and over as one possibility (of many) projected on a white board. She could then have the thoughts with the fearful feelings greatly diminished. Once the feelings are gone, the thoughts naturally become much less compelling because there is nothing left to 'power' them.
Lilly was amazed how she could relax whilst imagining this. I set her this 'exercise in imagination' as a therapeutic task. She was to awaken at four and relax, then think about what it would be like to become ill whilst remaining relaxed. Pretty soon, she started sleeping through and she found herself misusing her imagination less and less as, well, without the fear...what was the point? This is just one strategy we used (I also helped her feel less traumatized by the sudden death of her father years before), but by focussing on the feelings rather than the thoughts, her therapy was rapid and effective.
If you are troubled by hypochondria, try these tips:
1) Relax, relax, and relax
Remember what I said above about the emotions driving the thoughts being like water needing to find a container to give it shape. Well, the more you relax, the less your imagination will need to conjure up stuff to give shape to anxieties. If you are new to relaxation and want a taster, click on the free audio session below.
2) Beware of self-diagnosis
The Internet is wonderful in some ways, but 'looking up' your symptoms to 'see what you've got' is not a great idea. I've actually done this when someone close to me thought they were sick. The fact is that just about any symptom you care to imagine can be linked to virtually any disease or condition. What's more, when you know what symptoms to look for, you may well find them. That's right: people can bring on their symptoms (to some extent). So ignorance really can be bliss because 'knowledge' may be no such thing.
Leave the diagnosis to experts who can look at your health in a wider context. My friend was convinced they had bladder cancer from self-diagnosis via websites... Turned out they'd been eating too much beetroot.
3) Trust your body to look out for you
Remember and reflect on the fact that your body is your friend. It is always looking out for you. Its purpose is to keep you safe. Have some faith in it and take care of it.
Research unexpectedly shows that hypochondriacs are less likely to look after their health (4). It seems that many hypochondriacs smoke, drink (perhaps in an attempt to calm frayed nerves), and take little exercise (for fear of injury?). Look after your body and trust it to do its best for you.
4) Give your body a break
During a flight, nervous passengers tend to be hyper-aware of changes in the sounds, the speed, the amount the plane rattles during turbulence, the expressions on the faces of the cabin crew: "Oh no, what does that mean?" Being hyper-aware of every little change and then assigning scary meanings to those changes is a fast track to self-torment.
Hypochondriacs will be hyper-aware of every ache and pain, a muscle stiffness here, a dizzy spell after standing up too quickly there. Your body is supposed to alter and have variation of feeling. It's a self-regulating system and there are going to be natural and harmless changes in the way you experience your physical self.
Your body is always sending messages to your brain and vice versa. The vast majority of these messages are innocuous. Aches, pains, dizziness, stomach gurgling, pins and needles, and headaches are the symptoms of being alive. Most of the time, these sensations signify that your body is just doing its thing the way it's supposed to. Hypochondria happens when people assume that any bodily signal is a portent to disaster when it isn't at all.
As you begin to worry less, you'll start to focus outward, engage in life, and feel more connected to other people. Overcoming hypochondria will be a major step to developing as a person in all kinds of ways.
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No, I don't know everything. I'm just here to share my experience. |
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dgreen97
122 Posts |
Posted - 06/28/2013 : 09:20:39
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This sounds pretty much exactly like me. Seeking reassurance is a short term anxiety reliever but the fear always comes back so that doesn't work. My dad injured his back in 1993 and I grew up with him where he had back pain all the time, so subconsciously I wonder if that affected me and thats why Im more susceptible to chronic pain in my eyes (and my feet for that matter). seeing him in pain every single day for the last 20 years I think really affected me, and I was one of the main people he talked to about the pain so I heard negative talk and stuff about it like "my life sucks, its over" he became a very negative person after suffering with chronic pain for years and years.
I think i feared subconsciously that i would have the same chronicity as him with pain so my anxieties created that in my mind. That and my anxiety runs rampant a lot of the time so I need to calm way down.. I dont even know how unrelaxed I really am because it seems normal to me.
quote:
"What if they missed something?" or "What if they mixed up the results?"
Definitely have done this many many times.. you can always create doubt in your mind as to why you have pain if you want to. Even if a TMS doctor says to you "your pain is psychological 100% positive" if you want to doubt it you easily can. In fact, my psychologist told me that shes 99.9% sure my pain is caused by psychological factors and not physical issues but yet I still have doubt creeping back in that I have to fight off when Im having bad days.
Ive been under a ton of stress in the past 2-3 weeks and it makes sense that I have more eye pain but I still see the thoughts come around making me want to fear the condition.. have to fight these off pretty frequently.
Thanks a lot for posting this article is pretty much describes me in detail. |
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chickenbone
Panama
398 Posts |
Posted - 06/28/2013 : 10:54:55
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| Balto, although this approach sounds good and a lot of what is said about hypochondria is true, this approach simply did not work for me. I think it is because this is primarily a CBT approach that deals only with the conscious mind alone. This type of approach does not work for a lot of people. |
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dgreen97
122 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2013 : 18:30:23
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balto where did you find that article? it sounds exactly like me and id like to read more. i believe i brought on the pulling sensation symptoms i have because i read about them over and over. you see, the hallmark of convergence insufficiency, what i was diagnosed with before and then no treatment worked for it at all, is "pulling sensation in the eyes" so i saw that and said to myself "this must be it.. i have this pulling sensation in my eyes and it must be convergence insufficiency". it makes the symptom real in your mind and then you believe thats what you have but its not true. by worrying about the pulling sensation and "looking" for it every day almost every moment of the day, you actually create the symptom.
i read a good article here: http://saveyourself.ca/articles/pain-is-an-opinion.php
this article has been mentioned on this site before. the author states this:
quote:
So, if you think there’s something wrong with your eyes, they may well start to hurt. This demonstrates that “pain is an opinion” rather well. That is, pain intensity depends surprisingly heavily on how dangerous/scary/disturbing the situation seem to us, on our “opinion of the state of the organism.” If you think the organism (you) is safe, pain will be dulled. If you think you’re in danger, then pain will be more painful.
This is clearly not the same thing as being “all in the head.” It’s pain being affected — dialed up or down — by what’s in the head, both consciously and unconsciously.
My optometrist described the following scenario (paraphrasing):
Someone can “discover” an eye problem they’ve had for twenty years and start hurting. They accidentally cover one eye while watching television, happen to notice that the vision in the free eye is a bit off. It’s been off all along — almost everyone is at least a wee bit astigmatic, but the brain completely takes care of that when both eyes are open. But if they notice it with an eye covered, a week later they’re in my office complaining of blurred vision and an ache.
Fascinating. And exactly like the mind game in low back pain. As with back trouble, I reckon that the idea of eye trouble is just a bit more freaky, and thus usually more sensitive to psychological factors.
Not only is worry generally excessive and unnecessary, we can see here that it is actually counter-productive and painful. (Which is worrying!) It’s really quite a thing: here I was getting anxious about my right eye when it’s only problem was being less awesome than my left. Good grief.
Honestly, I really became a little obssessed with it in the last couple weeks. I “discovered” that it wasn’t as good as the left, and started checking it constantly.
And so it started to ache.
I am impressed again by how easily I am fooled by the illusions of neurology, even when I am well aware of them. It is becoming clear to me — if I look at it with my left eye, anyway — that we need to know the basics of pain neurology quite well indeed in order to acquire the confidence required to see through those illusions. I was able to quickly focus on the nature of the problem when it was explained to me … but despite all my knowledge about musculoskeletal problems, I was blind to it without a bit of help.
that pretty much says it all. its kind of the same thing that happened to me. im sure ive been astigmatic my entire life but only when my eyes started to hurt did i go to the doctor, find out i had teh astigmatism, and then i started checking it every day. i remember wearing glasses and taking the glasses on and off, on and off constantly throughout the day looking for the difference in vision. the glasses didn't help at all and i tried like 6 differnent lens prescriptions for farsightedness correction, astigmatism, prism, etc.
i really believe if i hadn't googled those symptoms i was having of the pulling sensation, i would have never come across this information and i wouldn't have started looking for it. but i felt like i really couldn't help myself and i worried about it constantly thinking something was wrong with my eyes when there wasn't anything wrong... |
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dgreen97
122 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2013 : 18:31:39
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| and the pain intensity being amplified by how dangerous something seems to us makes perfect sense too.. i don't think the eyestrain would have become chronic if i had got some when playing a video game at home while i was relaxing. but since it happened at work, i freaked out thinking that i have to do this for 8 hours a day... i can't handle this, i need to fix this now, etc. |
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Peregrinus
250 Posts |
Posted - 07/01/2013 : 14:51:17
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| I looked up hypochondria on Wikipedia and found that the definition works, almost word or word, with the definition of TMS as generally agreed to here. After checking some medical sites I found that there is no known cause for hypochondria which is what these sites say about TMS symptoms. Is there a connection? |
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icelikeaninja
USA
316 Posts |
Posted - 07/01/2013 : 16:12:46
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| I believe Sarno mentions how Tms is a lower form of the hysterics that Freud spoke about. Hypochondria is now considered a form of hysteria, in fact this term is not used anymore. |
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pan
United Kingdom
173 Posts |
Posted - 07/01/2013 : 16:26:04
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| I do believe as well that in the truest sense hypochondria is defined through having the belief that you are sick or ill etc but with the absence of signs and symptoms. I think if you want to apply the concept of hypochondria to TMS it is actually more akin to health anxiety which is traditionally defined by the fact that the sufferer experiences both signs and symptoms and interprets these as serious illness/disease despite medical evidence and opinion to the contrary...the obsession and checking compulsions that pretty much always develop from this pretty much fit in with the criteria of OCD. |
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Peregrinus
250 Posts |
Posted - 07/01/2013 : 16:54:07
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quote:
Originally posted by pan
I do believe as well that in the truest sense hypochondria is defined through having the belief that you are sick or ill etc but with the absence of signs and symptoms.
According to Wikipedia, hypochondriacs do have signs and symptoms. |
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pan
United Kingdom
173 Posts |
Posted - 07/01/2013 : 17:22:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Peregrinus
quote:
Originally posted by pan
I do believe as well that in the truest sense hypochondria is defined through having the belief that you are sick or ill etc but with the absence of signs and symptoms.
According to Wikipedia, hypochondriacs do have signs and symptoms.
I bow to Wikipedia. 
This is what I was told by a CBT counsellor I saw a few years back...by all accounts he saw quite a few people who where convinced they had an illness etc without any symptoms whatsoever...I'm sure he said that's why the health anxiety grouping was created. But yes, I agree that hypochondria/health anxiety and TMS do share many similarities. I recall years back when I had my ALS fixation I used to visit a forum about benign fasculation syndrome and it struck me back then just how many of them probably had TMS. |
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kirbyhilton
USA
1 Posts |
Posted - 08/28/2013 : 05:07:19
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I struggle with excessive sweating problem form last year. I need a help for stopping sweating problem. My friends is suggest Maxim product for sweating treatment. is it better option? here is online place that sell maxim product http://www.stopsweat.com/
Kirby Hilton |
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Hypochondria
