Accepting anxiety for what it is, physical symptoms too

[Moonchild 11:11]

Hi all, I’d love your tips/input on reframing thoughts. I’m currently suffering some pretty severe health anxiety and panic attacks and I fixate a lot on the physical symptoms, predominately the heart palpitations. The shooting pains, tingling lips nose etc I can attribute to anxiety as I’ve experienced them before but the panic is new for me. I keep having what it thoughts that lead me to dr google that leads me to more anxiety and around we go. I’d love to hear your stories on how you stopped these compulsive behaviours and intrusive thoughts and came to a place of accepting that you have anxiety and not some horrible diagnosis that the drs are missing or not looking for. How does one break these habits? I’ve thought about restricting myself for a day and seeing if it makes a difference. I go between checking my pulse constantly, dr googling symptoms and then googling anxiety symptoms to try and reassure myself but I know it’s not helpful. My partner jokingly asked if she needed to confiscate my phone but I’m genuinely curious as to whether that may actually be beneficial… just to see if the symptoms subside however I am concerned that I will continue to focus on them and thus bring on that anxiety anyway 🙄 anyway I went on a little tangent there, any helpful strategies would be much appreciated xx

[Petal22]

Hi Moonchild 11:11,

Im really sorry you are going through this I understand it’s distressing and exhausting.

I also used to do what you just explained. I would be terrified that I had something really wrong with me I’d doctor google aswell this would only make things worse…. My anxiety was at severe levels……..

It came to a stage in my life that I found it hard to function with the level of anxiety I was feeling…….. I was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder by a psychiatrist……. I was put on a antidepressant to help me to manage my anxiety and I also did a 8 week group therapy ……. The therapy I did was meta cognitive therapy this therapy changed my life……..

I longer do the things that kept me in my OCD cycle I learned what was keeping me in this cycle and I learned how to disengage from these behaviours.

OCD is a vicious cycle.

I have written two threads that you may be interested in reading…

From someone who had OCD and recovered

Effective treatment for OCD Metacognitive therapy