Health Anxiety, Guilt Trips, and Tropical Vacations

Hey Guys, I hope all is well. I’ve been pretty swamped lately but starting tomorrow I’ll finally get a chance to chill out a bit. I’ll be traveling to Cancun tonight and staying there for about a week. I won’t be working while I’m there, so I thought it would be a good time to post a new podcast.

Lately I’ve been receiving a ton of email about various issues related to health anxiety. So I thought it would be helpful to revisit this issue but also provide more detail about the different kinds of health anxiety that people struggle with. Like what the heck is the difference between Illness Anxiety Disorder and Somatic Symptom Disorder? Yup, that kind of thing.

During my vacation I plan to tweet some of the sights I encounter in Mexico, so if you’re interested in getting twitter updates about my adventures you can follow me @anxietyguru.

Listen to The Anxiety Guru Show…

To listen, you can click the play button below or visit the AG iTunes page.

Show Summary:

• Anxiety Guru struggled himself with health anxiety and now has gone on to become a therapist. Today’s podcast will be another form of reassurance to set your mind at ease, and to explain why you have a very good reason to feel safe and comforted and all your symptoms aren’t the wildly dangerous things you think they are.
• At the end of the day we really don’t have control, whatever control we think we have is just an “illusion.”
• There is a place in Australia called Center for physical activity and nutrition research that did a study which showed a moderate correlation between sedentary behavior and anxiety risk. Therefore, if you sit around too much and not taking walks is not good for you or your level of anxiety. If you aren’t very physically active, try to be!
• This study done indicated that anxious people produce too much serotonin; psychology and psychiatry is becoming more scientific, which is good.
  Brain scans suggest that anxiety is hereditary.
• Anxiety Guru lived with anxiety for a decade and knows what that is like but he is also a therapist so he knows what that perspective is and he has both perspectives to offer.
  Somatic Symptom disorder- to meet the criteria you have to have 1 or more physical symptoms that are distressing and do not have a medical cause. You also have excessive thoughts, feelings or behaviors related to those symptoms.
• Excessive time and energy devoted to these symptoms and what they mean. Symptoms can also include things like pain.
• Illness anxiety disorder- preoccupation with having or acquiring a serious illness. Somatic (physical) symptoms are not present or only to a mild intensity. With this you don’t have a lot of the physical symptoms somatic symptom disorder has. Illness preoccupation is a big one and these folks will still end up in a Doctor’s office being screened.
• Conversion Symptom disorder- 1 or more symptoms of altered voluntary motor or sensory function. You might have a neurological malfunction when you become really stressed. Sometimes these symptoms have “no cause” but when you are stressed these symptoms are made worse.
• For many people having a true medical illness (ex. cancer, heart disease) it just seems more acceptable. In our own minds having high worry/ anxiety, it may feel “less acceptable” and having a medical problem would just make more sense if it related to something more acceptable.
• CBT- Cognitive Behavior Therapy is recommended for those who have health anxiety thoughts. It’s a helpful way of challenging distorted thinking and understanding the root cause of these thoughts.
  There is no reason to not seek help, but is there an excuse for us to be anxious? Yeah, because we did nothing wrong and we didn’t ask for this, this isn’t about willpower or going on a diet.
• Never feel guilty about how you feel about anything. If you have a normal, emotional response to anything how could that be wrong. What you do with that and how you express that is another story.
  When people are anxious for a long time, they build up a high tolerance for emotional pain and they may not realize how strong they are and how high of a tolerance they have built up and we can do more than we think we can and get better than we think we can.
• Bottom line, if you have health anxiety, you may feel scared and you may feel confused, you don’t want to be sick. Anxiety Guru is here to tell you that your mind can produce physical pain, palpitations, etc. and this means really your issue is emotional and has to be dealt with in another way. These fears are based in fear, sadness, uncertainty rather than death and in sickness. Some of us were just born anxious people and we don’t deal well with stress. Have hope that we can get better. Change the attitude, get better, get active, try to seek the solution and hopefully the less suffering we will experience as a result.