|
I developed something like this health anxiety starting back in April, after a severe bout of flu/some unknown and moderately severe viral illness coinciding with a bacterial skin infection. I had a very tough couple of months where I would worry about every minor physical "deviation" that I noticed. I also had constant heart palpitations, which caused more anxiety, thus triggering more palpitations. I'd spend upwards of a half hour at a time on Google, looking up symptoms and trying to figure out whether my headache was due to a common cold or a brain condition... One thing that personally helped me recover mentally was weightlifting. Part of what helped was that I could relatively easily attribute any random (and benign) ache/pain that I might otherwise worry about to "oh, well, I just lifted recently, so my body's repairing/sore/etc" as opposed to some serious condition I found on Google. Sticking with caffeine even though I was worried about palpitations also helped me through some form of "exposure therapy," where I eventually (re)learned that caffeine is safe to consume. Talking with my therapist helped. As did consciously reminding myself that, for a lot of rare or potentially deadly conditions, the symptoms would be much more severe than I'm experiencing, and that some symptoms (fast heartrate is a big one) can be attributed to anxiety alone. For example, last night while lying in bed, I felt a sudden twitching on the left side of my chest at about twice my resting heart rate. I instantly jumped to the conclusion that it was my heart having rapid contractions, which triggered a burst of anxiety, but when I stopped and thought about it (the twitching seemed to be intermittent and didn't feel internal like a heart problem might, it felt external), I successfully convinced myself that it was my muscle twitching -- a totally benign occurrence. Maybe I was dehydrated. Basically, I was able to help myself by using logic and trying to match the severity of my personal diagnosis with the severity of the symptom I was experiencing. I imagine this wouldn't be possible if I suddenly had symptoms as severe as GP, but it can help me stem these threads of anxiety before the anxiety itself causes more issues than the original problem. |
However, it is a well-known fact that caffeine and anxiety don't blend very well. Be careful.