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Anxiety from physical activities

Hi, since two or three weeks am feeling suffocated and neck tention each time i do exercises or walk to the shop.. I feel like I can't breathe through my nose (I have sinus also) and feel a slight pain in my abdomen/chest.. I've been to a cardiologist last week and did ecg and echo etc but everything is perfect except I have a fatty liver. Am constantly afraid that something will happen to me.. Help please...
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973741 tn?1342342773
Hi there.  Well I'm very sorry to hear this!  And anxiety stinks because it is a vicious cycle.  The first thing I want to say is that you did a great job by checking out your heart and making sure that is fine and I'm glad it is!  But just as you check out your heart, you have to think of your emotional health almost as if it were another organ.  It also can be out of whack and need the aid of a professional to make sure all is okay.  A psychologist is someone you talk to to explain your feelings and reactions and they have various talk therapies they use to help you learn to cope and feel better.  Is there any way you can see a psychologist to talk about this?  

And a psychiatrist can often provide that type of therapy too but also can prescribe antidepressant medicine that works on anxiety.  You may not be at the point in which you need medicine but it is good to work with someone to help determine that.  When anxiety disrupts us from doing normal things on a regular basis (everyone has anxiety once in a while)---  that is when I think action needs to be taken.  And just like if the doctor told you that your heart wasn't okay, you need to take medicine and do a specific therapy to make it better-----  that's how you have to look at your emotional and mental health. :>)  People are sometimes reluctant to look at it that way and then they suffer when they don't need to.  

So, if you aren't ready to see a doctor, you can also work on some things on your own.  There are anxiety work books and reading books that help with the subject.  I've known a technique that works a bit with my son who has anxiety.  If you think of anxiety as an IT rather than part of you--- a  separate thing, you can then see IT as intruding.  And work with what you have to stop IT.  You can put IT in its place.  Tell IT to simmer down, you need to walk to the store and IT is not going to make this so hard.  Visualize that.  With my son, we also talk about WHAT IF.  What if the worst thing happened?  What if, for example if he is afraid of greeting a group of kids, they DID make fun of him and make him feel like a jerk?  He pictures it.  Then realizes --  well, it would stink but I'd be okay.  So then he is less afraid.  That's just an example.  But think through what your worst fear is of walking somewhere.  Is it health anxiety?  Is it that someone will hurt you?  Think of the fear and then go from there.  Often, the what if is not REALLY going to hurt you and that realization gives peace.  At least it does for my son.  

also, you can do the simple things that really help overall to keep stress and anxiety in check--  get plenty of rest, eat well and exercise (bodies natural sress relievers are released from this as well as it has a general lasting calming affect on our nervous system).  Good luck and stay in touch!
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Arlington, VA
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