Health anxiety and how i got trapped in a vicious circle

[brandon9911]

Hello guys I want to tell you my story. A never ending nightmare for me.
It all started when I was 11 years old. I was pretty sick (bad virus), staying home and I remember playing GTA San Andreas ( cmon everyone played GTA when they were 11 right?) in the living room when I felt some weird feeling in my chest. I thought it was my heart so I told my parents that I could feel my heart rate. They reacted… well let’s say THEY FREKING PANICKED. My father has high blood pressure, asthma and he is a total hypochondriac so he rushed to his room and gave me his blood pressure monitor to see how high my pulse was. My whole family gathered around me and just looked at me as if I was dying while my pulse was being measured. At this point I am now sure that I was having the worst panic attack in my life but then I was just a silly kid who judged the situation from my parents reaction. 157 heart rate. I still remember when it was finally over and I felt some kind of relief. It wasn’t 200 right? But no. My dad immediately called my GP and I was rushed to a kid’s cardiologist. I was f*cking petrified. I had couple of EKGs taken, the doctor tried many weird ways to bring my pulse down but I don’t think it was even possible as I was thinking that I’m dying. EKGs were all fine except the madly high pulse of course so she just prescribed me betablockers.
From this day on I lived in a nightmare. My parents were obsessed with my pulse, non stop measuring it and I already had a phobia about it. Couple more visits to the same cardiologist pulse was still pretty high no matter how calm I tried to be ( around 120-130 I remember) so my father decided to send me to A HOSPITAL FOR A WEEK TO MONITOR ME 24HOURS A DAY. HELL NO. After many fights with my family I just stopped sharing with them how I felt. I wasn’t sent to a hospital. I just lived this nightmare alone.

Two years later I had some blood tests done for my thyroid glands and found out that I had hyperthyroidism. Went to a specialist and she told me that it was probably triggered from stress. Hmm I wonder what stress. I was put on medication and the days went by.
I could say I learned to live with my fear of fast heart rate and I pretty much forgot to check it so frequently until one day during summer I just decided to check how it was. Well, it wasn’t what I expected so boom- another series of fear and panic. I remember that I couldn’t sleep that night, I felt so doomed. As this was in the beginning of summer, I spent my whole summer break worrying about my heart. It was filled with so many panic episodes that I don’t even want to remember. I still didn’t know about anxiety and panic disorders so I was trying to figure out why my heart is beating so fast and I always failed.
I started 8th grade, new school, new friends and I forgot to think about it for a long time. I got into a really bad depression around 9th grade and I didn’t really care about my health anymore. I was drinking and smoking on a regular basis in 10th and 11th grade. Well, of course there were some episodes of panic between the time but let’s skip to 2017. I was 17, had a nice girlfriend, cool friends, worked out regularly and I was pretty much happy. Living the teenager life I guess. Untill I was just laying and reading a book and decided to check my pulse. BIG FCKING MISTAKE. I became obsessed again and this time it is worse than ever. I stopped working out in fear of my heart beating so fast I would die, I stopped socializing and going out this much, I could not lay down and nap, I found falling asleep much harder. I am now checking my pulse all the time. I am not even measuring it because I am too afraid to know how high it really is. I am just feeling the beat. I don’t know what to do it is 2018 already and I have spent my last 7 months obsessing over my heart. I feel like I am not the same person I was before. I cant bring myself to stop. I know it is all in my head, I had countless EKGs done, blood tests even had a holter, nothing wrong just the high pulse. I still take my betablockers I think that I can’t live without them. I feel so doomed. The fist thing I do in the morning is to check my pulse, I probably do it around 40-50 times a day I don’t know. I want to stop but I can’t. Is anyone in a similar situation? I feel so hopeless and I need help.

[specialmom]

Oh my.  This is no way to live!  You've had your heart checked thoroughly.  And I'm disappointed in your parents.  This is a really good example of how parents can screw it up.  Their panic, obsession and anxiety caused you to be the same way.  Parents need to be aware of this and keep their own over anxious selves to themselves.  

What you need is not another heart doctor or to be checking your pulse or blood pressure (is this your heart rate or your blood pressure you are checking?)---  you need a psychiatrist.  For real.  The heart is not your problem, your mental health is.  Your parents rush you to a cardiologist when they now need to rush you to a psychiatrist.  Mental health issues, OCD and anxiety are as much health conditions as a heart problem.  They need to be treated. This can include talk therapy with a psychologist who works through why it happens and helps with coping strategies.  You may also need medication.  This started very very young.  

I'm glad you are staying away from drinking and smoking.  This can just mask the issue and really cause MORE problems in your life. Exercise is something you should not give up.  It is proven that exercise will help the heart so it is counterproductive to give it up.  My blood pressure wants to go up, exercise brings it down.  

So, you need to go to a psychiatrist as soon as you can to get a handle on this situation so you don't have to live like this.  Let us know how it goes!

[brandon9911]

I've been checking both my pulse and blood pressure but I've stopped as i was madly afraid of the BP monitor so now I am just feeling my heart to see how fast is it going. I've told my parents how I felt countless of times and they just say it's all in my head(as if I didn't know) and that it is about time to stop taking my betablockers. I've told my mother that I want to go to a specialist about my anxiety and she just said "You have to solve it yourself"

[Paxiled]

You're old enough now to make these decisions for yourself.  Personally, I wouldn't go to a psychiatrist, because they don't do therapy, they just give you medication.  You're already on one useless med that hasn't fixed this problem.  You have something most of us on here don't have -- you know what caused this problem.  Most of us just have chronic anxiety and therapy often doesn't work for that and we end up on meds.  But therapy works a lot better for those who know the origin of the problem -- it gives you something specific to demystify.  You get to decide what you wish to do, and I hope whatever you decide is the best choice, but you need to advocate for yourself if you need your parents to pay for this.  Families aren't our choice, we're born into them.  Friends are our choice.  Some are lucky with families, and some just aren't.  You weren't.  But don't let that ruin the rest of your life -- get on this ASAP as the longer it goes on the more likely it will become a chronic problem.  You will get past this.

[specialmom]

To me, you sound like a psychiatrist is essential and medication will most likely be necessary. You began having significant anxiety at a very young age.  This means that this may be a life time issue that you must keep under control.  You have an obsession of checking your bp and a worry to the point that your parents are telling you that it's in your head (meaning they have no worries NOW after the huge concern they initially had about your heart).  

I don't want you to have to live this way.  No one here is a doctor and taking steps to overcome this is important.  You are a young man at a critical time in life in which you are getting your life on a path.  The best mental health you can have is essential.  So, I'd dig into the anxiety side of things aggressively and get this treated fully.  Why waste anymore of your life?  Best to you and let us know how you are doing.

[Paxiled]

Again, just to say, psychiatrists are never "essential" and medication is never "necessary."  That's just not medically true for anxiety.  It is for psychoses, but not for anxiety and depression.  It is, however, as I said, often our best choice, but it is just not proper medicine, as I've often said, to start with invasive treatment.  When you have an injury that is chronic, an orthopedist first sends you to physical therapy -- they don't first do surgery unless they're bad doctors out to grab your money.  But if the therapy doesn't work, well, then you can get to where the surgery is your best bet.  Medication is the same way -- it would only be necessary if it actually cured anything, but we don't have medication yet that does that with mental illness.  If therapy has never been tried, and the person is still functioning in life, then it is a good place to start.  Psychologists will tell you if they think medication will be the best way to go.  Still again, I take medication and have for years -- I don't disbelieve in it.  But it's got its problems and if you can avoid them all the better.  If you can't, you can't.  As stated above, none of us are doctors, but in this field, doctors don't know a whole lot more than anyone who cares to learn because there are no answers yet.  Just trial and error.  The younger a person is, the better the chance of getting past this stuff, and childhood problems are not the same as adult mental illness.  SpecialMom and I always always always disagree on this point -- she believes very strongly in medication and she might very well be right.  I really don't know for certain.  I only know that I've been on medication for a long time and it hasn't fixed anything and it's very hard to take and stop taking.  If it's the best you can do, it's worth that, but if you can do as well without it or better, at least give it a try.  But it's just my opinion, not truth -- truth is a very hard thing to find.  But at bottom, both of us just want you to do something and not just suffer with this because from experience we both know the longer one waits to act on this stuff the harder it is to fix it.  Please, find a way to move on.  Peace.