anxiety-hypertension cycle help

[andalina1982]

Hello to everybody, my name is Andy and I'm 36 years old.

I have been writing to the heart disease community for a while because I have hypertension (controled with meds now), but I believe the basic problem with me is chronic stress and anxiety.

So here is a little story of how it started.

Back in 2011, my dear grandmother passed away, she was like more than a mother to me since she raised me because my parents got divorced when I was still a baby - so in other words, my "mother" has passed away. I am a very strong character, I understand the life cycle, she died because of ageing, so I was "ok" with it - don't get me wrong, of course I felt really sad and crying at the time, normal for such occassion, and I could manage it the following weeks, I was trying to feel better and move on.

In the house, it was only me and her living together, after some weeks I started to "realize" that suddenly I am all alone. Thats when I got the down side of it. Slowly, day after day, stress and anxiety kicked in. I couldn't feel it at first but it was there (now in 2018 I can think more clearly about back then of what was going on).

One day, I got my heart racing, I tried to stay calm and relax, and sleep. It didnt go away. I went to the doctor and I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and tachycardia. At the time I would never even think of having high blood pressure ever, because I was healthy, eating healthy, and exercising. Well, I thought the blood pressure was caused from stress I had at the time (I was right), so I tried to calm my mind, knowing it will go away. After a few months, a dear friend was at the hospital for surgery, and the doctors needed blood supply, so I was a blood donator at the time and went to give some blood. While at the hospital, the doctors told me I could not do that because "I have high blood pressure" - "here we go again" I thought to myself .... that's when I realized that something was going wrong.

I had stress at the time, which raised my blood pressure. Checking my blood pressure regularly only to see it high again, caused more stress - so i got into that cycle that i couldn't get out of it. Then I was feeling all these anxiety symptoms, chest pains, dizzyness, fatigue, panic attacks - same symptoms like having a heart attack. And my mind got crazy, I had thoughts like "am I dying?", "is this it?" etc etc...see the cycle? anxiety symptoms that caused my blood pressure to rise thinking of heart disease, I could not get out of it.

So here we are in 2018,  I do feel much better, I dont have any more bad symptoms, but that anxiety-blood pressure cycle is still here...I finally got prescribed medication for high blood pressure...and I am young, I am 36....thinking how "long" my life will be (irony)..

I want to believe that my problem is not in my heart, but in my mind, trying to get out of that cycle and i cannot.

any suggestions on what i can do? (sorry about this long letter i just wrote)

[Paxiled]

If you're anxious, there is therapy for that and medication if that doesn't work.  If you've got unresolved grief, that's also something therapy can help with, though the kind of therapist would probably be different.  But hypertension has many causes, and it's unclear that anxiety is one of them.  Hypertension doesn't just happen when you're very very anxious, it's there all the time.  It's usually dietary and lifestyle related, but there are many causes.  Has any of your doctors ever suggested a biological cause for it?  Does it run in your family?  And if it's controlled, your lifespan will probably be long.  But if you think this is from your mind, therapy is a good place to start.  Meditation, spiritual adjustment, all that sort of thing, is where you go for this sort of thing.  They won't help if it's caused by a physiological condition you may just have to live with, but it might still make it not as bad.  There are also natural remedies that can help with this, though care has to be taken if you're on medication for it.