Worried Sick? Health Anxiety Signs & Solutions | Ep. 34

Foreign darlings, this is Dr. Nicole. Today I'm sharing with you a podcast that I'm going to be doing called Worried Sick Health Anxiety Signs and Solutions. And so if you struggle with health anxiety or you struggle with what other people have called hypochondriasis or illness anxiety disorder or somatic symptom disorder, we're going to be talking all about that today. And for some people, maybe this is a completely new topic. And so I'm really excited for you. In this video, you're going to get a few things. One is we're going to talk about, and I have notes here. So you're going to see me looking at my notes to make sure we don't miss anything. We're going to talk about the signs and symptoms of health anxiety. I'm going to give you a checklist, a quiz. Do I have health anxiety? What causes health anxiety? And then I'm going to give you solutions for health anxiety. This topic's really important to me. I have a really great friend, and he is a vibrant, incredible, wonderful, vivacious human, but he is terrified all the time that he's going to have a heart attack. And he's not at risk for a heart attack or his risk factors are incredibly low. He's seen a doctor, he's been examined, he's gotten cardiac stress tests. He's young, he's vibrant, and for all intents and purposes, he's not going to have a heart attack, but it's in his brain. He's so sure that something's wrong with his heart. And so when he can't feel his heart beating, he's afraid it's going to stop. Stop. When he does feel like it's beating, he feels like, oh, my gosh, my heart is stressed. And so health anxiety is a big part of his story. And the thing is with health anxiety is that it can feel really real. It can feel like there's actually something wrong. But the difference is that we're having normal symptoms. We're having. Our body is expressing sensations, but the problem is the interpretation of those symptoms. And so that's what we're going to learn about today is do I have health anxiety? Or is it just that my body is producing symptoms and signs and I just don't know what they mean? Right. So I want you to stick around to the end because I have a super glittery, gold, magical goodness that I want to share with you about. It's totally free and it's amazing, and so I hope that you'll stick with me to the end. This is going to be jam packed with goodness. And so I'm really honored and excited to be here. And. And so I could tell you that health anxiety was a big part of my story, and I consider myself an anxiety freedom warrior. When I was done with medical school, I had basically intern syndrome. If you've never heard of that. It's where you get an internship or you become an intern in medicine, or really anything where you learn about mental or physical health, and then you decide that you have everything that you're learning about. Is anyone with me? Have you ever had that happen? And with the Internet, which became more of a big thing in the 80s, and it's just been growing and growing and growing since that time, we see more people having access to this information, and then anxiety about our health can just skyrocket just by sheer amount of information that we're seeing. And in medicine, what we talk about are real differentials and. And zebras. And zebras are those things that are, like, so out of left field. You know, someone comes in with heart palpitations, and they've decided that they have, like, a chronic, terrible, obscure disease, and we would call that a zebra. It's something that's super unlikely, but they found it in Dr. Google and they're just terrified about it. Right. And so now that we have all of this information at our fingertips, so many more people are falling victim to health anxiety. And so you may have heard it called hypochondriasis or illness anxiety, but for the purposes of this content, I'm going to call it health anxiety because I feel like it really embodies what we're talking about. We have anxiety about our health. So if you feel worried about your health, if you feel scared that something's wrong with you, if your body is giving you signs and symbols and symptoms and sensations that feel scary and you don't know what they are and that you're worried that you're sick or you're gonna get sick or the worst case thing is going to happen, then this is the video for you. And if you know somebody who's struggling with this, share this content with them. Because it could be life changing. It could be freeing. And so if you're with me, give me like a hands up. I saw Haley in there. I see a couple of other amazing warriors. I see Frances, my soul sister, in there. And so if you guys are with me, let us know we're not alone. I'm a health anxiety warrior. And so we need to band Together, we need to understand anxiety is. And I'm going to teach you at the end the sparkly glitter and gold strategy for turning the page so that you can get your life back. So I want to start by telling you a story of a girl named Lucy. And Lucy was in third grade. And so she's in third grade, she's sitting in class, and suddenly the little boy, two desks over, Ralphs all over his desk, just terrible. He just upchucks everywhere. And little Lucy looks over, and she is terrified. She's scared. Why did he throw up? Is something happening? Is he okay? Am I okay? And ever since that time in third grade, Lucy has been terrified that she might catch something when at school. So her parents brought her to me to try to get to the bottom of this anxiety about her health. And she's now in school, and she's getting ready to graduate from high school, but it's gotten to the point where she just can't go to the school building anymore, right? So. So she's working from home, she's doing online classes, but she's really missing out on a lot of the experiences that she wanted to have. She wanted to be in. She wanted to be in the school musical, she wanted to be able to go and do sports, but she couldn't do any of that because her anxiety was so intense and so scary. And so Lucy has health anxiety. They've brought her to doctors, they've had her assessed. She's really healthy. She's a young lady. And. And she's being held back by her feeling paralyzed by this fear that something is wrong with her. And this is what she said to me, and I'm going to read this from my notes. She said, I know it's not logical, but I can't get the smell and the image of him throwing up out of my head. She says, what if I get sick? What if I get some terrible disease from another kid at school? And so then when she socializes, she's always scared that something's going to happen, that maybe she's going to get sick from them or something terrible is contagious, Right? So health anxiety is a form of anxiety that causes you to worry excessively about becoming symptomatic or becoming seriously ill. Right? And so the human body in its natural state produces all sorts of funny sensations. We may feel a little bit of tingling, we may feel a little bit of numbness here and there. Maybe our body will twitch, maybe our heart will palpitate, maybe we'll feel. Feel things moving around in our stomachs. And it's all about figuring out what is causing that. Right. And so one of the things with Lucy is that she didn't understand why he was feeling that way and it never got addressed. And so this was a trauma that was building up in her system for lots of years. And so I'm going to tell you at the end what we did about it and what you can do too. But first I want you to do a self assessment quiz. And so these are signs that you may be dealing with health anxiety. Right. So number one, I want you to answer yes or no to the following. And so, number one is, when I notice bodily sensations that my doctor has told me are normal, I feel dread and doom that something's wrong with me. If you say yes, that's a symptom of health anxiety. Right. Okay, let's look at number two. I feel preoccupied by the need to assess my body for symptoms and signs that something is wrong. And the key here is preoccupied. Right. It occupies a lot of your thoughts, it occupies your mind, it takes up your time. Because there is a difference, right, between gathering data and making sure. We're advocates for our own health and it preoccupying us. Right. So let's go to number three. I automatically interpret new or uncomfortable sensations in my body as a serious medical illness. Does anyone relate to that? Where it's like, oh my gosh, what is that feeling? Am I really sick? I have so many people reach out to me and they're like, my heart is palpitating. Am I going to have a heart attack? Or my foot is going numb. Do I have some sort of a neurological disease? Or my eyes are a little bit sore and achy? Am I going blind? Like all these worries and fears of sensations that are perfectly normal for most people. Right. Okay, let's go to the next one. I have done physical exams and have had lab testing done, all of which has been normal. And. And yet I still feel worried that something is seriously wrong with me. Yes. Is anyone with me? You've had the testing, you've had the doctors look at your health. They've told you you're okay, but your brain is so preoccupied, it's worried that they're missing something. That's anxiety about your health. And the important thing is to know that there's a difference between our interpretation and what's actually happening. And that's what makes it anxiety. But we'll talk more about that. Let's go on to the next one. You spend a lot of time Researching your health babes. Is anyone with me? Like, give me a heart, give me a high five. Is anyone with me? Do you spend time researching your health? Because that was my biggest thing. Right. So it says I spend a lot of time researching my health, seeking reassurance or trying to avoid anxious health thoughts and feelings. When I was at my worst anxiety, my love, My doctor would say, okay, Nicole, how much time have you spent Googling your symptoms this week? That was one of our indicators on how my anxiety was doing. Right. So if you find that you're preoccupied by researching, seeking reassurance or avoiding, then those could be signs of health anxiety. And then the last one that I want to share is yes or no. Does anyone relate to this? I feel like my doctors missed something life threatening. And I go back for more and more testing and try to find doctors who will find the answer. Does anyone feel that way? Has anyone felt that way? And so we recently got a call from a potential client who had been through doctors. They jumped doctor to doctor to doctor. And the doctors were all trying to figure out, this person was so sure that she had a bacterial infection. And everyone tested her, they did swabs, they did all sorts of testing, and there was no infection found. And so she was so sure that she had an infection and she was so scared that she was really sick. She kept going to more and more doctors. And so the thing is with her is that she was preoccupied. She was so scared and so worried, and she didn't have an infection. Now, that doesn't mean that there was nothing going on, but her interpretation of it wasn't accurate, and it was feeding health anxiety and it was taking over her life. And so let's talk about, well, why do we have health anxiety? What causes health anxiety? And so I actually have found that the ACT method can really break this down for us beautifully. And. And so if you haven't heard of the ACT method, it's a methodology that I created that can help us turn the page from anxiety into freedom. And so when we're trying to solve a problem, when we feel stuck and we're trying to say, okay, is this anxiety an indicator or a sign or a warning that I need to get more information, or is this a symptom? Right. And so the ACT method tells us about this. And so what I have here is there are three main categories. There's the A, which is acknowledgement. There's the C, which is the cast of characters, and the T is transformation, and that's the sparkly glitter gold Thing at the end, I'm gonna share with you. It's how you deal with this, right? But let's talk about what can cause health anxiety. And so, number one is there are three psychological characters. Psychological characters refers to your psychology. It refers to your parts, your experience. So number one, a psychological character is not having a good understanding of. Of bodily sensations, health, disease, and diagnosis. So let's go back to Lucy, right? Lucy is the little girl that got sick. She got scared when that little kid vomited on his desk. She didn't know what was going on. She didn't have education about symptoms. She didn't have education about health and disease. And she had a very traumatic event that got lodged in her nervous system, creating this spiral that has lasted until we addressed it with the transformation, right? So there's the number one is not having the education. So one of the tools for transcendence is to antidote that, right? It's to get education. It's to do your research, but to do your research with somebody who you trust so you don't end up down that rabbit hole finding those zebras that we talked about earlier. So that's the first psychological character. There's two more. Number two is there are parts of yourself that are generally anxious and hypervigilant. So if you have somebody who's already more stressed and more anxious, anxiety tries to create a sense of control by attaching itself, right? So it'll attach itself to sensations like, okay, I'm anxious, I'm anxious. Ooh, I felt a twitch in my leg. What does that mean? And then it can go through a spiral, right? And so there are parts of yourself that are anxious and hypervigilant. And so this may be that if you have a generalized anxiety or if you have a phobia or you have trauma, and these are locked in your anxious parts, they may misinterpret bodily sensations, right? So that's another psychological part. The third psychological part is that you have endured trauma and stress. And so with Lucy, with the story of Lucy, it was really scary for her to be a little third grader and to have something like that happen to a classmate. And when she went to her doctors, they did a lot of cbt, which is cognitive behavioral therapy. And CBT is the number one form of therapy used for health anxiety. But the thing with trauma is that trauma affects your logical brain, which is right here in your prefrontal cortex. And CBT will help with that. But trauma also affects your midbrain, which is the emotional center of your Brain right here in the middle. And then it also affects your brain stem, which is where we can have physical sensations of anxiety. And so when we think about trauma, somebody may have where they feel anxious and they throw up, but they're not actually sick, it's anxiety. Right. Or they may feel anxious and then they may feel their heart palpitating. When my anxious is at its worst, I get this weird zapping in my teeth and my body goes on fire. Right. And so this is because anxiety and trauma can get stored in the brain stem. And so when we're looking for solutions about health anxiety, it could be stored in our physical parts. Okay, so number two in the act method is the cast of characters. Right. And so we have three main social characters. Social characters refers to the people around you, your environment, culture, society. And these variables can impact our mental health and our well being. They can make us more anxious or they can make us less anxious. So there are three main social characters that can cause or contribute to health anxiety. Number one, your caretakers may have struggled with anxiety when you were a child. They may have had general anxiety, they may have had trauma, or they may have had health anxiety themselves. And so that social character may impact how you perceive events. Right. Number two is that you have witnessed illness or injury to somebody else, and that may make you afraid that it could happen to you. And so Lucy witnessed her classmate getting sick, and so she was afraid that that could happen to her. Which makes sense. Right? It's a social character. It's what happened around her. And the third social character is you're exposed to scary information on the Internet, social media, the news outlets. And in a world where we are constantly inundated with scary information or worst case information or tragedies, the more anxious that we can be and the more we can have health anxiety. So that's social anxiety. This is social cast of characters. And now we have the three biological characters. So health anxiety can come from our biology. There could be something in your body, in your hormones, your neurotransmitters, that predisposes you to feeling more anxious. Right. So number one is maybe your body is producing neurotransmitters and hormones that make you feel more anxious generally. So that when you start thinking about your health or you notice a health sensation, you're already amplified and you feel more anxious. Right. Number two is you have another health condition that makes you afraid of something else going wrong or something else happening. Right. The number three is your body is changing in ways that feels really unfamiliar to you. This could be adolescence, when our kids are growing and they're getting growing pains and their body is changing. It could be menopause, where women's hormones are changing andropause men's hormones are changing. It could be pregnancy, right? Pregnancy changes so many things and the body feels different. Our hormones are different, our neurotransmitters are different. Maybe you started a new medication and your body's feeling different and it's making you feel anxious, or maybe you're getting off of or tapering a medication, or maybe you have something else that's going on that you're taking like a vitamin or supplement, Right? And so all of these biological characters could contribute to health anxiety. So we've been talking about, I want to recap because there's been a lot that we've talked about and I'm so grateful that you guys are sticking it out and you're watching this with me. We've been talking about health anxiety. You may have heard it called hypochondriasis. People feeling where they're doing. It's called somatic symptom disorder or illness anxiety disorder. We're calling it health anxiety. We had a quiz on are you dealing with health anxiety disorder? And if you have more than two yeses to that self assessment quiz, then it could be possible that it might be valuable to talk with your clinician about, is this part of my experience? And then we were talking about what could predispose you to have health anxiety or what could cause that. We went to the ACT method, right? So we talked about your psychological cast of characters, your social cast of characters, your biological cast of characters. And the good news is, is that, babe, this is totally treatable. You can turn the page from health anxiety. You don't have to be anxious about your health your whole life. And if you're like me, and if doctors told you, yeah, you just gotta use cognitive behavioral therapy and that's you're just going to kind of have to deal with it and manage it. I want you to know that there are more things that we can do that really work. And having a good understanding of trauma is really important with that. And so I'm going to get all this typed up in a blog. So I'm going to give you some solutions right now. But if you don't write as quickly as I talk, don't worry, we're going to get this all put in writing and you can go to the blog and export the file and download it and use it. So let's jump into solutions. Okay, so the ACT method, we're going to go to the T. This is tools for transformation. This is where we get the good stuff. This is the glitter and gold. This is the magic. This is what's going to help you actually get better. And if anybody is with you that you know that has health anxiety, then share this with them too. And I also want to do a shout out to Amazing Anxiety's page. She's offering awesome stuff. And so as you're listening to this video, make sure that you click on her stuff. She just left a comment and so you can see her stuff, because that is another tool for transformation is finding great helpers and healers that can help you along this total amazing journey. Okay, so when we're looking at transforming health anxiety with Lucy, let me tell you what we did with hers. Number one is we dealt with her psychological character's lack of understanding about health anxiety. So we educated her, we talked with her, we taught her about her own body, we taught her about sensations like what is this? What is causing this? So getting educated is really important if you have a psychological character that doesn't have that education and is scared. Right. So getting educated. And number two, we also dealt with the trauma. And so parts work, doing work on the parts of yourself that are anxious. So remember, Lucy said, like, it isn't logical, but I feel, feel anxious. So her prefrontal cortex, she'd done the work. It wasn't logical for her to be anxious, but the midbrain and the brainstem don't respond to CBT very well. And so we did other work with her. What we actually did was emdr, which stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. And this, my loves, is amazing. It works. It changed my life. I've been using this with so many clients throughout the past 10 years. And if you haven't done it, your insurance should cover it. It's so cool. And so you just Simply look@psychologytoday.com and you can do a search for someone in your area that does EMDR number three is we worked on her biological cast of characters by bringing down her nervous system. And so her nervous system was on a fight flight. Freeze, flop, fawn. Right. And so her nervous system was activated. And so we were able to calm her nervous system, help her get out of a fight flight state into a relaxed state. And when her nervous system was more on board, when her biological characters were more on board, the anxiety went down and then the health anxiety went down. So there are really three main things that I want you to take home from this video. And number one is that CBT is incredibly useful. Mayo Clinic recommends this as your number one standard of care. But I would avoid the rabbit hole. So the Internet rabbit hole, it's going to tell you all of the most terrible things. And unfortunately, clickbait makes more money off of telling you that you're really sick and there's something wrong with you. And so try to avoid the Internet, Try to avoid going down rabbit holes and talk to people that you trust. If you feel scared, if you need reassurance, see a doctor that you trust who knows you and knows your body. Somebody that you can rely on to do the work to make sure that you are healthy. Anxiety is an indicator for an opportunity to heal. Anxiety is here to try to help you, not to ruin your life. And so by listening to the wisdom of your body, by listening to your anxiety, you can truly transform. And so number three is learn about the science of anxiety. Learn about how anxiety presents in your body. Like I told you, when I get anxious, I get this weird zap of my teeth and my body's on fire. If I didn't know about how the nervous system worked, I could be really scared. But that's a normal experience when our anxiety is high. And dealing with the anxiety can help those feelings get better. Okay, remember how I promised you something glittery and sparkly and gold and wonderful at the end? Well, this is the part where we go to that. And so what I did is we know that CBT works, we know that parts work works. But let's face it, sometimes you need solutions and answers. Like yesterday, right? And so I created a seven day, one week challenge where I teach you how to use strategies to send anxiety backstage. And it's totally free. So it's going to give you knowledge, it's going to give you information, you're going to get videos, you're going to get emails, you're going to get a beautiful book and it's all just me loving on you. And so if this is helpful, if you want to learn more, we're going to put a link in the link tree and you would just look for one week challenge. Or you could also go to my website, Dr. Nicole Cain and I have of tons, tons of freebies in there. You just go to drnicolecane.com and at the top there's a button that says free gifts. And that is all this amazing stuff that I have for you to help you feel better. So today my loves. We've been talking about health, anxiety, and most of the time you're healthy. It's just that your body is producing symptoms and your brain is latching incorrect information to them and that could be not in your logical brain. And so doing this kind of work can help you get your life back. I am so honored to be a part of your journey. Thank you for watching this video. I know it was a long one and I will see you next time. If there's any way we can support you. Leave a comment, leave a heart. Send us a dm. We've got your back. Check out the one Week Challenge. I know you're going to love it. All right, my loves, I'll see you later. Bye.