WHO HERE IS CONVINCED OF HAVING A HEART PROBLEM?

Hi,

i know all the symptoms, read books, articles but i still cant come to terms with actually believing thatits totally my anxiety.


i sure we all know its a vicious circle.

can anyone empathise with me. just talk, or any tricks on how to treat it. how to just work on it.

ive gone to doctors an they said nothign wrong with ya.

the chances of me a 20 year old havign a heart problem is one in a million. made me laugh, feel better btu stilll it re-coccurs with chest pains, little discompforts, sharp pains around heart area and around rib cage.


Thank


Barry

feel free to add me on MSN.

barrybmcdonagh@hotmail.com

I've been having issues with this lately as well.

I was out of state staying with a family member who I'd never lived with before and my anxiety was getting really out of control. I was constantly in fear of everything from earthquakes to....well everything. One night I was about to fall asleep when I felt this huge thump in my chest and was immediately sure my heart was stopping/ or exploding, and I was going to die. I woke up the other person in the house at 3am and made them sit with me while I felt my heart to be sure it was still beating. I wanted to go to the emergency room but they said it was probably just a bad dream. It wasn't. I was wide awake. I have been dealing with similar things on and off for about a month now. I returned home and went to the hospital to have them check my heart. I had EKGs and and echocardiogram done. They tell me my heart is fine and that I am in perfect health. Sometimes I can believe it. Sometimes not. At least 1/4 of the time I am sure I am about to keel over from some rare congenital heart defect. Even after the heart tests telling me I was fine I went back and was fitted with a heart monitor as an extra precaution. In case my symptoms were rare and being missed by them during all of the appointments. I had blood tests done. Still I wasn't sure I was ok. One day I woke up after a snow storm and the only car in the house was gone and I was sure I was going to die in that house that day, having been trapped. I called the doctor and told them I couldn't breath. They sent an ambulance. I went to the emergency room. They said there was absolutely nothing wrong with me. I am a perfectly healthy 19 year old girl. Still. Still I get anxious. On a daily basis. I fear for my health. My heart health specifically. I understand completely. And I know how frustrating and exhausting it can be. I am trying to go to school now and I really hope this constant fretting doesn't get in the way. The first couple of days I wanted to turn around and run away, fearing I would have some sort of emergency in class. I am awaiting the results from the heart monitor I was wearing. And the results will most likely come back negative just like everything else, ain which case I will see a doctor about the anxiety disorder everybody is telling me I have.

Sorry that's so long. It's been quite a ride and I haven't realy talked about it.

I understand, though. Keep trying![/b]

It's so good to hear other people are experiencing similar things to me - I thought it was just me!

My story is another long one - I'm a 28yr old male, but this all started when I was about 23.

One night I was in bed, just about to drop off to sleep, when my heart went nuts, it started beating like I'd just ran a marathon. It made me leap out of bed, I went to the bathroom, splashing water on my face, trying to - well, I don't know what I was trying to do! Eventually it slowed down, but from then on, I've taken a massive interest in my heart.

I used to smoke cannabis/marijuana everyday at this point, and also regularly drank alcohol. I mean daily. I wasn't waking up and cracking open a bottle, I'd do my thing in the day (I was at a Music College) get home, have a meal and a shower, then start drinking/smoking through the night. I put my heart thing down to 'freaking out' due to drugs. Maybe it was?

My heart beats pretty slowly (and I dont think I'm fit AT ALL anymore!) - 53,54 times a minute when I first wake up, 60-65 resting in the day. It also beats very strongly - you can hear it in my breathing, and when I lay on my bed at night, I can hear it in my ears moving the mattress. It also beats right at the base of my throat. So it's hard for me NOT to take notice of my heart and just switch off.

Anyway, one day soon after the first incident I had bad palpitations - sensations in my chest, I wasn't sure if it was a missed beat, extra beat or what. These really scare me even today. (I have since concluded they are ectopic beats - this is when one half of your heart has a quick beat - the other half pauses to catch up the rhythym and because my heart beats slowly the pause is quite long and noticable.) I ended up going to the A&E (ER in USA) because I thought I was having a heart attack. One ECG later and I'm on my way home, told I'm fine. I was a mess for about 2 weeks after that, waiting for my heart to stop beating and to drop dead! I had blood tests, diabetes tests done too, nothing found.

I stopped drinking and smoking drugs totally for three months, life regained some normality, and as I got better, so I started drinking again. Yes, and the drugs returned too, I was playing in a band now, and it was just expected I suppose. Slowly my alcohol intake grew regular again, daily.

Since then I've had these alarming beats about every day, once I had four in a row - THAT was scary! I also have to listen to my heart every night, so I'm totally obsessed with it. I also get sharp pains in the chest area, sometimes a kind of numbness in my arm and/or feet too.

I gave up drugs in January, haven't touched it since.

January this year after a big drinking session I had bad palpitations and beats again - I ended up in A&E again. Again, an ECG and a taxi home, but this time I went to my Doctor and was honest about my drinking. I've just had an Echo (ecocardiogram?) and wore a heart monitor. My echo was fine, don't have the results for my monitor yet - it caught an ectopic beat after just an hour, so I was pleased about that. If it was anything sinister I would have heard from them by now I think (been a week).

I've just had another big night out 14hrs drinking, got in at 6:30am this morning) and am again feeling dodgy, but I'm becoming convinced this is ALL in my head. Call it stress, anxiety, OCD - I don't know. But I do know the mind can do funny things to your body without you realising. I've been thinking of my heart everyday for at least five years - I'm sure that is having an effect on my health. My Doctor gave me Beta Blockers, but I daren't take them because they slow your heart down, and I worry mine is too slow already! See? ALCOHOL is what I use to switch off, I always have - but it's a solution that is hurting me and probably keeping the situation going I think. I have to stop drinking, I know.

I need a shrink too but I dont have the money - this has helped, just typing all this now. OMG, sorry it's sooo long! You have nothing on me wanderingmoon!

wanderingmoon, you're 19, please try not to go down my path of worrying all the time - it can take over your life. You're too young for it - I am too!

Well, if anyone wants to chat or help me, please feel free to reply.

Good luck everyone, stay strong, and try to enjoy life!! These are my bad things I've spoken about (well apart from being abused as a kid and my £22,000 worth of credit card bills!!!), but my life has many good sides too. Loving parents, a few good friends, and an absolute star of a girlfriend who sticks with me through all this! What a pain I must be!! Without these people I think I'd be gone, so if I can help anyone be a friend or a listener, let me know.

..........

That is the first thing people thing of when they get anxiety ridden or panicky and their heart starts to palpitate and start to feel tight.

There are tests that can be done to rule that out if it's something someone is really worried about, and it takes 2 seconds to do.

xpreshun wrote:It's so good to hear other people are experiencing similar things to me - I thought it was just me!

Word!

I am so sure that I have something wrong with my heart - or that I have cancer. I too feel pain in my heart or somewhere near it and one time the pain was so bad that I felt I couldn't breath. And many times I have went to bed thinking that I'm going to die during the night. I'm 19 too so there's probably nothing wrong with my heart but it would feel safe to hear some professional say that. But I don't like going to a doctor......

I had the cancer and heart symptoms and fears for years too. I would recommend joining a CBT group and learn the tools you need to calm your overactive mind down and get things back into perspective. It has helped me immensely.

my doc put my palpatations down to anxiety too. ya see he just looked in my medical notes and saw that ive suffered with depresssion in the past, plus a few other things that would point to maybe me being anxious.

id go to bed and feel nice and relaxed, wasnt anxious about anything, but then id find it hard to breath...not a lot just a bit wierd. then just as i was falling to sleep id feel a real hard thud in my chest. this went on for weeks. doc sent me for tests at my insistance..had ecg and all that lot but all was normal. my heart rate was low..50 beats per min at rest never above 65 when not. because i was suffering extreme tiredness and feeling quite low my doc once again told me i was suffering depression..but id been depressed before and this was different. i gained lots of wieght....and then developed a lump in my neck. doc gave me anti biotics but lump got bigger. turns out after some simple blood tests that i have an underactive thyroid!. and the palpatations,breathlessness,feelings of anxiety,weight gain,exhaustion.,low heart rate,feeling cold...well they are all symptoms of this hypothyroidism.

not saying everyone has the same condition but maybe if you find your heart rate is low or have many of the above symptoms it might be worth your doc ruling thyroid disorders out.

I feel like I'm in similar boat of investigating heart quirkiness. Sometimes when exercising my heartrate feels "more calm" than when seated in a classroom, or stationary. By discerning what induces the flight-fight response ( a large source of HR fluctuations), you can pinpoint and hopefully predict when your HR will fluctuate. Exercising, although it "gets your blood flowing", has a more calming effect on me and I've been astonished to experience how LOW of a an HR I had while exercising (no f-f response, sympathetic nervous system disengaged) and how my HR sounded off the charts when experience social anxiety (during periods where my peripheal nervous system most likely engaged my sympathetic nervous system response).

Also, sometimes in conversations with people -- typically people that cause a tremendous amount of confusion and problems for me and people with whom I have history with -- I feel like electricity shoots through my arms. Does this happen to anyone else? At first I just kind of went with it and ended up exploding in anger or in an over-reactive response, but recently I've been able to just "observe" these "electrical firings" in my body and choose to react different. The strange thing is that I'm not sure if these "subtle twitches" i get are teh effects of anger, or of wanting to help a person who appears to be suffering.

Barry did you ever give CBT a try?