The Two Faces Of Anxiety Disorder
photo credit: glitter feet
As anxiety sufferers we all understand by now what constitutes an anxiety symptom. It could be palpitations, chest pain, dizziness, or more thought based symptoms like racing or disturbing thoughts. In my case I have experienced both, but interestingly rarely have I experienced both at the same time.
This only came up because lately I’ve noticed that if I’m sucked in by speeding or negative thoughts I usually will not encounter physical anxiety symptoms like hot flashes for example.
The only thing that I can summarize from this is that when anxious thoughts, especially the “automatic” variety, come into the mind they completely preoccupy our entire being. As if our bodies don’t have time for palpitations when fully engaged in anxious mental sparing.
On the other hand, when I’m dealing with a physical concern my anxious thoughts are present but on a completely different level, solely focused on how the physical symptom is about to kill me, or at least how I imagine it’s gonna kill me.
So there I am, sometimes enveloped by the body and other times by the mind. Aside from being a gift from hell, it does bring up an interesting question. Is not being anxious more about redirecting our attention, at least partly, from anxiety with enough focus and energy to make the anxiety not matter? In other words, if we were able to occupy the mind with something else as intense but less negative, could we achieve more anxiety free days?
Or, is it more likely that only anxiety can bring enough energy to bare to make us forget about this or that aspect of our condition? Is your anxiety as two faced as mine? I suppose more than anything when someone is chronically anxious they cling to anything they perceive as potentially dangerous or scary. And of course there is that pesky thing called genetics and life experience that could be the prominent source of our anguish.
In this way the two faces of anxiety are really just different sides of the exact same coin. You might ask do I prefer mental anxiety versus phyiscal anxiety? Honestly I’d rather have a piece of palpitation pie anyday, but I hate’m both just the same.
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This site is amazing. It’s like I’ve found some friends who know exactly what I’ve been going through.
I experience the exact same thing as you Paul. If I’m feeling physical symptoms, my mental symptoms are generally not there. But if I’m feeling mental symptoms, the physical ones are generally gone. Just like you, I’d gladly take tightness in my chest over racing thoughts and the like. Much easier to deal with for me.
I hear you Danny. I hate chest pain as much as the next person, but frankly there is something less ominous about a phyiscal symptom I can “relate” to.
They both come and go, just a part of being anxious.
I think mine go hand in hand to be honest. I think my racing thoughts generally lead to physical symptoms. Like, I might get a twinge in my chest and that triggers something in my mind that tells me I might be having a heart attack and this goes on and on. Actually, i have expereinced something very similar today. Had a brilliant couple of weeks but today it’s just crept up on me. Hit my head earlier and that spiralled into trhoughts and then later physical symptoms. What a shit.
I can definitely relate. sometimes I get so caught up in the physical symptoms and I am solely focused on why it is happening and what the negative outcome is-”my left hand is tingly and numb, therefore it must be MS, hence I am going to become incapacitated.” What this does is distract me from what I am really worrying about -it takes alot of energy to be objective and not let the intense physical feelings take on a life of their own.
Ditto to what Chuck said. It seems like lately I am consumed with the thought that I have MS. I am currently having a panic attack that is switching between the physical and the then the head. It’s just completely exhausting. I’m so glad I found this site and the podcast. Thanks so much Paul!