A Recent Bout of Health Anxiety

How I worked through it . . .

The other day I ran into a large wooden bear. I was playing with my nephew and bumped my head and blood poured out. I had to get stitches which I wasn’t too concerned about although I had to go to that place where they do the stitches, a place I despise not just because of some of the people that work there, but also because it’s a place of suffering and I guess that reminds me of my past. Anyway I tell them I’m just here for some stitches. And they’re like oh when did last get your last tetanus shot? And I thought oh no. I had one as a child and maybe again later but did I need another one? Because I hate drugs I only take drugs if I feel they’re absolutely necessary which is almost never.

So I was doing a little research on my phone in the waiting room to figure out if I needed this thing when I got called in and I had no idea what to do. Then a guy comes in and stitches me up and it’s fine and he says they’ll come in shortly for the tetanus shot. And I kind of fell silent. Kind of shut down a bit. I’m truly terrible at standing up for myself and I’ve been in arguments with these types of people before. So I guess I just thought the odds of getting tetanus were extremely low and the odds of being harmed by this shot seemed extremely low so the path of least resistance was to just get the shot. So I got it. But I was scared and felt wobbly afterwards.

Now I was scared in part because I thought of withdrawal forums with people having all these sensitivities after taking psychiatric drugs but that thought passed fairly quickly; it wasn’t really my concern. I’m strong, I’m healthy and just as importantly I know that to be true. The bigger thing for me is my profound distrust in the medical establishment, the vast corruption that exists there, and also of course having so many negative experiences with drugs in the past. Even though I resolved protracted withdrawal sensations with a mindbody approach while I was tapering and lost all fear of those drugs and then tapered off smoothly the rest of the way I still have profound reservations about taking any drug. 

But I took the shot and kept telling myself that I’m safe, that I’m healthy, that I’m strong, and that my body can fight off this drug and I’ll be just fine. Then I noticed a rash. And I felt this wave of heat, this wave of stress. It’s the type of rash I’d not seen before and I’ve had many rashes in my life. Then as I was getting ready for bed I looked up online to see if a rash was a possibility from this shot and it seemed that, yes, a rash was an uncommon but possible reaction and that it should pass with time. Okay. Then I thought my calves felt a bit weird and my feet felt weird and I looked at them and thought oh are my feet swollen? And I looked that up online and then I could start to really feel the panic come in. So I threw my phone down and said, no, I will not research this any further. My feet upon inspection looked okay and I thought yes I have a rash but that’s it and I’ll just see how it looks in the morning.

So I went to take a shower and I started to feel sick and the light in the washroom started flickering a little and I had a brief image of myself going blind and calling for help. A danger signal, a stress response, was firing chaotically in my mind and I perceived danger at any little inclination. I finished the shower and felt a little woozy and that’s when I had to start talking to myself. Is this coming from the shot or is my mind just freaking out? And to try to answer this I could ask myself: what’s my state of mind? Is there any reason for me to be stressed out? I know my mind had a deep fear of taking the shot and it was scared of the rash so I thought this must just be stress. 

So I went to lie down to go to sleep but then I felt even worse. It felt a little like I used to feel a long time ago when I just felt nauseous and sick and I was scared and my mind was racing and I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop it. I thought is this an adverse reaction to the shot? Well again how’s my state of mind? It’s panicking okay so it’s probably just that. But because I felt so sick I thought maybe I should stand up but then I thought no I wanted to go to sleep and that would be giving into the sensations. I wasn’t going to let my mind ruin my night. So eventually I fell asleep and woke up in the night and checked the rash and it was gone. Then I saw it was replaced by another rash. And I was like okay. I mean I know I shouldn’t be monitoring it like this but sometimes it’s hard not to as you probably know.

Then I went back to sleep and eventually it was morning and I felt kind of under the weather but ended up taking a walk outside, rested a bit, and then I wanted to meditate. I thought maybe I’d relax. I don’t think I ever really mediated during the months I actively resolved pain and withdrawal sensations but I’ve mediated off and on throughout the last decade and I’m getting back into it and determined to mediate once a day, ideally twice a day. But when I went to try to meditate I think my experience was pretty revealing. Because when I started to meditate all of a sudden I felt worse, my arm was twitching (the one I got the shot in), I felt itching, and just felt more stressed out while meditating. So what’s this all about? Why is all this weird stuff happening when I’m meditating?

So my interpretation is that it’s my mind saying hey, wait a minute, I’m not going to let you relax here, we need to stand guard, we’re afraid about a potential adverse reaction to the shot. In fact, John Sarno the originator of The Mindbody Syndrome, called his final book The Divided Mind because he views the unconscious mind as the producer of the stress response—that’s what freaking out—and it tries to convince the conscious mind to follow so that we also freak out to address the mind is perceiving as dangerous. So what Sarno says is that we, the conscious mind, have to fight back and stand up to the unconscious mind and convince it we’re okay and that this stress response is not necessary. 

So I couldn’t let that stress response win. I’m going to win. I remember when I had protracted withdrawal sensations and pain I gave up doing things because my mind convinced me I was doomed so what’s the point? But I’ve learned from that. So I kept going and continued the meditation and felt myself relax despite sometimes feeling these sensations. Because I’m in charge, not my mind. Even if I didn’t end up with a relaxation response it would still be okay because I just did what I wanted. That’s what was important. I’m doing what I want to do.

Then later I tried to do a little writing and I got warm because my computer was on my lap and maybe I was a little stressed about what I was writing about and the original rash came back from the shot. But I thought if this is an internal adverse reaction why would the rash come back just because I’m a little warm or a little stressed? Is that how an adverse reaction to a shot would act? It didn’t make sense to me. 

Then later that night I was at the grocery store where I continued to have brief waves of panic and rashes including one around my throat which is always kind of scary because my throat felt strange and I had images of not being able to breathe and many times when I had protracted withdrawal sensations I would suddenly not be able to swallow and then I would be gasping for breath. And that happened a couple of times recently again here too. But I carried on and completed the shopping trip. 

Thankfully the next day I had to go to work and that was good because it took my mind off of everything and I didn’t have a rash, no panic, no anything, and then I was on the subway coming home and I felt a little panic again. Another clue this was a stress response and not an adverse reaction.  There was just nothing to distract myself with anymore so my mind pounced and tried to convince me that something was wrong. But I realized this was just my mind tricking me so I just sort of laughed at my mind and told it to cut it out because I know I’m fine, it can’t fool me, and I’ll be moving on now so don’t even bother to try again.

Now this whole experience was very, very minor compared to what I experienced previously with persistent pain and protracted sensations from psychiatric drugs. That went on for five years and was far worse. But my response here was still very important because when the stress response takes control and completely takes over that’s when things can get worse and worse and it might take longer to stop this response and it might be harder to understand where this stress response originated from. But of course it’s still possible to stop it. I did that as well.

I guess one point of this story is that, despite this event being a fairly rare occurrence, you just heard how I can still freak out a bit, and yet I still resolved five years of debilitating persistent pain and protracted withdrawal sensations. Me. Someone who can be scared of his own shadow. And I did that through determination and specific processes from John Sarno's books, Howard Schubiner's books, Steve Ozanich's books, these are the books that worked wonders for me and anyone interested can read and re-read these books. A single reading of them probably won’t get you anywhere. But it can be hard to read if you’re having sensations, so there are some audiobooks as well. There are podcasts. Even listening I know can be difficult when sensations are strong but if you’re interested you can check out those works.

And as for me this recent bout of health anxiety has passed. I reconfirmed to my unconscious mind that I’m healthy so the stress response stopped. If it didn’t then maybe I would have done some journaling to acknowledge deeper sources of this stress response like where my fear of drugs comes from and all that but in this situation it wasn’t necessary. I mean I got more preoccupied with sensations than I wanted to but I’m far from perfect and that’s okay because I didn’t have to be perfect. Anyway I’ll come out with another post on Thursday. I was making Part 2 of a post on health anxiety and withdrawal when this happened. So maybe I’ll see you then.