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Health Anxiety - Part One: What It Is and How to Overcome It

Jun 07, 2021
Hello everyone, my name is Neil Seidman and I am co-chair of the public education committee for a DAA which is the Depression and Anxiety Association of America. Welcome to this webinar on

health

anxiety

,

what

it is and how you can

overcome

it. So these webinars are brought to you by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, which is the leading nonprofit organization in the field of

anxiety

and depression, and you know our mission is to improve diagnosis and promote prevention, the treatment and cure of anxiety, depression and stress-related disorders through education like this webinar. through practice and research, so I want to invite everyone to take advantage of all the free resources on our website which is a DAA o-r-g point and also on our website you will find a really wonderful list of treatment providers where just click to find a right therapist. from the home page and we also have a free online peer-to-peer support group and finally you can support our organization by making a charitable donation on the website as well.
health anxiety   part one what it is and how to overcome it
Okay, let's start now. Please note that we are going to

part

icipate in our concert. audience, we will have a question and answer period at the end of the webinar, so during the webinar you may want to write a question and then when we get to the question and answer session, I will explain how to write it, so I'm very happy to present it. our host ken is a clinical social life worker, he specializes in the treatment of anxiety disorders and ocd, he is a member of the board of directors of DAA and is also the founding director of quiet mind Solutions.com ken is an author and produced a program of 12 hours. self-help audio program for people who suffer from anxiety and the title is Anxiety Solutions Series, Your Guide to Overcoming Panic, Worry, Compulsions and Fear, and also created a self-help coloring book called Break Free from anxiety conferences at universities and organizations across the country and in his private practice in Los Angeles is individual and group therapy to help anxiety sufferers free themselves from debilitating fear and Ken's website is calm therapy by Ken Goodman , so let me hand it over to Ken now.
health anxiety   part one what it is and how to overcome it

More Interesting Facts About,

health anxiety part one what it is and how to overcome it...

Hi everyone, mention my powerpoint just want to make sure everyone can see it. It looks good though, yes you can see it. Okay, Alex, everyone for joining us today. I just want to start with a short story. Many months ago I had a patient with

health

anxiety and she was afraid of having a brain tumor, so she went. She went to a doctor, they did an MRI and while she was waiting for the results, of course, she was extremely anxious and nervous and she went to her doctor to find out the results. The doctor told her that everything was negative, she has no problems, there was no brain tumor, everything was fine.
health anxiety   part one what it is and how to overcome it
Well, you have no reason to worry, but if you are worried, come back in six months, so of course she was relieved and went home very happy, but that night, while she was lying in bed, she started thinking about herself why would she tell me. come back in six months if nothing happened, he chose a

part

of

what

his doctor told him and that got out of control and started another round of worry, so even though the MRI was negative, she ended up getting very, very anxious and that's why health anxiety is very complicated. We are going to talk about the other complicated aspects of this disorder, what health anxiety is and what strategies you can implement to

overcome

it.
health anxiety   part one what it is and how to overcome it
Today we have a special guest. We invited Stephanie. Stephanie is a former sufferer of health anxiety and she's going to chime in throughout this talk that I'm giving and share from her perspective, from the patient's perspective, what it took to overcome this disorder, so Stephanie, welcome, yeah , thank you, I'm happy to be here and there. There is actually no official diagnosis called health anxiety. There are actually two diagnoses in the DSM. The mystical manual diagnosis. It is illness anxiety and somatic symptom disorder. The main distinction between the two is the presence of somatic symptoms that are distressing or significantly disruptive to your life. you're talking about physical symptoms in the body, yes, physical symptoms, so pain, neurological things like weakness or lightheadedness, digestive symptoms like diarrhea, cramps, any type of acid reflux or chest pressure that you may feel racing, so that these are all somatic symptoms, whereas with illness anxiety, you may not have as much, it's just more worry, but for our purposes here we're just going to lump them all together, so we're not going to make a distinction between the two and I'm going to talk about the characteristics, but I'm just going to call it health anxiety, which is going to encompass both of them because of the way we're going to try to address as much as we can in this PowerPoint if we can't do it.
We will have a second part of all this, so we will get to everything well, then there is a worry about having or acquiring a serious silent illness, so what I mean is that you really believe that you have some type of serious illness or that there is a fear that you are going to acquire that is going to happen someday possibly imminent possibly in the near future there are somatic symptoms that I just talked about that are distressing and disturbing and that include so many different things that we will have to include tingling, sensations and hands, lightheadedness, knots in the throat, all kinds of you know, shortness of breath, all kinds of physical symptoms, as well as an excessive amount of time spent on those symptoms and health concerns, so a lot of what happens if they think imagining the worst. case scenarios worrying about your symptoms and worries, a lot of time goes into that and then there are a lot of behaviors related to that, so regular visits to the doctor, medical exams can be taking too much medication or seeking a lot of reassurance, so You go to your spouse and say hey, I have this feeling here, what do you think it is?
So you calm down, maybe scan your body for things and then there's a lot of compulsive checking, so I currently have a patient who is afraid of this. blood pressure is too high so you know people can take their blood pressure all day long just checking it over and over again and then there's also online searches on WebMD to enter your symptoms and see what comes up and rereading them articles, there are many behaviors related to this disorder and finally avoidance, fear of going to the doctor, some people go to the doctor too much and other people avoid the doctor completely because they don't want to receive bad news, maybe they do. we're trying medications because they're afraid of the side effects maybe you know they feel physical symptoms they don't want to leave the house you don't want to exercise they don't want to see certain things because they're afraid they might see something that might trigger their anxiety so these are the main characteristics of health anxiety, so I can jump, yeah right, just watch while you're going through it, it's a lot of fun because it really reads like a textbook.
I'm laughing to myself. while you're going through it in a way like, yeah, it's like you've been watching me over the years, but all that, you know, you talked about blood pressure, but I think about lying there and taking my pulse and checking my heart and you know, the doctor told me one time that they had examined my heart and he said no, everything looks great, but I can't guarantee anything with a heart and I thought, oh, it totally screwed me up, so all these things and Searching online when I would go to an article, it would say I last visited it and then the date, and I think I already read this one, but you're reading it over and over again, so all of these things are correct, it's actually So.
It's good to know that this is a real thing because I think when we're in this and we feel like we're the only ones feeling this, but you just explained it perfectly, yeah, by the way, for our audience, Stephanie wasn't there. My patient, she was kind of my patients' colleague, so we're actually getting to know each other. We met for the first time a couple of weeks ago, so I'm glad you shared that yes, that's how ideas work and, unfortunately, sometimes people will. It is difficult for them to believe that what they are actually having is a psychiatric illness.
They firmly believe that what they are experiencing is a medical illness and when you have had it you have been medically ruled out for all that remains. really helps anxiety, so what underlies all anxiety, no matter what your anxiety is, whether it's public speaking, fear of going indoors, spiders, fear of driving, social anxiety or health anxiety, there is two things that underlie all anxiety, these are the roots and anxieties we will talk a lot about them and the first is the intolerance of uncertainty, you cannot tolerate a certain set of uncertain situations and, in the case of health anxiety, It's uncertain, like what is this mole, do you know what it is?
I don't know, I'm not sure and the other one is anxiety intolerance, like you feel that anxiety and you can't tolerate it either, so those are the characteristics of all anxiety disorders, no matter what you have, and OCD, so What causes fear? of the disease, well, it's similar to what causes anxiety and everyone genetics plays a very important role, you know, the genes that are passed from one generation to the next also just living with an anxious parent who is anxious about Illness can create anxiety and if you have a parent and grew up with a parent who constantly worries about their own illness, you can pick up on a lot of those worries and take them on yourself, maybe you had a loved one who suffered from an illness and you saw everything.
What happened to that person? and now you're worried that you might experience the same thing and maybe someone died of an illness and now you're afraid of getting that illness maybe you've suffered from an illness before and you know what that's like and now you're worried about having a relapse of that same thing or something maybe a different one and then, finally, maybe a doctor left something out. Now no one trusts doctors anymore because they left out something critical and now you're worried you won't be able to do it. just trust anything doctors say so health worry is easily triggered and these are the most common things that trigger health worry an unusual or painful sensation in the body so anything you arises be unusual and, in fact, it doesn't even have to be that way.
It might be unusual, it might be the same thing every time you know about it, so things that come up randomly, new things, but old things that you've been suffering from for years can trigger it and also a flare-up of a medical disorder, for example. example. if you have acid reflux and you eat something that probably triggers acid reflux and now you experience acid reflux, now you start to worry, the weight is deistic acid reflux or is it esophageal, a little cancer that is protein, sir, something that burns in me heart is that. heart problem or you know some type of GERD or heartburn that you don't know is in certain posts on social media you come across something on social media about someone diagnosed with MS and now you're worried about Al's maybe you're watching TV or a movie or see something on the news there is a scare about bird flu that you see now you are worried about getting bird flu just listen to someone talking about your own party and someone talks about another person who had some disorder some disease that they acquired and Now you're worried about getting it or maybe something your doctor says.
Stephanie just mentioned something that you know doctors will commonly say. Well, nothing. You know everything is fine right now. So you just focus on the words right now. Oh, but what? about subsequent discharge instructions. I am a patient of mine. She just showed me her discharge instructions. I'm going to read them. I read you one. Do you know that you have a little high blood pressure mainly due to anxiety? So the doctor gave you these additional discharge instructions and this is this line that triggers the risk of complications from uncontrolled blood pressure indicates infection nerve heart brain kidney and eye damage that may not be reversible so just the discharge instructions they can scare people and finally external lab values ​​the normal range, so your blood pressure may be a little low or your cholesterol may be a little low and that can really trigger it Stephanie, finally one more, sorry, waiting for the test results, so you just got a test and I have to wait, wait. week for the results we will have Stephanie something, yes, can you relate to Stephanie?
Yeah, I'm just like every point, I'm just remembering different things, you know, you mentioned the lab values, you know, I remember looking at my white blood cell count. and I called my doctor and I told her why it's so low and she said no, no, Stephanie, you look at the whole picture, you look, you know, it's not just the one I say, yeah, but, oh yeahof course, then I'm online looking up why that white guy, what that guy needs, you know the discharge instructions, it's always like you know it and you know it after IB times, after times I had visited the ER because I was sure that you knew I was having a heart attack or I was having something and then you look at the discharge and yeah, I love that and I think even Cceptor when you go to the doctor you definitely hear differently than the average patient would, you just have a you .
You're just more aware of all the little good things they say, so absolutely yes, yes, it's very easy and underneath the painful sensations in your body it's unusual and I would describe to you the amazing curd that anyone who goes to the mole, yes, and with which he has faced. Yeah, yeah, I've dealt with that for years, so that causes all kinds of things, you know, but then you mentioned I had a mole and you know I've been down that path, you know, numbness, I've been down that path, You know, I've had every illness you could have without ever. have some illness, fortunately, so yeah, okay, yeah, okay, once you get activated, a lot of different things can happen from there, one that you can start to avoid, like I'm feeling something, my heart, I'm not going to exercise, maybe I.
I'm not going out maybe I'm not going to I don't want to see people because if I see people they can talk about some illness I'm a boy go to the doctor there's also a home and worry so once your Twitter caused you to start thinking about it over and over again again so you just can't get it out of your head there is compulsive verification so like you mentioned you go online maybe start scanning they have used verification surveys and then you can just get peace of mind and it constantly asks you people to calm them down, call their doctor, email their spouse, run tests, and finally once it's triggered, they may experience physical symptoms that we're going to talk about, this is why Physical symptoms are triggered once you have something that just appears to you so that's how this works everyone's heard of adrenaline okay there's a nickname for adrenaline you know the nickname for adrenaline they call it fighting or escape. correct hormone because adrenaline is for emergencies, it is a very necessary and really important hormone that makes you fast and strong so that you can run away from danger or fight against danger, for example, if a fire breaks out in your house, your brain will send signals to the adrenal gland.
Glands The adrenal glands will secrete adrenaline that will make you fast and strong so you can run away from the fire or put it out. Oh, you can hear my phone ringing and that's great, but now it's going to go away. Adrenaline is an important and necessary hormone. However, adrenaline also causes many physical symptoms and anxiety. Tons of physical symptoms such as hard running and Paul's tight niche in the chest, shortness of breath, lightheadedness, sweating, muscle tension, many physical symptoms are caused by adrenaline. and these physical symptoms are also symptoms of medical illnesses so it makes it very complicated, very, very complicated, you can feel a tightness in your throat, well, what is that?
Well, remember that adrenaline can cause muscle tension anywhere in your body, from here to your chest and even your abdomen, which is why it causes so many physical injuries. Symptoms and people who can be easily fooled, but it is very predictable. It's like another physicist. It says like other substances. So what would happen if someone drank? And what would happen if someone drank too much alcohol? Well, you would start slurring your words feeling unbalanced, right, it's predictable. It's the same with adrenaline. You're just not drinking it. It's happening internally. It's because your brain sends signals to the adrenal. glands at the moment the brain is incredible it calculates thousands of things at the same time but it tends to do what it is programmed to do so it is a bit like a computer what would happen if someone reprogrammed your computer two plus two equals five well the Next time you press? pushing two would equal five although it is wrong, what is the same with your imagination and your brain?
If your imagination tells your brain something scary, your brain will send signals to the adrenal glands that secrete adrenaline and then you'll start to maybe have nervousness and then once you have nervousness, you'll be, oh, now I'm sure I have ALS. It seems like I can feel my jitters just fine, so here's the flow. Imagination says something terrifying. There is something wrong with your heart. Your brain sends signals to the adrenal glands. glands the adrenal glands secrete adrenaline and now your heart is racing now you may have the physical symptoms first suddenly you start to feel a little bit of heart racing and then you have the thought afterwards so the consistent physical symptoms of the system may be the first or the thought can be the first. but in both cases, stimulating the flight of fire in adrenaline, which then leads to maybe a bunch of different body somatic sensations, yeah, it just reinforces what you're already thinking that you know for someone who has a troubled heart, it's going to make them your heart races. which will make you believe that you are having a heart problem, you may be having a great day, you are just on the computer doing your social media and then you read something on Facebook about someone being diagnosed with MS and suddenly you are out of control and by that's so easy to turn just when you get the trigger right.
Why did things like this anxiety reaction happen so quickly? Why do rational people somehow become irrational? You might wonder like me. I'm a rational person, why does this happen so often? It all comes down to two parts of the brain. I'm going to highlight that the first part is the prefrontal cortex, which is in charge of logical thinking and reasoning up here, the other part is the amygdala. which is a small almond shaped middle part of the brain that has to do with emotional reactions they called primitive brain think about a lizard, if you just clap a real cloud, the lizard would jump right, it just reacts and that's something like that.
What happens with humans also is that the amygdala processes information much faster than the prefrontal cortex, to the point that it hijacks the entire brain, so you can't even think clearly, so any rational thought you can do when your amygdala activates it turns off and you start to feel those physical symptoms, it's hard to think logically, it's thinking about something you put something in your toaster oven and you leave it there and it starts to burn and smoke starts to come out and if you happen to have a smoke detector in your kitchen, it will go off, smoke alarms don't have a frontal cortex to determine if smoke is actually a sign of danger, it just goes off and it just sounds like a fire, which is basically what happens when the People have health anxiety are actually two forms of anxiety, so the brain is made up of billions of neurons connected to each other, a complex network, think of billions of telephone wires crisscrossing through your brain, I used to think the brain never changed. and now that we know that it changes and it changes when there's a highly emotional event, whether it's good or bad, in addition to repetition, it's like repetition, repetitive lifting will strengthen your muscles, you know, repetitive behaviors change and strengthen connections. neural pathways in your brain, so for example when writing, you know when you're first learning to write you have to really think about where your fingers are, but if you practice every day for half an hour pretty quickly, you start to do that. automatically, it's just automatic and what's happening in your brain is that those neural connections have changed and they get stronger the more you do it, so if you stop writing for two years you can go back to it, the connections are still there and you can still write now.
If they rearrange the keyboard, you would have to start over and learn the new keyboard and then the neural connections in your brain will change again, so with all the practice you've had in avoiding, worrying, checking, scanning and compulsive searching. By calming down and focusing on your symptoms, you have strengthened the neural connections in your brain and exacerbated your anxiety about illness and death. You are an anxiety expert with all the practice and that is basically what happens and people have all types of anxiety so here is the question of how do you overcome health anxiety when you are genetically predisposed?
You've had years of practice at worrying, avoiding compulsion, and seeking reassurance, which has strengthened the wiring in your brain to be anxious and trained your amygdala to take control of the entire brain so you can't. Think rationally, in other words, how do you fix the faulty wiring in your brain? Well, I have good news: you don't need brain surgery, you just need cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, which is what we're going to talk about now, and if you seek therapy with someone for this disorder, you need to make sure they are highly trained in CBT, cognitive-behavioral therapy.
The cognitive part is about your cognitions, the way you think, changing the way you think and the behavioral part, is changing the way you behave. behaviors so we'll get into that finding good help Stephanie in your process I'm sorry you said how you found how you found good help for yourself how I found good help in the same At first I did a lot of research, in fact, the person I worked with the most I had recently written a book that I loved so I called the author of the book because I thought I loved everything the author said so I called him and He couldn't help me but then he pointed me in that direction and I think it's very It's important to find out that you have to talk to people and make sure that, like Ken said, they're really qualified. and they really understand the specific anxiety that you're dealing with well you can easily find out on their website if you just go to the person's website if they talk mainly about anxiety or OCD you know you can tell the heart what their specialty is if They talk about marriage counseling and developing self-esteem and all that, depression and then you know that kind of generalist treats everything well.
I think that is not possible. I think it's kind of a struggle when you're looking for a therapist, especially if you're looking for someone with your health insurance, you know you get these long lists of a lot of therapists who know 25 different specialties, but I think there are therapists who just list everything they you know because you covered everything in school, so I think it's important, like Ken said, to go to a direct website, there's a direct website and have a conversation with them and you know, sometimes you go to a therapist and you actually It is not like this.
It may not really work, they really won't have what you're looking for and that's okay, you just have to move on and you know sometimes it's hard to find someone in your area, but with video conferencing you can often find someone in your state. who specializes, you know, and you would just do video conferencing, which is really yeah, stay open to that because I think you know, I think traditional therapy is in the office, but I think it's great that we have the one where we can do it at through zoom and through all these different avenues because then we can get the best treatment, yes, a daa actually has a list of therapists that do video conferencing on the website, okay, so our bodies are naturally loud, all kinds of things.
I mean this is natural and I think sometimes when you have things your way you expect there to be no noise but that's not realistic and all of this is just a partial list of things that can happen on a regular basis and if you have anxiety you are You will experience more physical symptoms due to adrenaline because you are constantly worrying about things that send signals to the adrenal gland and amygdala, so you will feel like your body is going to be louder than the average person's, even if you are in Perfect Good health, but if you are in perfect good health, you will still have a noisy body.
I mean, the other day I felt something like a muscle twitch, it was like here, right there, just a muscle twitch. and it went on for a while, but then it disappeared and the world is a noisy place, so we talked about these things, you know, news about health problems. Posts on Facebook without friends talking about family members who have had illnesses so the world is a noisy place your body is a noisy place easily triggered and anxiety is full of internal struggle and dead ground or you know, internal turmoil should I Go to the doctor?
Is this a new shopping center? Does it look different from the previous ones? Why is my blood? pressure so why should I take it again? maybe the doctor left something out maybe it's not acid reflux maybe my cholesterol isn't in the normal range i should be worried so there isa constant internal struggle and internal turmoil when you have health anxiety and I want you to start By looking at anxiety from a different point of view, you know the problem that people have with anxiety is that they are trying to solve the problem of anxiety from the same perspective that created the problem.
Let's change your point of view so you can see the problem. in a different way and the way I want you to look at it is that instead of fighting with anxiety, look at it from the perspective of a mental game against a very intelligent opponent. It is a mental game against a very smart opponent and you win this game if you free yourself from health anxiety but your opponent has a different goal, he wins by keeping you trapped then your opponent has a strategy that's why he is winning and you are not has no strategy, so what we're going to do in this webinar is talk about what your opponent's strategy is and what your strategy should be so that your opponent has some strategic moves, just a few, but they're really good, the first one is : lies, lies, exaggerates, catastrophizes when telling you the truth If something has a 1 in 1 million chance of happening, the approach will likely make you focus on things that aren't important, but if you believe it, it will feel Right, like for example Stephanie.
You were saying that you had all these worries about different diseases and disorders. Do you have any of these diseases or disorders? No, how long have you had health anxiety? Probably about 7 or 8 years ago. I think it started, yeah, maybe nine years ago. nine years ago nine years ago okay, more than nine years daily or not daily, but regularly, well, after lie after lie, none of them were true, that is something very common, the other is to start a conversation with you. so you concentrate so that your focus and attention is on the health and symptoms instead of living your life, then the first is lying, the second is making conversation and the third is tricking you into doing what he wants you to do. scan check ask for reassurance visit the doctor avoid the doctor go online okay then these are yours this is your opponent's strategy okay now your opponent has a lot of rules and these are a lot of them he says you have to be one hundred percent sure no at 99 percent, you have to be 100 percent sure you don't have a disorder, there you will get more tricks, you can never believe your doctor or test results, you just can't trust them if something bad happened to someone else person.
You must believe that the chances of it happening to you are high. If something seems dangerous to you, then you must believe that it is dangerous. You should take scary thoughts seriously to protect yourself. You must believe that the worst possible outcome is the most likely outcome. You must scan. Your body all day to detect signs of illness. You should focus on the symptoms to make sure they don't get worse. You must focus on your health to ensure you don't die. You should contemplate all my questions and look for answers on the Internet. You must do everything I tell you and if you follow these rules your monster wins.
Can you absolutely relate to any of these rules Stephanie? I am following them, yes, yes, and it is very difficult, but it is the only way to do it and I believe. That's the only thing that's gotten me through is not following these rules and you actually have to do it. I noticed them when they came in. I noticed the voice telling me the rule. I know the rule and I have to suggest a no, not today mm-hmm, right. Could I interrupt for a moment because we're getting some questions from people who want to be able to spend more time with some of these wonderful slides.
I just want to let everyone know that the webinar is being recorded so you'll be able to watch it again whenever you want through the adaa website and we'll check in to see if there's any way to make the actual slides available, but you'll definitely be able to come back to watch this webinar whenever you want. Yes, it was wonderful. being able to pause and reread, yes, absolutely now, one of the things I talk to my patients about is really taking this idea of ​​playing a mental game and putting it into practice, we do it by externalizing the anxiety and embodying it. so we take away the struggle and then we personify the anxiety, we give it a face and a shape and now we say, okay, I'm playing a mind game against that guy, so if I create some kind of creature and say okay, that will be my anxiety or my anxiety monster or my opponent whatever you want to call them and he's the one who will tell me all these things that we can mean, so it's a lot easier to see your problem when you do it that way.
So instead of having a headache, what does that mean? Know? Why do you keep getting headaches? It's not why I keep getting headaches. Why do you keep getting headaches? What happens if you have brain cancer? Search online again. Telling you to do these things right your doctor is very busy, what if he forgot something or made a mistake? WebMD says you could have MS you have all the right symptoms so he's your anxiety disorder your opponent is basically dismissing the fact that your doctor spent all the time The last time you know eight years into medical school and suddenly you give him Give WebMD the credit it deserves, I mean, you have to diagnose yourself, you are actually the best judge, you are the doctor, forget your doctor, your doctor can make mistakes, so you are devaluing, devaluing your Doctor, are you?
Why are your hands shaking with all this tingling? Is it ALS? He holds out your hands and see if they shake well so he can tell you what to do right and if you do it, you will do it stronger. No, you are feeding your anxiety by participating in what he tells you to do why does your heart race that way take your blood pressure again you are taking your blood pressure you are taking off your feeding earrings you are making it worse by Doing it you know what you think you're, you're making it better because you want to get that comfort, you want to get that good read, but you're actually just making the anxiety worse, ask your wife what she thinks, now you have to ask your wife what she thinks.
I think you think I have a problem and then it can cause marriage problems when your stomach still hurts but if you have a stomachache cancel your plans with your friends just rest and see what happens if it goes away again he is trying to get you , No. To live life I want you to focus on your stomach, stay home, focus on your stomach. I'm going out with your friends. The goal of your anxiety is to make sure you feel miserable, so let's talk about what your strategy should be. These are the things that I am going to present now are the things that you have to implement and these things are like everything else easier said than done, but this is what your strategy should be and we will analyze them more specifically, but here they are like this, the first is that you have to refuse to believe your opponent's lies, you have anxiety about your health, let this be your default, you already know that you have the things, or at least you should know that you have things that should be your defaults, remember you have that.
It also doesn't mean you can't have medical problems, but don't devalue or minimize the health anxiety you have. Live without absolute certainty. Be confident enough to be free of anxiety. You can't be sure. The last time I got on a plane. month there was no certainty that the plane was going to land, but it was sure enough. I entered the cockpit and asked the pilot for his driver's license. Why did I breath test him to see if he had been drinking? Now I'm going to trust that. he knows what he's doing. I am pretty sure. He can't be one hundred percent, sir.
If you demand 100 percent certainty, you must have health anxiety to be able to choose. You may have health anxiety or you may be confident enough as the only one. The way to be free of anxiety is to be insecure. Don't fall for their tricks to start a conversation. Don't answer the question. Respond rudely. We're going to talk about how to respond when you have an anxious thought but anxiety is trying. to draw you into a conversation if he can draw you into a conversation think of a fisherman he pulls the line he has the hook he has the hook the fish takes the hook he has caught the fight so that's what happens when he asks you a question what is ?
What is that over there? Why do you feel so much pain and then suddenly for the next half hour you focus on the pain? Do the opposite of what your opponent tells you to do: super difficult, very hard, and yet critical to overcome. disorder, in fact, the ultimate focus on living your life and not your health, the goal is to live your life, it is not to be comfortable or safe, any of these things Stephanie ring true for you and you are on a journey towards yes, to me I was practicing to do the opposite, in fact, I would miss everything that came up about something and I would know that just being aware of the thought coming up was really helpful for me because then I would know what it is, you know, that's how things work. that I have to do the opposite because I know that's really the only way.
I think you said at the beginning that it's easier said than done, and they are, and I think that's one of the hardest parts of how to identify things or anything else. One type of anxiety is that yes, these are all really great because they are great strategies, they are really very difficult but at the same time they really work, if you can really practice one and have the goal in mind of living your life. In life, they're really useful, yes, but it's easy to fall for tricks, you know, and I think I think about my haunting value, something I suffered from myself.
I think about it like, oh, there's my health anxiety again, oh, there's the story. that I'm having a heart attack again, there's that story that you know, it's really helpful to separate it out, so except what you know for sure and let this be your default, you know, for a matter of time, I'm going to do it. . I'm going to continue with this, but I know okay, I have things I know for sure, other things I'm not sure about, I don't know, so if something comes up, remember, okay, I have hell of things against me. I know this is what I'm right, don't minimize that, it's important, I mean Stephanie, you suffered with this for many, many years, it's a significant amount of time and probably the listeners probably suffered for longer.
A real disorder, remember that you have it, don't minimize the psychiatric component of this, and to be free of anxiety, you have to be sure you know it, whether it's a plane, whether you're going into the ocean, or whether you're walking on Ridge table or you are going to get into an elevator requires that you live a life of uncertainty when you go on a trip to Europe and you bring your passport or you could lose it you could get bitten by a dog there could be a terrorist in a shopping center I I mean that you house could burn down when you leave.
I mean, there are all kinds of things that can happen, but you live an uncertain life to be happy, they can't serve you, so what you focus on will grow, so think about if you would like to plant. a garden and if you're going to plant a garden, you go get the seeds, you get all the tools, you find the perfect spot in your backyard, now you take care of the soil, you feed it with what it needs, you feed it, you get the seeds out. put some gadgets around you build the cages so the rodents don't get into the water, remove the weeds, it will grow if you take care of it, it will grow if you do nothing but throw the seeds on the ground.
I'm going to die right, so the more you focus on something, the more it grows and the same goes for your thoughts and behaviors, the more you do it, the more you focus on it, the worse the anxiety gets, which is why you have to stop doing it. those behaviors do the opposite of what anxiety tells you to do and you don't engage with those questions there are obsessions that are thoughts and worries and there are compulsions that are behaviors mainly there are behaviors that can exist there are mental compulsions like praying or reassuring yourself a and again, but think about the obsessions that are in the worries, if you want those thoughts and worries to go away, if you don't want to worry about health, you must first stop the behavior, you can't stop it and eliminate those worries unless you stop the behaviors first, it won't go in the other direction, so one of the first things you said that was helpful was to do the opposite of what your anxiety was telling you, which was huge, you can't stop that health.
You worry unless you stop your behaviors first, so what are those behaviors? stop reading WebMD stop scanning your body for symptoms stop checking your pulse and other symptoms stop asking loved ones for reassurance stop going to the doctor unless there really is a problem and that may be kind of the factors difficult triggers to stop avoid go to the doctor if you avoid going to the doctor exercise and eat healthy for the right reasons so you have to change your behavior if you want to change the way you think so this is a good slide for people I go back to when they're watching the recording, that list of behaviors that need to change.heart attacks all the time and it was very CBT and it was the first time in therapy that changed everything.
I still remember my therapist's name so I was probably in therapy at the time for six months where we were working together weekly and really practicing CBT exercises every day and that took me a long time and I think. that therapy over the years now I just go back and revisit it like I said, sometimes you're more sensitive and you know, but it's not a forever thing, it's for everything I practice because now it's part of who I am as a part. Many of you know how I respond, but I think it's just going in and learning the tools to not let them have to be.
I don't expect to have to be in therapy for the rest of my life. I already know how to do this, sometimes I may need support, but I mean, I know how to do it. You know, yeah, congratulations on overcoming it because it's a difficult disorder to overcome. You know it varies. People improve to different degrees. It depends not only on the severity and how long you've been suffering and your circumstances, but also how quickly you adopt the strategy and how quickly you implement it, so you know I've had people who can implement it and get back to it . very quickly and for other people it takes a while so there really isn't a big answer, some people get better in three or four months and for other people it will take a few years.
We have a quick answer on when it will be available. on the DA website and my response is pretty soon maybe in a matter of days here is a question and we could finish with this question we have a question about exposure so if I want to start working on my anxiety problem health, what is an exhibition? And how do I start doing that? Can I do it on my own? Thoughts on that, so we didn't finish this webinar, so we'll plan to do a part two, so we didn't get to the exposition section, so we'll get to that next time, but to briefly answer your question, yes, certainly you can do exhibitions, for example.
I'll give you an example of some of them, but it really depends on who you were, what your fears are, for people who don't. I don't know that exposures confront your fears, so if someone is afraid of elevators, they actually have to get in the elevator so they know they are afraid of cancer. It's not that you're going to get cancer, but you could expose yourself to stories. related to cancer that you know, so you could read about someone who has cancer or you could write your horror story as if you had cancer and read it over and over again or if you are afraid of having your blood pressure taken, you might take blood pressure, you know, five times in a row, but I hesitate to even share this step because it's really not just about doing the exposure, it's about how you do the exposure. it's a little bit like you know swinging the baseball bat is how you swing it so the next webinar we do is going to talk specifically about the best ways to put yourself out there and not just go out and do it because you can do it wrong.
I want to do it slowly and there's a certain mentality and then maybe we could give ourselves some examples and that could be a part of it. One more quick question. Any books you recommend for health anxiety or websites, of course, can be the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Go on, hey, hey, I wonder if there are books on our website? I know there is a book. There is a section of self-help books. I don't know if there are any self-help books specifically about health anxiety in the ad. A website, but there may be. be and if so I would recommend them yeah yeah I don't have anything in particular but it's a great question so for the next webinar I'll do some research and check it out and give you that answer.
Great, thank you all for watching, thank you so much Ken and thank you Stephanie for yes, for the contribution and for everyone watching, please like and share it, and if you have any questions about our live audience or watching the recording , you can go ahead and send an email. your question for the webinars at adaa dot orgy so bye for now and see you in the next one okay thanks again I can

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