Fear of cardiovascular disease and a heart attack.

For the longest time, I convinced myself that I had heart problems, before I knew that it was just my anxiety acting up. I was so sure that I was going to die every time my heart would start beating fast and my breathing became shallow. It's such an awful feeling, and I'm so glad that I eventually found out what it was and started working on how to control it. That 'uneasy' feeling that comes over you and suddenly your whole world just shrinks and you find that the only thing you can focus on is the beating of your heart and your thoughts of death.

My family has a horrible line of heart problems, every single generation on my dads side seems to have heart attack or strokes young or end up with coronary artery disease as they age. This causes a horrid fear of "what if's" in my mind. I didn't use to give much thought to it, but a year ago I started having slight chest pains and random strong/weird palpitations. I mentioned them to family and because I was only 22 I was sort of blown off like I was a hypochondriac. I even tried to think less about it or ignore the strange feelings, hoping it was just me. When I turned 23, I was forced under an immense load of stress, but I truly believed I was handling it fine. I felt calm, at peace even though I was going through the hardest time of my life, so much so I was almost unnerved by how unstressed I felt. Three months later I was hospitalized for symptoms that typically lead to a heart attack.


If you truly feel like something is wrong you need to talk to a doctor. I believed everyone else, no matter how strange I physically felt and I ended up in a hospital for a real problem.

Heart ailment runs in my blood and I was always fearful of a heart attack when I was young. My mother's younger brother succumbed to heart attack when I was 13 and it gave me reason to fear. And then my youngest sister almost died of a heart attack. But I am glad that I am able to shed off my fear by thinking that I will die someday and a heart attack is one good death since it is almost free from pains and suffering. That thought greatly helps me to live a better life.

For that last couple of weeks, I've notice that my entire left side, meaning my left arm, left hand, left hip, and left leg/foot have been getting this "cold/numb" sensation right at the surface. I was almost 100% convinced these were stroke symptoms, or maybe even cardiac symptoms (left side- watch out!)

But then I finally figured out what I was doing....I was unknowingly tensing up my muscles in my left shoulder whenever I was under stress, even lifting my shoulder all the way up to my ear, that's just how tight my shoulder muscle was on that side. By doing it so often without even paying attention, it was setting off all kinds of nerve impulses shooting down the left side of my body.

AGAIN, anxiety was the culprit. And it always takes a while before I catch myself in the act.