One thing I find is that nagging, minor symptoms that seem to always be present will largely dissipate after I receive imaging test results that put my anxiety at ease. More and more I am coming to realize just how much pain is a subjective phenomenon that is related to, or even dependent on, my attention. For example, after I had a colonoscopy and was given the all clear for colon cancer, the symptoms that were triggering my colon cancer fears more or less disappeared. This doesn't mean they aren't "real" but rather that my anxiety causes me to focus on them in a way that brings them to the foreground and then, because I panic about them, my nervous systems treats them as dire and assigns them a top priority, creating a kind of pain, stress feedback loop.
Do you find that your symptoms sometimes diminish or disappear entirely with test results?
- Thread starter Fraser
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100% this. When my attention shifts, so do my symptoms.
bigjetplane2
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Yes, I can relate.
100% I was worried about my stomach and stomach cancer. I thought the stomach was on the right and all the discomfort was on the right. Then I had pale stools one day and started worrying about PC. Learned it was on the left and back and started worrying abut little sensations and pains on the left and the mild to almost unnoticeable beck pain. (I only feel pain if I push and pock the area) has now grown. It is never ending. In 2001 had this HA afflict me. First it was my heart and palpitations. The it shifted to leukemia and so did the symptoms.
kristinelorraine
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All the time. I wish I could rewire my brain like other normal people.
You can.
kristinelorraine
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How?
1.) Cognitive behavioural therapy
2.) Meditation
3.) For chronic pain and it's relationship to stress, I'd suggest the app "Curable"
It's work and it takes effort, but there is a ton of evidence supporting 1 and 2. Science also backs the theory behind 3, but your mileage with the execution may vary (I find it helpful). If you're curious about pursuing any of these, I can provide you with more info/links.
Cuchculan
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I think a lot of people with HA don't want to accept test results. Because they have been handed an answer telling them there is nothing wrong with you. Of course the doctors must have missed something. That can be the thinking. Nothing wrong with them does not go along with their HA. Another thing they might do is accept the test results but them start over with something new. True story this, but I once had a person tell me they had something wrong with them. Now this person was Irish. Never left Ireland. Obly what they were claiming they had wrong wrong was a tropical disease. Which you can not get in Ireland. So it shows the extent of how a person with HA can imagine things. I did explain the whole tropical disease thing to this person and suddenly it was gone. It was time to move onto something new. The HA mind can't rest easy. It knows nothing but illness. Having read a lot of posts over the years it is very clear these people Google a lot. They write up names that no oridinay person would know. So a test might help them for a short while. But it won't be long until they have something new.
blueberries
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I wish my symptoms disappeared after test results but sad to say they don't. Scares me because I know something else is lurking in there that that particular test wasn't looking for.