I consider myself fairly bombproof and think, on balance, I’m capable of managing quite a significant of stress but, suddenly out of the blue, I started having health anxiety panic attacks! They took me completely by surprise. I wasn’t expecting them and I certainly didn’t want them hanging around. It’s such a strange thing – it’s like an involuntary physical reaction that you can (seemingly) do nothing about. But it appears you can….
I had a bit of a stressful year a little while ago…we had three children aged 4 and under, our 7 month old baby had open heart surgery in the September, (which I wrote about here), our eldest daughter started school while he was in intensive care and my Mum was terminally ill with breast & bone cancer. In fact she was riddled with it and bed ridden. That winter our youngest little boy was also hospitalised twice with bronchiolitis and croup. My Mum died in the January.
A few months later, I developed these wretched ‘health anxiety panic attacks! Put very simply, I’d develop a genuine symptom (usually of a virus of some kind) and then be absolutely convinced that it was Armageddon. I’m an Osteopath we’re trained to rule out what we call ‘red flags’ – ie. if you came in to the practice complaining of arm pain, we want to exclude that it’s coming from your heart before we proceed. We do this every day routinely, BUT with my (genuine) symptoms I was unable to rule out the red flags and so convinced myself the end was nigh. It was absolutely debilitating in every way and very very annoying!
e.g. I caught food poisoning but not your usual food poisoning – my stomach blew up to 7 months pregnant size, zero appetite (I forced myself to eat one banana every 24 hours), I was incredibly tired and with no change after 6 days I just knew I had stomach cancer. Even watching an episode of 24 hours in A&E confirmed it (there was a woman on it with a bloated stomach who turned out to have stomach cancer). Thankfully I deflated on Day 8 and by Day 9 I was eating chocolate with my head buried in the fridge while passing grapes out to the kids.
I went to the GP and I said ‘you really have to dooo something’ because I’m about to explode with the stress of it. Please can I have some CBT and possibly a general anaesthetic and are the side effects of beta-blockers really that bad? It was actually not unlike asking for a cup of tea….
So off I went to meet ‘Joel’….and over 6 sessions this is what he taught me to do:
Onset of panic-inducing symptom and countdown to Armageddon….
- Write down as many things as you can think of that could possibly be causing the symptom(s), even if you think they’re completely unlikely.
- Make sure that somewhere on your list there’s an entry that says ‘something I haven’t heard of’.
- Allocate a % to illustrate how likely you think each entry on your list is.
So, for something simple like a headache, mid panic, your list might look like this (I’ve shortened this):
- Brain tumour – (definitely 96%)
- Neck / muscle problems – (3%)
- High blood pressure – (1%)
- Eye disease – (0.5%)
- Arterial disease – (0.4%)
- Dehydration (yeah right) – (0.1%)
- Something I don’t know about (0.0000000000000001%)
Well what a load of nonsense. How’s THIS going to work then?
Joel then asks me if I think these percentage’s are sensible / fair / realistic and would I like to review any of them….I argue until I’m blue in the face why I can’t reallocate the percentages because I can’t rule out the biggies and we realise I really am dreadful at maths. We spent far too much time trying to get everything to add up to 100%.
So then he asks me to allocate a % of occurrence of each in the UK (or your country) to each item on your list – the total must = 100% and you’re not allowed to look anything up on google! So, you’re forced to go through the process of deciding if something is rare or not with absolutely no idea if it is or it isn’t…
So then your list looks a bit more like this:
- Brain tumour – (5%)
- Neck / muscle problems – (70%)
- High blood pressure – (1%)
- Eye disease – (0.05%)
- Arterial disease – (0.05%)
- Dehydration – (18% but of course it depends on what sort of headache and associated symptoms….I’m still arguing away with poor Joel)
- Something I don’t know about (6% if I really must include this on my list)
You repeat this process with other symptoms that either you’ve had or haven’t but would concern you. And repeat….
Now remember that neither of these lists are at all realistic when you’re mid-panic / don’t have access to google BUT as I discovered later when I saw an inch long non painful ‘blood blister’ under the surface of my gum that the dentist wanted to get checked out, this process worked a treat! I would absolutely have convinced myself that I had mouth cancer and not slept a wink until I’d been checked with an electron microscope.
I have absolutely no idea why my brain has allowed this to happen but happen it did. I’m sure it will happen again but at least I now have techniques that I can put in place and try and get my head back in to reality.
If you’ve found this post ‘Panic Attacks: How Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) Helped Me’ helpful then please do share it – I know it’s not so easy for everyone to access CBT and they may need more immediate help while they’re waiting to be seen.
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If you’ve ever had panic attacks or CBT, please do leave a comment below, we’d love to hear about it.
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Also I wouldn’t leave the house for two weeks as I was so scared the panic attacks would come back, and I have two young children and really put me down as I don’t want it to effect them seeing there mum like this, I really really hope cbt helps me!
I know another Mum who only gets them on public transport. It’s completely debilitating. x
Hi, I’ve suffered with anxiety for the last few years now, then two months ago out of the blue I started to suffer with major panic attacks whilst driving which was very scary, I felt like I was going to pass out , I’m currently taking citalopram 20mg which has helped although I still get a bit anxious and suffer with panic attacks but not as severe, I’m starting cbt on Wednesday and fingers crossed it will help, I’ll keep you all updated, nice to speak to fellow sufferers
oh gosh – I do empathise. It’s just awful isn’t it? Good luck with the CBT and yes please, I’d love to hear how you get on x
Gosh, so sorry again about your mum and what you went through at that time. It’s an awful load of stress to cope with and I think for those of us who tend to internalise – i.e. we look calm and cool on the surface – the internal breakdown can be overwhelming. I suffer with exactly the same thing, health-related anxiety and panic attacks. I’m more aware of it now and what triggers it (extra stress) but when it starts I find it very hard to stop those negative thoughts building. A while back when I had major problems with my shoulder, I had what I thought was heart attack symptoms and did wind up taking myself to A&E in a state of alarm.
Luckily the osteo I saw was able to diagnose the condition (acute tendonitis) and really helped in terms of soothing care (the doctors weren’t much help aside from ruling out heart issues). I’m a big researcher which is both gift and curse, especially if you have a symptom but I do find that after I wade through the fog of anxiety and doom-laden thoughts, I can usually pin it on something that’s more realistic and gain some support from forums with other people going through similar issues. I’ve heard great things about CBT so this was a very useful post, thanks again for sharing your story x
Gosh, I’m so sorry you have this too – what a pair we are! I too am a big big researcher but in my case it seems to go against me as my brain filters out all the benign options and gets stuck on the increasing numbers of doom and gloom scenarios I find. Three cheers for osteos too ;). I hope you’re ok x
I have panic attacks regularly and constantly feel so riddled with anxiety that sometimes I can’t even leave the house.
I think I should really try CBT. I don’t want to live like this but am living in constant fear that something bad is going to happen if I so much as go grocery shopping.
Thank you for posting this! I wasn’t aware that CBT was something you could ask for at the doctors. I really think that CBT might help because it is all in my head x #brilliantblogposts
Oh Chloe yes please do go to the GP and ask – it really helped me and I hate to think of anyone locked in a world of panic attacks with no hope of resolving them. As Martyn quite rightly pointed out in the comments, you really need to have someone to work through these techniques with you to be the ‘rational’ contributor, so do try them with a friend / partner while you wait for the CBT appointment to come through from your doctor. Thank you so much for popping in x
Great post. I get really bad anxiety attacks and mainly under the social umbrella of it. I trained as a counsellor so use this technique but saying that it’s difficult to do when you don’t have an outside influence to allow you to sound off against otherwise you’re just producing a list of things without rationalisation. Loved this post though as it shows a side that people will relate to. Thanks as always for linking up with us on the #bigfatlinky hope to see you there next week
Martyn, you are absolutely right about needing rationalisation to do these – thank you! I hope too that this post helps people to know a bit more about CBT and what’s involved / the types of things one might do in a session. Often people aren’t so keen to try a therapy that they know nothing at all about and can’t imagine how it might work. Thanks again.
Panic attacks and other similar issues do often pop up when we have been through more stress than we can handle. What people often find strange is that they can appear after the stress has passed. It is a kind of kick back from everything we have gone through. Listening to what happened to you I am not surprised, you had a massive amount of stress to deal with all at once and right at a time when we really need to feel safe because of being responsible for children. I am really glad to hear that you found CBT helpful. As a counsellor and hypnotherapist I am always glad when people are brave enough to write about their journeys and how they have improved their lives. It is one of my reasons for writing The Guilt Free Guide to Motherhood. Well done.
It’s the classic PTSD isn’t it?? Also stress headaches…I hope this post will help people to know that CBT might be an option and a little bit about what sort of things might be done in a CBT session. Thanks for popping in 🙂
really interesting technique to help deal with panic attacks I have been suffering with similar since my youngest was born so thank you for sharing #sundaystars
Oh no you poor thing – they’re absolutely dreadful aren’t they? Do give it a go and definitely try and get yourself referred via the GP if possible. I really wish you well x
I have only suffered minor anxiety issues and then mainly brought on through my depression but I can see how CBT could be of great help to regular sufferers.
I’m currently running a mental health linky trying to raise a little awareness over Mental Health Awareness Week, I’d love if you’d consider linking up (not going to spam you with the link it is on my front page).
Hi Ashley! Thank you so much – I’ve just linked up and will pop back in later to have a read through. Thank you so much for thinking of this post and please do share it wherever you think it might help people…
Thanks for linking up.
Thank you for hosting something like this – I think mental health is so important x