Session 3 Heart Attack Anxiety
Posted: Tue Mar 26, 2013 12:04 pm
So I have just started Week 3 of the program. Listened to the first CD yesterday, and I was doing great until the woman on the CD who says she had a heart attack at 46 and it was caused by stress. The second I heard that my stomach dropped and I started getting the hot/cold waves and pounding heart.
One of my major "catastrophic fears" is that something is wrong with my heart. I get really bad tension in my chest muscles and the pain is so intense. I tell myself that it's just my muscles tensing but sometimes then I get a heart flutter, like someone is doing the jig in my rib cage. And then I start thinking, well, maybe it isn't just muscle tension. I start feeling my pulse, obsessive over every sensation in my chest, back and arms.
I have some relatives, my uncle and grandpa, who died of sudden heart attacks. One was in his forties, the other in his fifties. They were both heavy smokers. I try to tell myself that I'm healthy. I exercise. I'm not overweight. During my worst "emergency room level" attacks I was hooked up to a heart monitor and nothing was wrong. But then the thoughts come in...if stress alone can cause a heart attack, maybe I'm going to have one anyway.
This anxiety over last night's session has carried through to this morning and I am wigging out at work. Had to take .25mg Xanax. But I had already taken 2 capsules of passionflower this morning, about 1.5 hours before the xanax. Then I started thinking I shouldn't have mixed them, and googling wither it's ok to mix them. And now I'm anxious about that.
I'm afraid to listen to session three again. I know I have to face this fear and overcome it. It's really hard. Does anyone else have this problem with session 3 and fear of heart attacks? I kind of got mad that they put that trigger on the tape. But then I thought maybe it was intentional to make the listener face that fear and realize that the fear of a heart attack can make the real possibility of a heart attack worse. But it's triggered this vicious anxiety cycle in me. Fear of the heart attack is causing fear that the fear will create a heart attack!!!
One of my major "catastrophic fears" is that something is wrong with my heart. I get really bad tension in my chest muscles and the pain is so intense. I tell myself that it's just my muscles tensing but sometimes then I get a heart flutter, like someone is doing the jig in my rib cage. And then I start thinking, well, maybe it isn't just muscle tension. I start feeling my pulse, obsessive over every sensation in my chest, back and arms.
I have some relatives, my uncle and grandpa, who died of sudden heart attacks. One was in his forties, the other in his fifties. They were both heavy smokers. I try to tell myself that I'm healthy. I exercise. I'm not overweight. During my worst "emergency room level" attacks I was hooked up to a heart monitor and nothing was wrong. But then the thoughts come in...if stress alone can cause a heart attack, maybe I'm going to have one anyway.
This anxiety over last night's session has carried through to this morning and I am wigging out at work. Had to take .25mg Xanax. But I had already taken 2 capsules of passionflower this morning, about 1.5 hours before the xanax. Then I started thinking I shouldn't have mixed them, and googling wither it's ok to mix them. And now I'm anxious about that.
I'm afraid to listen to session three again. I know I have to face this fear and overcome it. It's really hard. Does anyone else have this problem with session 3 and fear of heart attacks? I kind of got mad that they put that trigger on the tape. But then I thought maybe it was intentional to make the listener face that fear and realize that the fear of a heart attack can make the real possibility of a heart attack worse. But it's triggered this vicious anxiety cycle in me. Fear of the heart attack is causing fear that the fear will create a heart attack!!!