I thought I would get this particular blog out the way, however, it may be the most important for readers to get to grips with. This post isn't designed to assess my current situation or to disclose how things are, how anxiety has affected my life or how the symptoms have changed over time, but it will just set out the 'conditions' that I have been 'diagnosed' with over the years. Obviously those who have experienced similar feelings will be more drawn to this than others and if I'm honest I don't really want that to happen, but it would be foolish for me not to detail my more precise experiences so as to set the scene for future blogs.
Let's bring an unnecessary level of academia to proceedings and do it in the form of a list:
Health Anxiety (aka Hypochondriasis)
In non-official non-diagnosis terms, this is a belief that a physical symptom, pain, or discomfort will become something life threatening. A good example that I have persistently experienced is regarding the heart; any change in heart rate or pains in the chest or left arm automatically raises the panic alarm and the thought that "I'm going to have a heart attack" manifests. (Key note: 'the thought that.' More on this in future.) From what I understand, people with health anxiety can have preoccupations about one specific health problem, such as contracting cancer, or a multitude of problems or 'assumptions.' Whilst some symptoms produce more anxiety than others, I generally fall into the latter category. For me, HA can also be triggered by reading about health problems or other people talking about them. It's damn inconvenient, especially when you start taking phrases like 'pain in the arse' all too literally.
Panic Disorder
Again unofficially, this is effectively having a fear of having a panic attack. I have suffered from many panic attacks in my life and at times it has got to the point where I'm so scared of having a panic attack that I have a panic attack. It has meant that I have found it exceptionally difficult to go out into the public domain for fear of panic attack, and such a condition could result in the onset of agoraphobia. Again this is inconvenient, because it can dramatically affect all parts of your life. It is intrinsically linked with health anxiety; for example, if I get a pain whilst out of my 'comfort zone,' I then fear that I will have a panic attack because of the pain, which triggers the panic disorder, which then intensifies the pain... which leads to an actual panic attack. This, of course, is the worst case scenario but shows how each of these anxieties all work with each other.
Social Anxiety
I wouldn't say my social anxiety is severe, far from it. However I do have elements of it; eating out is the main thing, I have always found it very difficult. The more 'formal' the meal is the more difficult it becomes, although it also depends on who I'm with, where I am, how many people are there, what the atmosphere is like, how tight my trousers are... and so on. This, again, is inconvenient, particularly when eating so slowly results in you choking and subsequently you start panicking... you get the idea.
Obviously, and particularly given how each of these links together, it is far more complex in reality than it appears here. These complexities will no doubt be drawn out in future blogs, particularly those that detail some of my real life situations, but this is just to give you a broad overview of my anxious past. Anxious about what, exactly? No idea.
My intention was to paste the official definitions of these conditions next to my garble, but unfortunately, the Anxiety UK website currently has errors on its page. Apparently it is 'unable to modify the parent container element before the child element is closed.' It's enough to cause anxiety.
This will be the most difficult blog to write, I hope, and also the most difficult one to read. I'm anticipating plenty of positivity and optimism in future blogs so please stick with it. I might start by telling you a little about me. And I don't include anxiety in that.
Best wishes
Al
PS: You'd think that this particular website's spell checker would recognise the word 'blog'.
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